Figure 25.5 of “Gravitation” – the famous bible of general relativity written in 1973 by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler – shows on page 667 two curves as a function of time, both describing an astronaut in-falling from a stationary outer point onto a black hole. The two time curves at first coincide horizontally on the left. Then the upper one decays essentially exponentially reaching the horizontal x-axis of the horizon only asymptotically after infinite time. The lower curve, after initially coinciding, deviates downwards gently to after picking up speed (in a curve like the frontal part of a shoe’s profile) reach the horizon after 15 days already.
The lower curve is the proper time experienced by an astronaut falling onto a solar-mass black hole – the time it takes on the wristwatch to reach the horizon in free fall from a fixed outer position. The upper curve shows how this same in-falling process looks to an outside observer: infinitely elongated.
I am drawing your attention to this Figure in a famous book co-authored by my late friend John Wheeler because this figure – I claim – illustrates an error made by the whole physics community over many decades – notwithstanding the fact that the Figure is flawless.
The error consists in the reader’s believing that the short in-falling time experienced by the astronaut – lower curve – was “more real” because the maximally slowed-down appearance of the same process watched from the outside – upper curve – was caused by the growing and eventually infinite redshift that applies. This is the common belief in gravitation physics up to this day. Nevertheless this is a misunderstanding. How can I be sure?
My trick to convince you that the upper curve is the more real one lies in assuming that an ideal “trampoline” had been placed on the horizon – so that the motion of the in-falling astronaut is exactly time-inverted such that she is sent back up again without loss of kinetic energy. This ideal device can be assumed to be present without one’s making a formal mistake. The astronaut then automatically returns after another 15 days of her proper time. The pertinent curve – second shoe – is a mirror image of the first, touching it with its own tip at the level of the horizon to go up symmetrically to the right in order to hit the original height after 30 days of total travelling time of the astronaut. Such a second “dashed shoe” can be entered legally into the figure of Misner, Thorne and Wheeler.
Now the clinching question: Where, after these 30 days of travel experienced by the astronaut, lies the reappearance point of the astronaut on the time axis of the stationary outer observer (assuming he still occupies the same position as taken when the astronaut was released into free fall)?
My claim: The return occurs, not at 30 days of outer time as the newly added dashed curve suggests, but rather at “twice infinity” in outer time. The second dashed line – the one valid from the outside – is a mirror image of the full infinitely long upper curve added on to it on the right at t = infinity. This finishes the example.
If you are a high-school student: would you, please, ask your teacher about her or his opinion? I predict you will be told the following: The events on the wristwatch of the astronaut are only “optically elongated” such that what takes place in a short time for the astronaut looks vastly – eventually infinitely – stretched-out on the time scale of the outside world. But nonetheless “this does not add up to ‘twice infinity’ since no textbook says so and the question is too simple and important to have been overlooked over almost a century.” So the optical stretching must somehow be made up for again when the astronaut is racing back overtaking her own formerly sent-out light signals.
Can you make up your mind yourself?: Will the astronaut find a double infinity of outer time to have passed when she re-arrives (as I say), or can she hug the crew she left 30 days before? Bets are invited.
Acknowledgment
I thank my students for their skepticism which opened-up my eyes to the general interest of the question.
Dear Tom:
Thank you very much for kindly having added the diagram to the text!
No problem Otto. About your question — The answer is both. I don’t see it as an anomaly in science. To the astronaut, whose time is dilated, just 30 days would have elapsed — though to the faraway observer it would require infinite time (events at an event horizon cannot occur in finite time to an outside observer — such as the trampoline bounce in your example). Best –T.
Thank you for agreeing with my relativistic syllogism.
Simple question please answer me as this bad weather in the uk and usa got anything to do with the lhc or mbh ???? Or am I going crazy please try to answer me anybody please
The answer is no, dear Jen. Here we discuss an important known finding which radically changes the properties of black holes compared to what is currently believed. In order for those personalities on the planet, who care like you to get a chance to be heard. And — to address the danger you have in mind — it is really not great. It is only the duty of the responsible persons to make sure that even a low risk is not going to be overlooked — right? So this is a very detached and general blog here and I very much hope for a scientific counterargument.
I’m asking is this bad weather caused by the lhc or mbh sorry I’m confused and I’m also sorry that I don’t have a clue about this and I make people like you and tom angry
Ino you think I’m mad and I don’t blame any of you all ino I made a mistake but I just wanted to no if a mbh lhc is the cause of this really bad weather in the uk and the usa otto u said no what that to the lhc being the cause or me being mad I’m happy whatever lol
I may just be a kid in your eyes and what I say no1 listnes to but could you answer my question please
Again no1 listnes or answers me please will u answer my question
Otto please could you answer my question I asked so I can understand what u mean and I will leave it at that thank you very much
Dear Jen, allow me to repeat: “The answer is no.”
Feel stupid now keep up the gd fight
Otto — nothing stated here radically changes the properties of black holes — gravitational time dilation is not a new concept, and is already considered in HR theory. No risk.
For others — Some simple conceptuals explained here -
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/fall_in.html
and in Appendix 2 — http://environmental-safety.webs.com/TechnicalNote-EnvSA01.pdf
Dear Tom:
Thank you for the wonderful link. It explains marvelously the finite in-falling time result of Oppenheimer and Synder of 1939, the result to which I implicitly referred with the above picture (with # 1, the short-term curve which reaches the level of the horizon in a few days of flying time recorded by the astronaut and # 2, the exponentially flattening observable in-falling line onto the Schwarzschild radius at r = 2 visible in principle from without).
If you look closely, the proof I presented above shows that the “frozen star” (as the Russian school used to call star-borne black holes) is never finished in finite outer time. This follows from the fact that the subjectively short time of coming-up again for the astronaut – 15 days in the picture – takes another infinity of outer time. This fact which I described is not touched upon by the references you kindly gave, Tom.
Note that returning by the astronaut in the same short proper time as having fallen down-in, covers the same infinite outside length of time again. This fact – which I demonstrated by showing that otherwise the relativistic speed limit would be overstepped by the re-surfacing astronaut – proves that in external time, the Schwarzschild radius is indeed never finished. This is not a temporal-lensing effect, though, as everyone believes so far, but the reality.
It therefore is a most interesting phenomenon – as you correctly say and show with the link – that the scientific community was so far unable to come to grips with this fact, first described in 1939, of the two different in-falling time curves seen in the above picture. The two “dashed lines” to be added – mirror-symmetric versions of the two continuous lines given in the picture above the level of the Schwarzschild radius of r = 2 –, which I suggested to the reader to mentally enter into the picture, got invariably overlooked by the scientific community. This fact you now confirmed yourself with the references which you kindly gave. The two imaginary dashed lines got indeed overlooked for 75 years.
Ordinarily, common sense is not believed to be able to win out against mathematical sophistication. The here discussed problem therefore is a pivotal phenomenon in the history of science – if I am right only, of course. Imagine: a whole community of super-brains making such a blunder over 75 years – if it is indeed so.
Can you defend them?
Or can anyone else?
I will take this incantation in honor of common sense back if you – or anyone else – can disprove the two dashed lines I entered into the above figure in the mind of the reader: the “mirrored shoe” touching the shoe-like profile on the left and the “mirrored infinitely long exponentially decaying curve” touching the infinitely far away tip on the decaying curve on the right.
I have a weak feeling in my stomach. But this is science: to make yourself maximally vulnerable or, as Feynman said: “Bend over backwards!” I hope I did not overdo it.
Why is it always every1 else that is wrong there a very big chance u are rong
You are absolutely right. Therefore I am hunting for someone who can help me by showing that I am wrong.
Otto — About in-falling to a frozen star (BH) not occuring in finite outer time — this is known, and yes even touched upon in the short reference I provided — “If I then return home, I’ll have aged less than you. In this case, general relativity can say something about the difference in proper time experienced by the two of us, because our ages can be compared locally at the start and end of the journey. If an external observer sees me slow down asymptotically as I fall…” You are not presenting anything new here (other than an event horizon ‘bounce’ which is irrelevant in discussing finite outside observer time).
I totally agree with you, Tom.
Problem is: No one else knows, so it appears.
Black holes are never finished in outer universe time.
(Hence no twin particle can reach horizon and hence be unable to return to re-unite with its outside waiting pair twin in time, as Hawking assumes.)
Otto — it appears you misunderstand HR. It considers pair production from the vacuum energy outside the event horizon, where one is assumed can so escape in finite time to the external observer. HR is considered to already factor in gravitational time dilation (actually a member of the LSAG explicitly reminded me of this in recent email conversation when I mentioned your gravitational time dilation concerns to them). Having said that I have my own doubts about HR — though not in the context of gravitational time dilation ;-) — and not as a pretext to any safety concern. There is no risk.
No, not “one is assumed to escape to the external observer.” You cannot make an assumptions like that in physics. He first had to assume, and did assume, that the other has disappeared for good behind the horizon. No other situation in physics can (or could) prevent a pair twin from returning to do its quantum-mechanical duty of disappearing again jointly with its equally burrowed partner.
Otto — Yes of course I mean one escapes while the other disappears for good towards the horizon (or beyond the horizon in its local time) — pulled apart by the gravitational forces of the BH. You seem to attribute the horizon rather than the BH gravitational energy as that which separates the two — and preventing that neat disappearing act.
Dear Tom, this is a misunderstanding from your part in my eyes.
Re-check what I wrote. I repeat:
The waiting twin cannot move outwards unless the downwards departing partner has disappeared for good behind the horizon, in the lifetime of the waiting twin.
Since this never happens, the partner has — reluctantly? — to return to the waiting twin in time. There is nothing that could hold him back — only a horizon placed between them could do so according to Hawking. In the absence of such a barrier, nothing prevents the two from reuniting in time into annihilation.
I would not put Hawking in doubt.
Otto — It seems you misunderstand pair production and HR. It is that which gives energy to the pair (gravitational tidal forces) which can extract them from the quantum foam and prevent their disappearance. HR has nothing to do with an horizon placed between them.
See wiki page on pair production for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production
“In semiclassical general relativity…” “In a region of strong gravitational tidal forces, the two particles in a pair may sometimes be wrenched apart before they have a chance to mutually annihilate. When this happens in the region around a black hole, one particle may escape while its antiparticle partner is captured by the black hole.”
This is a misunderstanding, dear Tom. Mere spacetime cuvature does not suffice to obtain Hawking radiation.
If your wikis tell otherwise, they do not represent Hawking.
I am sure Hawking, who just made a strong statement in favor of the poor people in Syria, is here on my side.
Otto — That is not what I said nor quoted. Gravitational tidal forces suffice for pair production. HR of course is a specific case related to black holes where one of the pair escapes and the other does not.
Quote: “Gravitational tidal forces suffice for pair production. “
Could you, please, give me the pertinent reference by Hawking?
Otto — Hawking does not deal with the generalised case. Particle production in time-dependent gravitational field — the expanding mass shell, Hossenfelder, Schwarz, Greiner, 2002, discusses where there is no horizon and no singularity for example: http://cds.cern.ch/record/589463/files/0210110.pdf
If you want more references you’ll need to dig them out yourself –am a bit tied for time.
Dear Tom:
This is not Hawking radiation.
This is at best Greiner radiation. But the latter makes an assumption at variance with the Schwarzschild metric which alone governs black hole theory.
Otto — you asked me about pair production. Your whole point was that ‘only a horizon’ could cause pair production hence I obliged to show you that accepted viewpoint that e.g. gravitational forces are what causes pair production — by presenting an example which does not involve a horizon, and hence would not involve BH, and so not involve HR either.
It seems your whole case for ‘an anomaly in science’ is based on this misunderstanding of the forces behind pair production — and of Hawking Radiation in general for that matter.
Dear Tom,
While Hawking is supported by many physicists, the situation of the example you stick to is not supported by the majority of believers in Hawking radiation.
But what I should have said and was too stupid to do so is: your scenario was never claimed to apply to artificial mini black holes.
Otto — Yes indeed the scenario I cited about pair production is neither in the context of BH or hypothesized MBH. However — I cannot progress to discuss HR with you if we disagree on the process of pair production. I think at this point I need to call a truce on our debate — as we have reached an ‘opinion deadlock’ , though at least we weeded out the specifics of where we diverge opinion on the subject…
On a lighter note I leave you with some music, not entirely out of context — The Divine Comedy — The Certainty of Chance:
No disagreement about the music, Tom.
Hi Otto, without getting myself a degree in particle physics as I am unable to understand your papers or the scientific discussion on this forum where can I find an informative resource for the layman highlighting the dangers of the LHC as you envision them. I am interested to know the hows and whys, and not just hearing about a black hole swallowing the earth as has been reported in mainstream media.
Dear Mike:
There is an a little bit aged but in my eyes still fresh and honest website,
http://lhc-concern.info/?page_id=8
Tell me if you thought of something else.
Otto
Sick of you telling people there’s not long left
So you seem to understand the problem caused by the non-renewal of the logically and morally necessary Safety Report after 6 years.
All everyone needs is an assurance that there is NO danger, right?
I just don’t understand why you keep telling people there going to die along with the world soon when you don’t no this and also you said its 5 percent so why do you go on like its 100 in your eyes
I never said 100 percent. Five percent are much less alarming — and much more fun to refute if anyone was able to. Please, give it a try yourself.
Fun is that how u see what your doing as fun no no no otto the risk is 0 you have been shown this many of times tom as show this cern as shown this but you refuse to see it and still go on about your fears but then you take your fear and spred them so others get scared and then it gets out of controll now if you can show me here were tom is wrong with his work and were cern is wrong please do so otherwise just give up you know as well as I do there is no risk involved and even if its 5 percent that a low low low chance of anything bad
Been 4 years now and look we are still here nothing bads happened now like I asked tell me were they are wrong
This is no good propaganda for you and CERN, dear Stanley.
Please, show me the refutation of my results in a scientific publication if any. Thank you.
Wd is the best safety there is cern showed this tom showed this or do you not read these things
All I ask otto is that if you can tell me were mr kerwick and cern are wrong when they come to the conclusion that wd and cosmic rays make the lhc a 0% risk don’t no if you have looked at what they have done on the sunbject but if you have otto you tell me were there is a flaw in that because like me and every scientist on the planet we see no risk
No, I proved the danger and CERN refuses a public discussion of the risks.
I do not insist on being right, only on being shown to be wrong — which never happened. (Tom who is kind never claimed that he could exclude all risk on the basis of the very indirect evidence he adduces.)
But it is not my proof of danger that is the real issue, it is the refusal before the world public by CERN to renew their own “safety report” after 6 years’ time.
I may be an idiot. But not to renew a safety report that CERN itself considered necesssary for presumably good reasons, after 6 years and an upgrade, is an issue of world-wide public interest.
This you disclaim anonymously. You obviously have a very good reason for hiding your face because no single person on the planet can possibly place herself or himself on your side.
Otto u missunderstan what I’m geting at there are no sides here none at all there’s just you making false claims you say here like ur proofs are fact when there far from it but in the LSAG report the WD is a proven FACT that what they are doing at cern is safe I’ve asked you to state were you think they are wrong in the safety report and you still refuse to answer
Si tacuisses.
What ?
The full quotation reads: Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.
With CERN it is exactly the opposite: Si non tacuissent, philosophi mansissent.
Otto you have bypassed my question again tell me were you think tom and cern are so wrong like I keep saying the WD cosmic rays safety clam is a fact from astranomical obervations why do you find this so hard to take in
It is nice that under certain specific assumptions about the size of potential mini black holes, plus several other assumptions, a final safety argument can be construed from distant astrophysical data.
But Tom was so nice, as you may also know, as to acknowledge that my speed-dependency argument using which I could at least partially deconstruct his conclusion had not been included.
Do you really propose that a single scientist’s subjective feeling that he can stop worrying can replace a comprehensive new safety analysis after 6 years’ time and several massive updates in energy and collision number? And this after many othernew physical results of potential safety relevance have been accrued in the meantime? Come on! Then you would not have to hide your face any longer. As all other colleagues at CERN do who — unlike you — even keep their mouths sealed.
The WD safety assurance makes no assumption about the size of any potential mini black holes — a point which has already been explained.
I do not know what Otto refers to about an ‘acknowledgement’ of any speed-dependency argument which would in any way deconstruct such conclusion. The objective analysis by the LSAG and also more recently by myself have concluded 0% risk of potential MBH from p-p collisions (E <= 14 TeV), and the recent safety analysis I have done remains unrefuted. Indeed, the reader should also note that all upgrades in energy levels in recent years, and the quantity of such collisions, were already considered in the original LSAG safety report. http://vixra.org/pdf/1208.0005v5.pdf
http://environmental-safety.webs.com/TechnicalNote-EnvSA01.pdf
I do not understand why these two voices do support CERN’s decision not to upgrade its safety report. One voice is nice to have, but it cannot replace the responsibility of a whole institution.
And people should support your claim should they the safety report they did in 2008 is good in my eyes and toms and the LSAG looks good too
thank you for your eyes. But the world needs a safety report of any endeavor like this — why do you not accept this?
Otto if what you say is true then there’s no point in the report is there
You think what you say is true so in your eyes the planet is already in trouble so why do u ask for a safety report if you beleave its already happened don’t make no sense in what your doing
You can find the answer yourself, dear Stanley: A multiplication of a danger already incurred is also something to be avoided, is it not?
Oh is this the low proberbility of danger you speak off otto
I would not be ironic about a probability in the percentage range of Armageddon, dear Stanley.
What is it 5 percent or less dear otto
Why are you cynical?
You say 5 percent or lower everyone else says its 0 risk so far the lhc has been running fine not cause any problems and we are all still here and we will be here for years to come
Dear Stanley: No one says it is less than 5 percent risk for the foreseeable future!
Otto you have said it yourself on another post you said the risk is less that five percent or even less did you not
Or have you changed your mind again like you seem to do a lot
I have a few of my own views I would like to talk to you about otto [email protected] if you could email me we could talk about this out of the posts
I realize you ask where my “5 percent” and my “five-year worst estimate” come from.
Both are handwaving. Both are reasonable numbers that need to be excluded, not scrutinized or shown to be less alarming by a certain factor.
What needs to be disproved is that any danger in this QUALITATIVE range exists.
Even if the numbers are ten times less alarming after a thorough analysis, as I sincerely hope, that would not be enough for a clear-all signal.
This is why I insist on CERN renewing their by six years outdated safety report. And why I accuse the media of violating their public duty.
My “excuse” is that I know — definitively know in the sense of having proved in quite a few published learned papers — that the speed of light in the vacuum c is a global constant again. This automatically implies radically changed properties for black holes.
Problem is: the public does not even know — because this was never made an issue for it — that c is no longer a global constant for many decades.
So this — one could say — deception of the public by the profession would become a public issue, too, if CERN touched upon the new situation in their renewed safety report.
So if you wish it makes perfect rational sense how they behave. Only morally it does not.
Dear Tom:
You just erased my latest blog
( http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/einsteins-global-c-resurrected-implies-the-lhc-safety-report-needs-renewal
Apr 20, 2014
“Einstein’s global c resurrected” implies: The LHC Safety Report needs Renewal
Posted by Otto E. Rössler
No scientist objects.
The only way to spare CERN the renewal of its six years old Safety Report is by publishing a counterproof to c-global.
No one could for 6 years. CERN hides its face in shame.
Einstein resurrected can save the planet.
)
without notifying me: Why?
It is not policy of web-admin to inform users where contributions have been trashed, be it spam or otherwise. The trashed contribution — reproduced again in the above comments IN FULL — is considered repeat material and sub-standard drivel.
We try to maintain a liberal attitude to users of Lifeboat blogs, though on occasion there is a need to reign in misuse (e.g. troll behavior, spamming, libelous material…).
On the matter of hand-waving of sensationalist percentages by Mr Rossler above — it should be clear to readers that these are confirmed above to be unscientific, notional, and disregarding of current non-refuted safety analyses — which attest no risk whatsoever.
The reader is invited to verify or falsify this strange response.
WHY — please — should CERN be spared the ordeal of up-dating a six-years-old Safety Report?
Related post — http://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/05/conclusions-technical-note-on-lhc-collider-safety
Tom Kerwick, a non-physicist, happens to be the only defender of CERN’s rule-violating behavior word-wide.
It is fine that he focuses on one particular, very indirect safety argument, which is nice. The latter of course makes presuppositions that are not all justified or even made explict — like that very slow black holes have the same accretion rate as very fast ones.
Nevertheless the safety conference that I and everyone asks for for 6 years will, of course, have to discuss his safety argument along with all the — in part much more urgent — others that humankind has a right to see discussed.
world-wide
I think my bio speaks for itself — no need to denounce me as ‘non-physicist’ when you are not one yourself. As for championing me as a solitary defender of CERN, I am hardly this. \
About presuppositions made about very slow black holes having the same accretion rate as very fast ones in this paper — I think you refer to an earlier paper I wrote on relative flux… More significantly, an updated revision of the technical note linked above (rev 1.01, 17th May 2014, page 3 — remember to reload/refresh) captures a relevant oversight and as such suggests further analysis on the NS safety assurances to cover certain conditions:
“However – the WD safety assurance is only valid for lower orders of dimensions of MBH [5], and column densities required to stop the heaviest black holes (D>=8) exceed the stopping power of WD. To cover scenarios of MBH with D>=8, further analysis is required on the NS safety assurances [5][8].”
That is to say the WD safety assurance is not quite strong enough on its own as a safety assurance (E = 14 TeV) — it requires either the NS safety assurance also, or a verifiable HR.
Kind regards–
— Tom.
Thank you very much, dear Colleague!
No problem Otto. After some feedback from my most recent comment, I should clarify to readers that despite stating the WD safety assurance is not strong enough on its own as a safety assurance — This is in the context of specific parameters (D>8) — and a scientific consensus will still tell you it is safe even in knowing this.
Further clarification: The previous figure I had used for stopping distances related to slow-down of black holes to the non-relativistic regime, not to below the escape velocity in order to be trapped — hence the oversight. Column densities similar to WD are calculated to be capable of stopping 14 TeV MBH of up to 7 space-time dimensions, and are actually made clear in the G&M paper — fig 2 page 37 — no need to debate this point with CERN.
The implication of this of course is if one is to seek a safety assurance independent of Hawking Radiation theory, the WD safety assurance is only dependable where D<8, and up to 14 TeV energy levels. Hence one needs to rely on the NS safety assurance for such. As stated on another thread, I would like to see the criticisms in Alam Rahman’s paper — specifically of the NS safety assurance — taken into consideration at CERN/LSAG to confirm the NS safety assurance is not compromised by his findings in review of the G&M paper. However, I understand his paper is incomplete so I presume it was not presented./
Everyone sees that this is a jumble of many many issues.
Do you, or does anyone else, support CERN’s stance that not to renew their 6 years old saftety report is a defendable stance before the world public?
I believe a safety report in any industry — including CERN’s safety report, should always be kept up to date — I am not arguing this point with you. I just view the concerns differently. There is a bit of what I see as ‘unscientific handwaving’ going on here also…
I appreciate your fairness.
For those interested in keeping up with debate -
PARTICLE COLLIDER SAFETY NEWSGROUP (CERN / LHC-Critique): 900+ members and growing — http://www.facebook.com/groups/particle.collider/