Wot, no black holes?

January 26, 2002 3:36 AM

Wot, no black holes? Those wacky boffins in science land have already had a pop at the Higg's boson, but now they're moving on to everybody's favourite theoretical singularity, with a new theory about what happens when a star kicks the astral bucket.
posted by stuporJIX (6 comments total)

Oh, and its got an incredibly cool name.
posted by stuporJIX at 3:39 AM on January 26, 2002

Freaky, thanks for the link.
posted by riffola at 7:09 AM on January 26, 2002

No wormholes either? You mean we're stuck in _this_ universe?
posted by jamsterdam at 7:14 AM on January 26, 2002

Not necessarily. It seems that the existence of quantum computers implies the existence of infinitely many universes. Whether you can get there from here is another matter, of course.
posted by gleuschk at 8:27 AM on January 26, 2002

Thanks for the link, gleuschk, I'm going to finish reading it in a bit. I just skimmed the first article, because Saturday morning is a poor time for quantum mechanics, but it almost seems like this new theory is splitting hairs a bit. I mean, a gravastar also is a small ball of infinetly dense matter, but is different from a black hole?

Also, Michael Crichton wrote an excellent called named Timelapse a while back that does a good job of explaining multiverse theory and quantum computers in laymans' terms.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 10:16 AM on January 26, 2002

What I get from this article though, is that a black hole is mostly the same as a gravstar from an external observational point of view. The only differences are in their formation, and in their interior. So until a solid theory of quantum gravity is found, the inside is pretty much still fair game. Anyway, we're one step closer now as Quantum gravity has been observed for the first time.
posted by mkn at 12:21 PM on January 26, 2002