Comment Microscopic Purple Hole (Score 1) 825
My first impulse was to guess "camera artifact." But some people who are knowledgeable about digital cameras who have posted here seem to doubt that it is; so let's assume that it is not.
It has already been speculated that microscopic black holes sometimes intersect the orbit of the earth, passing through the earth and/or its atmosphere in a few micro or milliseconds.
If the picture's only artifact had been the dark streak, my guess would have been that we were seeing exactly that: the trail created by a microscopic black hole traveling through the atmosphere. This would explain how an object traveling through the atmosphere at high speed could do so without creating great heat (and an atmospheric glow): rather than displacing atmospheric molecules (consequently imparting kinetic energy and creating heat), a black hole would be _absorbing_ them, leaving a partial vacuum in its wake. This vacuum would be visible as the dark streak.
But we also have the flash to contend with. Not just the flash, but also the fact that the flash occurs in a location very near a streetlamp in the picture. For the moment, let's assume that this indicates that the object in question hit the streetlamp.
Let's describe the flash. In addition to the bright region just to the right of the top of the lamppost, there is a dimmer region that is roughly the shape of a squat "T". (This may be a lens artifact, but it may not.) The "top stroke" of the T extends perpendicular to the dark streak, about 3 times the width of the bright part of the flash on either side. The "down stroke" of the T is a halo-ish circular glow just beyond the bright part of the flash along the path of the dark streak.
I do not think that a black hole would explode or decay on impact with matter slightly more dense than the atmosphere. I don't have science to back up this guess, it's just my instinct. Also, while I don't know what a decaying black hole would look like, for some reason I don't think it would look the way this flash does.
So if we need an object with strong gravity to explain the dark path, but we can't use a black hole, what does that leave us? I am going to theorize the existence of something I will call a "Purple Hole." (I just Googled the term, and I don't see that it has been used in astronomy or physics. Apologizes if that turns out to be wrong. Apologizes also to http://ghs.ming.k12.wv.us/Purple_Hole/Gilbert High School.)
A black hole, while exhibiting extreme gravitational effects, is made up of ordinary matter. So the physics used to analyze black holes, and to predict when and under what circumstances they might decay, and what the products might be if they do decay, are based on models where the amount and density of matter is extraordinary, but the matter is not.
But what if the object in question were a mixture containing, in addition to ordinary matter, dark matter and possibly dark energy? We might have an object whose gravitational effects were similar to those of a black hole, but whose behaviors in terms of decay were quite different.
In particular, it is possible that the decay of the object would produce mainly weakly interactive particles. These particles would mostly pass through ordinary matter showing little or no macroscopic effect. This would explain the lack of visible damage to the street light. It might also help to explain the fact that the object decayed at all (whether it struck the streetlamp or not). A microscopic examination of parts of the streetlamp might show paths left by decay particles.
OK, maybe this is silly. But it's fun. Thanks for reading this long post.
It has already been speculated that microscopic black holes sometimes intersect the orbit of the earth, passing through the earth and/or its atmosphere in a few micro or milliseconds.
If the picture's only artifact had been the dark streak, my guess would have been that we were seeing exactly that: the trail created by a microscopic black hole traveling through the atmosphere. This would explain how an object traveling through the atmosphere at high speed could do so without creating great heat (and an atmospheric glow): rather than displacing atmospheric molecules (consequently imparting kinetic energy and creating heat), a black hole would be _absorbing_ them, leaving a partial vacuum in its wake. This vacuum would be visible as the dark streak.
But we also have the flash to contend with. Not just the flash, but also the fact that the flash occurs in a location very near a streetlamp in the picture. For the moment, let's assume that this indicates that the object in question hit the streetlamp.
Let's describe the flash. In addition to the bright region just to the right of the top of the lamppost, there is a dimmer region that is roughly the shape of a squat "T". (This may be a lens artifact, but it may not.) The "top stroke" of the T extends perpendicular to the dark streak, about 3 times the width of the bright part of the flash on either side. The "down stroke" of the T is a halo-ish circular glow just beyond the bright part of the flash along the path of the dark streak.
I do not think that a black hole would explode or decay on impact with matter slightly more dense than the atmosphere. I don't have science to back up this guess, it's just my instinct. Also, while I don't know what a decaying black hole would look like, for some reason I don't think it would look the way this flash does.
So if we need an object with strong gravity to explain the dark path, but we can't use a black hole, what does that leave us? I am going to theorize the existence of something I will call a "Purple Hole." (I just Googled the term, and I don't see that it has been used in astronomy or physics. Apologizes if that turns out to be wrong. Apologizes also to http://ghs.ming.k12.wv.us/Purple_Hole/Gilbert High School.)
A black hole, while exhibiting extreme gravitational effects, is made up of ordinary matter. So the physics used to analyze black holes, and to predict when and under what circumstances they might decay, and what the products might be if they do decay, are based on models where the amount and density of matter is extraordinary, but the matter is not.
But what if the object in question were a mixture containing, in addition to ordinary matter, dark matter and possibly dark energy? We might have an object whose gravitational effects were similar to those of a black hole, but whose behaviors in terms of decay were quite different.
In particular, it is possible that the decay of the object would produce mainly weakly interactive particles. These particles would mostly pass through ordinary matter showing little or no macroscopic effect. This would explain the lack of visible damage to the street light. It might also help to explain the fact that the object decayed at all (whether it struck the streetlamp or not). A microscopic examination of parts of the streetlamp might show paths left by decay particles.
OK, maybe this is silly. But it's fun. Thanks for reading this long post.
