6 ms·

Data does not match model. Hmm. What could be wrong here? Maybe, just maybe, the underlying assumptions of "black hole" and "accretion disk" are wrong. Mayhaps

Data does not match model. Hmm. What could be wrong here? Maybe, just maybe, the underlying assumptions of "black hole" and "accretion disk" are wrong. Mayhaps, the actual structure of the quasars is something that is not even on the their radar. I don't know, but if data doesn't match model, maybe they need to be looking at all of the basis assumptions they use.

DiabloD3 8y ago
What I don't like about high energy astrophysics like this is they keep ignoring obvious routes such as anything that involves electric charge or anything that isn't gravity.
- macintux 8y ago
  I’d assume you’d need to have a pretty dramatic theory to explain how any force other than gravity could have a galactic-scale impact, but my physics comprehension topped out in high school.
  - oldandtired 8y ago
    Since gravity is about 38 orders of magnitude smaller than electromagnetic effects then there could be an electromagnetic basis here. Something to do appropriate research into. When I did my undergraduate engineering in the late 70's, a class discussion took place on how many coulombs of charge would be required to launch a rocket into orbit. The engineering problem is to be able to input amps into a charge receptacle without it leaking away. But it was only coulombs of charge. 1 amp being equal to 1 coulomb passing by in 1 second. The other fun discussion we had was about the effects of 1 watt of sound energy and what it would do to the matter around it - a good way to bring down a building. One of the assumptions with regards galactic level gravity is that we are dealing with effectively electrically neutral material. If for any reason, it is not electrically neutral then gravity can easily be swamped by other forces. You can do a simple trick with your children and grandchildren by rubbing a balloon on your head hair (if you are blessed to have enough hair to start with) and having the balloon hang on the side of your head. This is simple electrostatic effect which overcomes the effect of gravity of the entire planet. My grandchildren love it when I do this and then do the same for them. They think it is a fun game. Another example of swamping gravity is maglev effects.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      The general issue with this is that neutrality is favored thermodynamically, since on average objects should tend towards being neutral. Meanwhile gravity seems to provide an easy way to explain how even a relatively chaotic system may end up becoming clumped and ordered.
      - strainer 8y ago
        Electromagnetism confounds that expected tendency. In combination with the nature of charged particles to repel each other - they divert each other in an unsymmetric, chiral direction to their relative motion. This leads to the obvious magnetic fields and visible flows such as aurora, besides who knows what other discovered and undiscovered phenomena. Quantum physics uses "virtual photons" - an unfamiliar virtual light, to produce the familiar magnetic forces in motors and things. I've tentatively tried to grok electrodynamics over time but I find it even more perplexing than General Relativity.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        You're really not providing much insight other than "electromagnetism is weird and that means it must cause black holes instead of gravity, because I find it to be more confusing than general relativity". The way you're talking about the topic in general makes me think that you are trying to make it sound more complicated than it really is, to the point of stating misleading things that are almost to the point of being factually incorrect.
        strainer 8y ago
        "almost ... factually incorrect" ?
    - Cogito 8y ago
      The issue with electric forces is not getting the right amount of force together in one place, it's separating the positive and negative forces from each other. They don't like being separated, and so it's difficult to isolate them and then put them to work. Importantly, if you look at any large amount of mass - at least everything we've looked at - the total electric charge is near 0. Gravity doesn't have this cancelling out problem; while it's weak, there is no negative gravity to cancel out effects, and so large scale interaction becomes possible. A really good breakdown of some of this is in the xkcd what if series https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/
jeremyjh 8y ago
> Mayhaps, the actual structure of the quasars is something that is not even on the their radar. Are there any candidates for an alternate energy source that could out-produce the entire milky way by a thousand-fold in a volume the size of a single solar system?
- oldandtired 8y ago
  This is the question - since the distances involved are well beyond the resolution of any telescope (of any type), how do we know that the objects are of a size on the order of a single solar system? Could these objects be light years across? Or somewhere in between? We have theory/models that assume certain basis ideas. Are these basis assumptions the only options? If the model is at odds with the data, one needs to take a long hard look at the model used and all of the underlying assumptions.
  - jeremyjh 8y ago
    Have you looked at pictures of galaxies? They look different from a single point source. So yes, what we have is a point source that outshines galaxies. You need another theory that explains all the data as well as the current model before there is really anything to talk about here. And models do not emerge fully-formed in a single brilliant insight, they get refined and completed over time as new observations and new theories are tested to account for them. Most likely we won't have to reset all of astrophysics to explain this.
    - oldandtired 8y ago
      Quasars outshine the galaxies they are in so 'tis difficult to get a handle on the size of such entities - this is all I am saying. The general portrayal is that they are smaller than solar system sizes. But that is an assumption that may be completely wrong. Even if hundreds of light years across, at the distances they are seen and in comparison to the sizes of galaxies, this is still small - almost point source in effect. Our own galaxy is, what, 150,000 to 200,000 light years across. The problem is the basis assumption. It is correct? Is it even valid? A lot more effort is required to determine this. It is a worthy area to investigate, don't you think?
empath75 8y ago
If the data doesn’t match the model a little bit you don’t throw out the model completely, you adjust it.
- oldandtired 8y ago
  Agreed, but one should also be looking at what assumptions are being used and how they affect the outcomes predicted. If the adjustments made then invalidate one of the basis assumptions or the implications on which the model or theory relies, then there is a need to revisit all of the model.
joe_the_user 8y ago
The thing is that the data does match the model, extraordinarily well in an extremely fine way. Each of the view of a quasar described fits many parts of very elaborate models in a very exact way. There's a huge amount of data coming in the form of the spectrum of all these astronomical objects. One particular detail has changed here but that's different from everything being uncertain, the size and properties of the whole system being up in the air and so-forth.

DiabloD3 8y ago

What I don't like about high energy astrophysics like this is they keep ignoring obvious routes such as anything that involves electric charge or anything that isn't gravity.

macintux 8y ago
I’d assume you’d need to have a pretty dramatic theory to explain how any force other than gravity could have a galactic-scale impact, but my physics comprehension topped out in high school.
- oldandtired 8y ago
  Since gravity is about 38 orders of magnitude smaller than electromagnetic effects then there could be an electromagnetic basis here. Something to do appropriate research into. When I did my undergraduate engineering in the late 70's, a class discussion took place on how many coulombs of charge would be required to launch a rocket into orbit. The engineering problem is to be able to input amps into a charge receptacle without it leaking away. But it was only coulombs of charge. 1 amp being equal to 1 coulomb passing by in 1 second. The other fun discussion we had was about the effects of 1 watt of sound energy and what it would do to the matter around it - a good way to bring down a building. One of the assumptions with regards galactic level gravity is that we are dealing with effectively electrically neutral material. If for any reason, it is not electrically neutral then gravity can easily be swamped by other forces. You can do a simple trick with your children and grandchildren by rubbing a balloon on your head hair (if you are blessed to have enough hair to start with) and having the balloon hang on the side of your head. This is simple electrostatic effect which overcomes the effect of gravity of the entire planet. My grandchildren love it when I do this and then do the same for them. They think it is a fun game. Another example of swamping gravity is maglev effects.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    The general issue with this is that neutrality is favored thermodynamically, since on average objects should tend towards being neutral. Meanwhile gravity seems to provide an easy way to explain how even a relatively chaotic system may end up becoming clumped and ordered.
    - strainer 8y ago
      Electromagnetism confounds that expected tendency. In combination with the nature of charged particles to repel each other - they divert each other in an unsymmetric, chiral direction to their relative motion. This leads to the obvious magnetic fields and visible flows such as aurora, besides who knows what other discovered and undiscovered phenomena. Quantum physics uses "virtual photons" - an unfamiliar virtual light, to produce the familiar magnetic forces in motors and things. I've tentatively tried to grok electrodynamics over time but I find it even more perplexing than General Relativity.
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        You're really not providing much insight other than "electromagnetism is weird and that means it must cause black holes instead of gravity, because I find it to be more confusing than general relativity". The way you're talking about the topic in general makes me think that you are trying to make it sound more complicated than it really is, to the point of stating misleading things that are almost to the point of being factually incorrect.
        strainer 8y ago
        "almost ... factually incorrect" ?
  - Cogito 8y ago
    The issue with electric forces is not getting the right amount of force together in one place, it's separating the positive and negative forces from each other. They don't like being separated, and so it's difficult to isolate them and then put them to work. Importantly, if you look at any large amount of mass - at least everything we've looked at - the total electric charge is near 0. Gravity doesn't have this cancelling out problem; while it's weak, there is no negative gravity to cancel out effects, and so large scale interaction becomes possible. A really good breakdown of some of this is in the xkcd what if series https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/

jeremyjh 8y ago

> Mayhaps, the actual structure of the quasars is something that is not even on the their radar. Are there any candidates for an alternate energy source that could out-produce the entire milky way by a thousand-fold in a volume the size of a single solar system?

oldandtired 8y ago
This is the question - since the distances involved are well beyond the resolution of any telescope (of any type), how do we know that the objects are of a size on the order of a single solar system? Could these objects be light years across? Or somewhere in between? We have theory/models that assume certain basis ideas. Are these basis assumptions the only options? If the model is at odds with the data, one needs to take a long hard look at the model used and all of the underlying assumptions.
- jeremyjh 8y ago
  Have you looked at pictures of galaxies? They look different from a single point source. So yes, what we have is a point source that outshines galaxies. You need another theory that explains all the data as well as the current model before there is really anything to talk about here. And models do not emerge fully-formed in a single brilliant insight, they get refined and completed over time as new observations and new theories are tested to account for them. Most likely we won't have to reset all of astrophysics to explain this.
  - oldandtired 8y ago
    Quasars outshine the galaxies they are in so 'tis difficult to get a handle on the size of such entities - this is all I am saying. The general portrayal is that they are smaller than solar system sizes. But that is an assumption that may be completely wrong. Even if hundreds of light years across, at the distances they are seen and in comparison to the sizes of galaxies, this is still small - almost point source in effect. Our own galaxy is, what, 150,000 to 200,000 light years across. The problem is the basis assumption. It is correct? Is it even valid? A lot more effort is required to determine this. It is a worthy area to investigate, don't you think?

empath75 8y ago

If the data doesn’t match the model a little bit you don’t throw out the model completely, you adjust it.

oldandtired 8y ago
Agreed, but one should also be looking at what assumptions are being used and how they affect the outcomes predicted. If the adjustments made then invalidate one of the basis assumptions or the implications on which the model or theory relies, then there is a need to revisit all of the model.

joe_the_user 8y ago

The thing is that the data does match the model, extraordinarily well in an extremely fine way. Each of the view of a quasar described fits many parts of very elaborate models in a very exact way. There's a huge amount of data coming in the form of the spectrum of all these astronomical objects. One particular detail has changed here but that's different from everything being uncertain, the size and properties of the whole system being up in the air and so-forth.