OT: An Existential Dilemma

[Gateway103]

Originally posted by Tris:
Matter can be spontaneously created. This is why Black holes seem to emit matter. Large scale particle-antiparticle assymmetry is a problem when talking about the big bang though.

At subatomic level, matter-antimatter pair of virtual particles can flash in and out of existence spontaneously. The energy for the particle creation seemingly came from the vaccuum itself, as long as they annihilate and disappear in sufficiently short time such as to satisfy the uncertainty principle.

However, near the event horizon, occasionally, one of the pair particle is pulled into the black hole before annihilating with its counterpart, thus the freed particle can manifest as a particle emission. However, in doing so, the black hole loses its own internal energy to, in essence, make the lone virtual particle "real", so as to satisfy the energy uncertainty principle.

[Edited: misleading information about thermal radiation deleted]

However, neither of the above two are actually observed yet, as they are predicted to be extremely faint for astronomical black holes (so the theory can still be proven wrong if and when we acquire the ability to test these predictions). Currently detectable emissions from possible black hole candidates are from matter accretion processes instead, the mechanism that powers the bright Qusars.

As for the Hidden Variable Theory, well I personally believe it is more of a silly attempt at clinging to the familiar deterministic large-scale world we are used to. Since the hidden variables are in principle hidden and unobservable, the theory is in fact like a belief and doesn't qualify as a theory, as it is untestable and has no real predictive power, two important criteria for modern theories.

Just some random thoughts.

-Gateway103

[ May 27, 2004, 10:30: Message edited by: Gateway103 ]