BLACK HOLES: A FIGMENT OF IMAGINATION?

Over the past few decades, the physics of black holes have been revolutionized by a large number of scientists, majority proving its existence with the widely accepted and "the master of all" theories - the theory of general relativity proposed by Albert Einstein while some finding the black holes too strange and unusual to exist in the real universe and are challenging the acquiesced proposition and declaring it "stranger than science fiction". With two different views on Black holes about which everything seem to be interesting, the difficulty lies in reaching consent. It will not be surprising even if efforts are being taken by scientists to establish Unified Theory II - Black holes. Do black holes really exist? The answer to this, as stated herein above is "the theory of general relativity". The theory predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform space-time resulting in a black hole. Black holes basically are super condensing collapsed stars. They are self gravitating objects such that nothing can escape from its powerful gravity, including light. Black holes are expected to form when massive stars end their lives. As this happens, the core shrinks and collapses under its own gravity resulting in the increase in escape velocity which finally reaches the speed of light thus making it difficult even for the light to escape. The striking feature of the black hole is its Event Horizon - the point at which the gravitational pull becomes very great as to make escape impossible. Anyway, the theory explains that the mass inside the black hole shrinks all the way to a point, an object of infinitely small size, called a singularity. Einstein was successful in proving that as gravity increases, the clock runs slower. Literally, time flows at an infinitesimal rate near an object with a very high gravity. Hence, to a distant observer, a clock near the black hole ticks more slowly than the one far away from it - an effect called "gravitational time dilation. An object falling into the black hole appears to slow down as it reaches the event horizon and takes infinite time to reach it. Simultaneously all the processes on this object cause it to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational red-shift. Eventually at a point the object becomes very dim such that it no longer can be seen. To an outside observer the core becomes dark. So its a hole which is black in color thus the name BLACK HOLE. The above explanation seems to be logical and lucid but here comes the most interesting arguments. Imagine the core collapsing as predicted by Einsteins theory. To a distant observer the slowing down of the collapse because of time dilation increases and finally the collapse of the core appear to stop. No black hole! Stephen Hawking, in his book Brief History of Time, proved that black holes can in fact leak mass. Time is stretching infinitely making it impossible for the event horizon to form and at the same time hole is losing mass (Hawking Radiation), so the black hole will vanish even before it is formed. Again no black hole! Contradicting this is a fact which states that black holes continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings and by combining with other holes. These ideas make it difficult for the scientists to reach a unified conclusion. So black holes might not exist! If what we see as black holes arent actually true black holes, then what are they? They are MECOs says a new controversial study.

Now adding to our confusion, what are MECOs? Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Object (MECO/ECO) is a hot ball of compact self-gravitating plasma. It remains in a quasi-static state where its radiation and contraction takes place at an infinitesimal rate trying to attain the true black hole state. It is predicted that the radius of an ECO is almost same as that of a black hole of the same mass. The term ECO was first coined by Indian astrophysicist Abhas Mitra in 1998. American astrophysicists Stanley Robertson and Rudy Schild contributed in developing the idea of ECO. Even though ECO resembles black holes in many aspects it also features some discrepancy with respect to black holes. Matters of a black hole are believed to be concentrated at a point (singularity) as mentioned above whereas ECO is filled with radiation and plasma. A neutral black hole possesses zero intrinsic magnetic moment whereas ECO since it is ultra-compressed plasma has a strong intrinsic magnetic moment. Black hole cannot have a magnetic field because the information is lost below the event horizon. Black holes imply a physical singularity, as stated by theory of general relativity, i.e. space-time and density of matter goes to infinity. Something that is hard to realistically envisage. MECO theory suggests that matter is collapsing toward a singularity but never actually reaches it. The drawback with MECO theory is that the current black hole theory is well developed and is widely accepted. Black holes cannot be formed as proposed by Mitra is based on the argument that collapsing matter cannot travel at the speed of light. Even though his propositions are denied, MECO theory is just at its infancy and has got a long way to go before it becomes more popular so that every one works on reaching a consensus. Unless and until the theory of quantum gravity is not taken into account, the final correct picture of black holes will not be known. It would be truly exciting if there were compelling substantiation to prove the existence of black holes combining the theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum gravity.