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scientists reported that in 2005 two unusual X-ray frequencies were detected coming from an extremely energetic light source, GRO J1655-40. The source is seen in the constellation Scorpius and it is estimated to lie about 10,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers say it is a “stellar black hole” about seven times the mass of our Sun, gradually consuming the matter of a companion star.

The emissions seemed strange because scientists had recorded identical emissions nine years earlier—an improbable coincidence, they thought. This got them to thinking, and the chain of reasoning that followed led to a report given at a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The centerpiece of the story is a black hole, and black holes are said to form in the death throes of massive stars as their fuel runs out and their cores “implode into a point of infinite density”. The “rebound” that follows produces a supernova explosion that blows away the outer layers of the star. But the gravity of the collapsed star is so great that, within a boundary called the “event horizon”, nothing is able to escape, not even light. And that’s why we can’t see a black hole, astronomers say.

Astronomers also say that the gravitational tug of a black hole is sufficient to distort Einstein’s “space-time fabric”. And that means it could affect the movement of matter falling into this celestial glutton.

The X-ray emissions from GRO J1655-40 are sporadic—long periods of relative calm followed by shorter periods of more intense activity with emissions millions of times greater than during the quiescent phase.

As reported on Space.com, some scientists began to wonder if the blinking pattern of X-ray activity is “related to how matter accumulates around the black hole”. The black hole is said to be stealing gas from a companion into an “accretion disk” around the super-dense relic, and the scientists suggested that as the mass of the disk accumulates for several years, the black hole consumes very little of the gas, and X-ray emissions are minimal.

“Every few years, however, something—scientists aren’t sure what—triggers a sudden binge fest on the part of the black hole, causing it to guzzle down most of matter in the disk within a period of only a few months”. This is when the profusion of X-rays occurs, the scientists suggested. (See “Black Hole Puts Dent In Space-time”, January 24, 2006),

But NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer recorded something curious. Among the X-ray frequencies observed in 1996 were one at 450 Hz and one at 300 Hz. The same two frequencies were observed again in 2005.

"Because it’s very hard to get gas to behave the same way twice, it argues strongly that these frequencies are being anchored by the black hole’s mass and spin”, study co-author Jon Miller of the University of Michigan told SPACE.com.

The scientists were reminded of the weird things predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. “Because the black hole is so massive and spinning so fast, it warps spacetime around it”. And the more massive the object, the more spacetime is distorted. “If the massive object is also spinning, it causes spacetime to not only bend but to twist as well”.

The authors suggest that the particles moving in “warped spacetime” near the black hole exhibit two types of motions, each producing a unique frequency. “One motion is the orbital motion of the gas as it goes around the black hole. This produces the 450 Hz frequency. The lower 300 Hz frequency is caused by the gas wobbling slightly due to the spacetime deformations”.

"If spacetime were not curved, we’d probably just see one peak," said study co-author Jeroen Homan from the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT.

The authors seemed confident that they were on the right track, and few astronomers raised objections. "We can now begin to determine the spin and thus, for the first time, more completely describe the black hole," Miller said.
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Though the photograph above ( => this ) is at best only marginally relevant, we have tried to be as accurate as possible in paraphrasing the logic that two scientists applied to the X-ray emissions from GRO J1655-40. Can you track the number of speculations in their reasoning? Can you separate what is known from what is imagined? If this seems difficult, that is because the language used by scientific media continually confuses fact and theory.

The light source in Scorpius is a fact. So are the sporadic X-ray emissions. But it may surprise you to hear that everything else discussed in the report is speculation, unsupported by anything we can actually study in nature: the star running out of fuel, the implosion, the rebound, the imploded star, its “infinite density”, the “spacetime fabric”, the stellar black hole, the “event horizon”, the companion star, the siphoning of the companion’s gases, the “accretion” disk, the “sudden binge fest”, X-ray production by accumulating matter, the calculated “spin-rate”, the simultaneous “bending and twisting of spacetime”, X-ray frequencies linked to orbital motion of gases, and X-ray frequencies linked to “wobbling” of gases due to “spacetime deformation”.

So it is not unreasonable to pose the question: Does the activity of GRO J1655-40 really imply a “dent in the space-time fabric”? Or is there a much simpler explanation based on accessible natural phenomena?

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Cosmologists assure us that GRO J1655-40 hides a "black hole." But critics suggest that recent discussion of the sporadic x-ray source illustrates the growing "credibility gap" in standard theory.

Last week we reviewed a well-publicized attempt to apply modern cosmological concepts to GRO J1655-40, an enigmatic light source seen in the constellation Scorpius. Periodically, the source emits copious X-rays, before returning to its “normal” quiescence.

We found the chain of reasoning in the scientists’ speculative adventure interesting, and we were not surprised to find that it led to a report given at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It can be difficult for readers of such reports to assess their credibility, we suggested, “because the language used by scientific media continually confuses fact and theory”. We offered this perspective:

“The light source in Scorpius is a fact. So are the sporadic X-ray emissions. But it may surprise you to hear that everything else discussed in the report is speculation, unsupported by anything we can actually study in nature: the star running out of fuel, the implosion, the rebound, the imploded star, its “infinite density”, the stellar black hole, the “event horizon”, the companion star, the siphoning of the companion’s gases, the “accretion” disk, X-ray production by accumulating matter, the calculated “spin-rate”, X-ray frequencies linked to orbital motion of gases, and X-ray frequencies linked to “wobbling” of gases due to “spacetime deformation”.

In reports such as the one on GRO J1655-40, how is a reader supposed to identify the boundary between fact and conjecture? The Space.com report states—

“A spinning black hole in the constellation Scorpius has created a stable dent in the fabric of spacetime, scientists say”.

Fact: No one has seen a black hole. All we have are electromagnetic signals that are open to many interpretations. But “mainstream” cosmologists interpret the signals in one way only, based on their peculiar set of axioms about the nature of space, time and gravity. Many of the most accomplished plasma experts dispute the entire complex of assumptions.

Fact: The ”fabric of spacetime” is a mathematical abstraction of widely debated relevance to the study of natural phenomena. Critics say that the word “spacetime” is essentially meaningless because it combines two incompatible concepts—the 3-dimensional space we experience and a non-dimensional interval of time. In physics, a dimension can only be measured by a physical ruler. However, mathematicians use the word ambiguously to denote any number of variables. This results in the common mathematical “fallacy of ambiguity”, where the word is used with one meaning in the 'real' world of 3-dimensions, and with another meaning in the theoretical world of mathematics.

Some cosmological theories talk of 26 dimensions and parallel universes, which serve only to astound and confuse those living in the physical world of 3-dimensions. As one physicist puts it, "Any theory where time is represented as a fourth dimension does not represent reality… If the math is correct but does not represent reality; then, as far as factually describing reality, the math is meaningless, unreasonable and ambiguous”.

“The dent is the sort of thing predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It affects the movement of matter falling into the black hole”.

Fact: The “black hole” is a theory not a fact. In his theory of general relativity, Einstein proposed a geometrical concept of gravity, suggesting that it was caused by the warping of 3-dimensional space in some “extra dimension” in the presence of mass. A growing number of scientists dispute the principle.

A common 3-dimensional illustration of the “geometric” theory of gravity shows a rubber sheet stretched by steel balls resting on it. The dents in the rubber sheet mimic the gravitational wells of the steel balls and control their movement. However, as the astronomer Tom Van Flandern has pointed out, this model only seems to work because our minds imagine the Earth's gravity acting downwards on the steel balls. Without pre-existing gravity the steel balls will not dent the rubber sheet and they will remain stationary. Critics argue that both the rubber sheet analogy and the extra-dimensional geometric interpretation of general relativity violate the principle of causality: In the physical world, all effects have causes, and it is the function of science to explore these relationships, not to deny them.

“The spacetime-dent is invisible, but scientists deduced its existence after detecting two X-ray frequencies from the black hole that were identical to emissions noted nine years ago”.

There is no actual observation of a black hole to verify this deduction from a prior guess. X-rays are most easily generated by particles accelerated in an electromagnetic field. There is no more difficult way to generate x-rays than using the weakest force in the universe–gravity. (Imagine your dentist trying to generate x-rays by dropping heavy weights from space). Nature is not in the habit of doing things the hard way.

“Black holes form when very massive stars runs out of fuel. Their cores implode into a point of infinite density and their outer layers are blown away in a powerful supernova explosion”.

Fact: There is no experimental evidence that matter can be compressed to “infinite density”. It requires the weakest force in the universe to overcome the strongest – the electric force. There is no observational evidence that stars implode. Mathematicians have simply placed a theoretical demand on an improbable model, requiring that a particular kind of star in a particular kind of binary system run out of fuel suddenly and undergo spherically symmetrical gravitational collapse to form an unreal object – a black hole.

Fact: The progenitor stars for a supernova have never been identified.

Fact: The explosion of a supernova is not spherically symmetrical. It is bipolar.

Fact: The theoretical result – a black hole – is a mathematical fiction with no verifiable connection to the natural world

"The X-ray frequencies detected by the team of researchers came from outside the event horizon of GRO J1655-40, a black hole located roughly 10,000 light-years from Earth. It is about seven times more massive than the Sun and siphoning gas from a nearby companion star."

Fact: The scenario stated here is entirely theoretical. Hence, the rest of the report can only strain credulity further by following a series of additional guesses. (See previous summary). But how would a general reader know this, when the author of the Space.com story cites all of the speculations as if they are part of scientific knowledge today?

“GRO J1655-40 undergoes short periods of intense X-ray emissions, followed by longer periods of comparative quiet. Scientists think this blinking pattern of X-ray activity is related to how matter accumulates around the black hole.

“Every few years, however, something—scientists aren’t sure what—triggers a sudden binge fest on the part of the black hole, causing it to guzzle down most of matter in the disk within a period of only a few months”.

Here, at the end of an elaborate chain of speculations, we have an admission that the sporadic X-ray outbursts remain unexplained—though the model was designed to explain them.

It therefore remains to be asked whether, from an electrical vantage point, it is possible to account for the X-ray emissions and other observed attributes of GRO J1655-40, without taking theoretical leaps beyond our present scientific knowledge.