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>I should mention pre-existing biases; my default setting is skeptical. I don’t really believe that black holes exist Wonder if dark matter/energy will turn ou

>I should mention pre-existing biases; my default setting is skeptical. I don’t really believe that black holes exist Wonder if dark matter/energy will turn out to be the Aether of the 21st century.

pete762 7y ago
What does dark matter have to do with black holes?
- davedx 7y ago
  They are related topically in that yesterday new research cast the very existence of dark matter into doubt, and this blog post is kind of trying to do the same (albeit with less rigour than the actual scientific paper posted here yesterday).
  - rob74 7y ago
    Wasn't that dark energy in yesterday's article?
  - m4r35n357 7y ago
    Dark matter is NOT the same thing as dark energy.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    As another reply mentioned, the paper in question cast doubt on one of the key pieces of evidence for Dark Energy, not Dark Matter. Despite the similar names, they are not fundamentally related concepts and there is significantly more evidence for the existence of Dark Matter.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  Well, MACHOs are one hypothesis for explaining dark matter, and they're typically considered to include (but not be limited to) black holes.
mumblemumble 7y ago
I think it depends on what you mean by "dark matter" and "dark energy". If you think they're theorized substances or energy sources (which seems to be the preferred interpretation in the press), then, yeah, there seems to be a decent chance that that will be the case. If you think, as more cautiously-minded folks seem to, that they're just clever catchwords to describe troubling lacunae in our understanding of how the universe works, not so much. There really are observations that we have trouble explaining.
burke 7y ago
If black holes don’t exist, what happens when gravity overpowers electromagnetism and the strong force in a region of high mass concentration? I don’t get what the alternative hypothesis could be. Do we just get arbitrarily-large neutron stars or something?
- vincent-toups 7y ago
  Something like a fuzzball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzball_(string_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzball_(string_theory) But there I think most physicists think something like the solution to the Einstein field equations does obtain within most of the interior region of the objects we call black holes. They just believe that the region of the singularity may have some other physics so that it doesn't become singular.

pete762 7y ago

What does dark matter have to do with black holes?

davedx 7y ago
They are related topically in that yesterday new research cast the very existence of dark matter into doubt, and this blog post is kind of trying to do the same (albeit with less rigour than the actual scientific paper posted here yesterday).
- rob74 7y ago
  Wasn't that dark energy in yesterday's article?
- m4r35n357 7y ago
  Dark matter is NOT the same thing as dark energy.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  As another reply mentioned, the paper in question cast doubt on one of the key pieces of evidence for Dark Energy, not Dark Matter. Despite the similar names, they are not fundamentally related concepts and there is significantly more evidence for the existence of Dark Matter.
mumblemumble 7y ago
Well, MACHOs are one hypothesis for explaining dark matter, and they're typically considered to include (but not be limited to) black holes.

mumblemumble 7y ago

I think it depends on what you mean by "dark matter" and "dark energy". If you think they're theorized substances or energy sources (which seems to be the preferred interpretation in the press), then, yeah, there seems to be a decent chance that that will be the case. If you think, as more cautiously-minded folks seem to, that they're just clever catchwords to describe troubling lacunae in our understanding of how the universe works, not so much. There really are observations that we have trouble explaining.

burke 7y ago

If black holes don’t exist, what happens when gravity overpowers electromagnetism and the strong force in a region of high mass concentration? I don’t get what the alternative hypothesis could be. Do we just get arbitrarily-large neutron stars or something?

vincent-toups 7y ago
Something like a fuzzball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzball_(string_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzball_(string_theory) But there I think most physicists think something like the solution to the Einstein field equations does obtain within most of the interior region of the objects we call black holes. They just believe that the region of the singularity may have some other physics so that it doesn't become singular.