Are blackholes really what we believe them to be?

James Webb produces surprises at a steady rate and at the same time is challenging the standard view of cosmology and astrophysics. Just when I had written an article about the most recent findings, which challenged the basic assumption of these fields including those of general relativity and thought that I could rest for a few days, I learned from a new finding in FB. The title of the popular Youtube video (see this) was "James Webb Telescope Just Captured FIRST, Ever REAL Image Of Inside A Black Hole!"

Gravitational lensing is the method used to gain information about these objects and it is good to start with a brief summary of what is involved. One can distinguish between different kinds of lensings: strong lensing, weak lensing, and microlensing.

1. In the strong lensing (see this), the lense is between the observer and the source of light so that the effect is maximized. For high enough mass of the lense, lensing causes multiple images, arcs or Einstein rings. The lensing object can be a galaxy, a galaxy cluster or a supermassive blackhole. Point-like objects one can have multiple images and for extended emissions rings and arcs are possible.

   The galactic blackhole, SgrA^*, at the center of the Milky Way at distance of 27,000 light-years was imaged in 2022 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration (see this) using strong gravitational lensing and radio telescope network in a planetary scale. The blackhole was seen as a dark region at the center of the image. The same collaboration observed the blackhole in the M87 galaxy at a distance of 54 million light years already in 2019.

2. In the weak lensing (see this), the lense is not between the observer and the source so that the effect is not maximized. Statistical methods can be however used to deduce information about the source of radiation or to deduce the existence of a lensing object. The lensing effect magnifies the image of (convergence effect) and streches the image of the object (shear effect). For instance, weak lensing led quite recently to a detection of linear objects, which in the TGD framework could correspond to cosmic strings (see this)">inflatgd2024 which are the basic objects in TGD based cosmology and model for galaxies, stars and planets.
3. In microlensing (see this) the gravitational lense is small such as planets moving between the observer and star serving as the light source. In this case the situation is dynamic. The lensing can create two images for point-like objects but these need not be distinguishable so that the lense serves as a magnifying glass. The effect also allows the detection of lense-like objects even if they consist of dark matter.

The recent results of JWT the findings of JWT are about a supermassive blackhole located 800 million light years away. Consider first the GRT based interpretation of the findings.

1. What was observed by the strong lensing effect was interpreted as follows. The matter falling into the blackhole was heated and generated an X-ray corona. This X-ray radiation was reflected back from a region surrounding the blackhole. The reflection could be based on the same effect as the long wavelength electromagnetic radiation from the ionoshere acting as a conductor. This requires that the surface of the object is electrically charged, and TGD indeed predicts this for all massive objects and this electric charge implies quantum coherence in astrophysical scales at the electric flux tubes (see this), which would be essential for the evolution of life at Earth.
2. After this the radiation, which was reflected behind the blackhole should have ended up in the blackhole and stayed there but it did not! Somehow it got through the blackhole and was detected. It would seem that the blackhole was not completely black. This is not all the behavior of a civilized blackhole respecting the laws of physics as we understand them. Even well-behaving stars and planets would not allow the radiation to propagate through them. How did the reflected X ray radiation manage to get through the blackhole? Or is the GRT picture somehow wrong?

Consider first the GRT inspired interpretation. Could the TGD view of blackhole-like objects come to rescue?

1. In TGD, monopole flux tube tangles generated by the thickening of cosmic strings (4-D string-like objects in H=M⁴× CP₂) and producing ordinary matter as the dark energy of the cosmic strings is liberated (see this) are the building bricks of astrophysical objects including galaxies, stars and planets. I have called these objects flux tube spaghettis.

   Einsteinian blackholes, identified as singularities with a huge mass located at a single point, are in the TGD framework replaced with topologically extremely complex but mathematically and physically non-singular flux tube spaghettis, which are maximally dense in the sense that the flux tube spaghetti fills the entire volume (see this). The closed flux tubes would have thickness given by the proton Compton length. From the perspective of the classical gravitation, these blackholes-like objects behave locally like Einsteinian blackholes outside the horizon but in the interior they differ from the ordinary stars only in that the flux tube spaghetti is maximally dense.

2. The assumption, which is natural also in the TGD based view of primordial cosmology replacing the inflation theory, is that there is quantum coherence in the length scale of the flux tubes, which behave like elementary particles even when the value of h_eff is h_eff=nh₀=h or even smaller. What does this say is that the size of the space-time surface quite generally defines the quantum coherence length. The TGD inspired model for blackhole-like objects suggests h_eff=h inside the ordinary blackholes. The flux tubes would contain sequences of nucleons (neutrons) and would have a thickness of proton Compton length. For larger values of h_eff, the thickness would increase with h_eff and the proposal is that also stellar cores are volume filling black-hole like objects (see this).

   Besides this, the protons at the flux tubes can behave like dark matter (not the galactic dark matter, which in the TGD framework would be dark energy associated with the cosmic strings) in the sense that they can have very large value of effective Planck constant h_eff=nh₀, where h₀ is the minimal value of h_eff (see this). This phase would solve the missing baryon problem and play a crucial role in quantum biology. In the macroscopic quantum phase photons could be dark and propagate without dissipation and part of them could get through the blackhole-like object.

3. How could the X-rays manage to get through the supermassive black hole? The simplest option is that the quantum coherence in the length scale of the flux tube containing only neutrons allows photons to propagate along it even when one has h_eff=h. The photons that get stuck to the flux tube loops would propagate several times around the flux tube loop before getting out from the blackhole in the direction of the observer. In this way, an incoming radiation pulse would give rise to a sequence of pulses.

I have considered several applications of this mechanism.

1. I have proposed that the gravitational echoes detected in the formation of blackholes via the fusion of two blackholes could be due this kind of stickins inside a loop (see this). This would generate a sequence of echoes of the primary radiation burst.
2. The Sun has been found to generate gamma rays in an energy range in which this should not be possible in standard physics (see this). The explanation could be that cosmic gamma rays with a very high energy get temporarily stuck at the monopole flux tubes of the Sun so that Sun would not be the primary source of the high energy gamma radiation.
3. The propagation of photons could be possible also inside the Earth along, possibly dark, monopole flux tubes, at which the dissipation is small. The TGD based model for Cambrian explosion (see this, this and this) proposes that photosynthesizing life evolved in the interior of Earth and bursted to the surface of Earth in the Cambrian explosion about 450 million years ago. The basic objection is that photosynthesis is not possible in the underground oceans: solar photons cannot find their way to these regions. The photons could however propagate as dark photons along the flux tubes. The second option is that the Earth's core (see this) and this) provides the dark photons, which would be in the same energy range as solar photons. The mechanism of propagation would be the same for both options.

In the TGD framework, one must of course take the interpretation of the findings inspired by general relativity with a grain of salt. The object called supermassive blackhole-like could be something very different from a standard blackhole. If it is a thickened portion of a cosmic string, it emit particles instead of absorbing them in an explosion-like thickening of cosmic string transforming dark energy to matter and radiation (this would be TGD counterpart for the decay of inflation fields to matter (see this, this and this). Of course, the matter bursting into the environment from a BH-like object would tend to fall back and could cause the observed phenomena in a way discussed above. The X-rays identified as the reflected X-rays could correspond to this kind of X-rays reflected back from the blackhole-like object. I am not a specialist enough to immediately choose between these two options.

See the article About the recent TGD based view concerning cosmology and astrophysics or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.