As an aside, their claim that all of the standard model is "self-consistent" seems to me to be rubbish. Perhaps the quote was taken out of context...
Anyway, it seems like Black holes are a fictional entity according to Crothers; one based on erroneous maths and one which can be corrected by going back to the original uncorrupted sources:
(Big Bang Busted! - The Black Hole, the Big Bang, and Modern Physics)
http://thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/a ... others.htm
I'm not a mathematician, so can't comment on Crothers' assessment, but he is a mathematician and has deduced that the original papers did NOT imply that a black hole should exist and in fact excluded it. Only later papers (possibly not as rigorous) hinted at black holes. If true, then the "internal consistency" and "working from first principles" arguments seem to break down. Also the emphasis on "math now, observations later" seems faulty.
(Where have you gone, Isaac Newton?)
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3147
It seems to me that much of the "Standard Model" is
ad hoc explanation of things that were either NOT predicted or that explicitly violated expectations. Which isn't to say necessarily that finding something novel and trying to explain it is a bad thing. But constant surprise and reworking seems somehow "bad..." I dunno.
There's a difference between a
prediction and a post facto
description. Predictive ability is to be lauded, lack thereof is not.
The fact that the Standard Model of Stellar Evolution has been called into question on several occasions in the past weeks due to lack of predictive ability does not speak loudly in its favor.
(Pulsar issues appear to have stumped Standard Model scientists.)
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/ ... 246802.htm
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Weird ... s_999.html
A few quote wrote:"Our ideas about how the fastest-spinning pulsars are produced do not predict either the kind of orbit or the type of companion star this one has," said David Champion of the Australia Telescope National Facility. "We have to come up with some new scenarios to explain this weird pair," he added.
[...]
"This combination of properties is unprecedented. Not only does it require us to figure out how this system was produced, but the large mass may help us understand how matter behaves at extremely high densities," said Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
[...]
"What we have found is a millisecond pulsar that is in the wrong kind of orbit around what appears to be the wrong kind of star," Champion said. "Now we have to figure out how this strange system was produced."
[...]
"If you were to ask any astronomer if we would have found a system like this, they would have said no. So this is a very big surprise," adds US team-member Dr Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia.
(Predictions, Falsifiability and the Standard Model of Stellar Evolution)
http://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/arch ... ctions.htm
Even more recently:
(Newly Formed Identical Twin Stars Reveal Surprising Differences)
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/s ... stars.html
Because astrophysicists have assumed that binary stars form simultaneously, the discovery provides an important new test for successful star formation theories, forcing theorists back to the drawing board to determine if their models can produce binaries with stars that form at different times.
[...]
In addition to causing theorists to re-examine star-formation models, the new discovery may cause astronomers to readjust their estimates of the masses and ages of thousands of young stars less than a few million years old.
In both cases (granted it's a small sampling of a larger problem), data didn't match expectations and have sent scientists scrambling for
ad hoc explanations. The former, apparently explicitly violated existing theories, according to several commentators (who didn't put it quite that explicitly but acknowledged that the results were unexpected and that had they been asked a few weeks prior they would have said that such a thing was not possible).
Aside from which, black holes which were supposed to be the grand "eaters of all" now seem to routinely be said to eject polar jets. Not because theory says so (they seem unable to properly explain it), but because the jets were observed, stunning scientists who had completely not expected such a thing. Black holes are supposed to be cosmic drains, not active ejectors. In attempting to shoehorn various objects into the "black hole" paradigm, scientists seem to have run into obstacles at every turn. Could it be that the black holes, as Crothers argues, are simply a fictional entity based on non-rigorous mathematical derivations from original documents which did not list Black Holes as an extrapolation?
Just some, shall we say, cursory thoughts. I don't know whether they'd help on BAUT or not. Probably don't address the original question, specifically either. But hey, such is life. ;o)
Cheers,
~Michael