Researcher shows mathematically that black holes do not exist

[Henning]

phys.org has a piece about Laura Mersini-Houghton who claims she has mathematically proven that black holes do not exist, and therefore no singularities nor the Big Bang.

The paper is available on arXiv: Back-reaction of the Hawking radiation flux on a gravitationally collapsing star II: Fireworks instead of firewalls. Not yet peer reviewed though, but Harald Pfeiffer has taken a look at it.

Got this from Slashdot.

[Henning]

Here’s the first part of the paper, already peer reviewed:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269314006686

[delt0r]

What does “no black holes” have to do with no big bang. Right from the get go, the idea of a mathematical singularity being something that is not physically real has always been around. Black holes are interesting from that perspective in that you don’t need a singularity for them to exist. Consider the density of a black hole as a function of mass.

There is nothing about the big bang that requires black holes to exist.

[Brian H]

And here’s more: “http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140921-big-bang-signal-could-all-be-dust-planck-says/”. B-mode gravitational waves not detected after all. But it appears inflationary theory may not be falsifiable; that would mean it doesn’t even qualify as a hypothesis! :shut:

[Brian H]

Henning wrote: Here’s the first part of the paper, already peer reviewed:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269314006686

Note that peer-review is the science journal equivalent of proofreading for obvious error, not validation. That comes from critiques, replication, and analysis after publication.

[Author]

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