According to the caption from Astronomy Picture of the Day, (APOD), ( qui ) "In the center of a swirling whirlpool of hot gas is likely a beast that has never been seen directly: a black hole. Studies of the bright light emitted by the swirling gas frequently indicate not only that a black hole is present, but also likely attributes. The gas surrounding GRO J1655-40, for example, has been found to display an unusual flickering at a rate of 450 times a second. Given a previous mass estimate for the central object of seven times the mass of our Sun, the rate of the fast flickering can be explained by a black hole that is rotating very rapidly. What physical mechanisms actually cause the flickering -- and a slower quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) -- in accretion disks surrounding black holes and neutron stars remains a topic of much research."

The astronomer Fred Hoyle once wrote of the herd mentality in his profession: “The trouble with conformity is that the process has strong positive feedback. The baaing starts up at a volume low enough to permit stronger-minded animals to think for themselves without too much trouble. Progressively, however, we break down one-by-one, losing all power of sensible judgement, to the point where we can do nothing but add our own baaing to the uproar, which eventually rises to such monumental proportions that nothing remains for the flock except the butcher's shop.”

Scientists are people and not immune to the madness of crowds. Ideas that appear folly initially may with time and a growing clamour of consensus delude people into believing it is a new "truth." Such is the story of black holes. Two years ago I criticised the theory of black holes and from the correspondence I receive, some scientists and engineers are "recovering their senses slowly, one by one."

Black holes highlight a situation, common today in astrophysics, where the object under investigation cannot be seen directly. This situation is pure heaven for the crowd of mathematical theorists who have hijacked physics from the natural philosophers and experimentalists. The sainted Einstein seems to have initiated the hijacking with that oxymoron, the “thought experiment.” But problems arise when thoughts are governed by a limited set of beliefs or dogmas and unchecked by direct observation or experiment. The result can be – and generally is – science fiction. University libraries and popular science magazines are full of it at the start of this new millennium.

The eminent theoretical physicist Paul Dirac exemplifies the mathematical theorist. He said, "I like to play about with equations, just looking for beautiful mathematical relations which maybe don't have any physical meaning at all. Sometimes they do." I have heard many physicists eulogize the exquisiteness of mathematical expressions. Are we in danger of losing the plot? Unfortunately the subjective beauty of an equation gives no clue to the objective correctness of any physical meaning it may have. If mathematics is an art, where are the art critics? After all, it is they who are responsible for discerning the relationships between artistic expression and experiential reality. Simply broadcasting the subjective visions of mathematical experts may foster only "extraordinary popular delusions."

The central dogma of astrophysics requires the puny force of gravity to generate stars and galaxies. So very small and powerful sources of radiation in deep space require almost infinite concentrations of mass to provide the gravitational force to drive them. The mathematics says so, so it must be true. But it is equivalent to the schoolboy howler of dividing by zero. A near infinite concentration of mass involves speculative physics that cannot be tested in the laboratory. Taken to its extreme — the black hole, which swallows even light — such a concentration swallows commonsense as well. Even Eddington, who produced the gravitational model of stars that inspired Chandrasekhar (who originated the black hole idea), could not swallow it. "A reductio ad absurdum,” he called it. "I think there should be a law of nature to prevent a star from behaving in this absurd way." There is a law, but Eddington himself obscured the simple answer with his “dogmatically correct” gravitational model of stars.

In this situation, of course, guesswork has free reign. Research becomes purely theoretical, engaged in adjusting sacrosanct theory to accommodate anomalous findings, not experimental, seeking to discover patterns of order in the phenomena. And modern computing power encourages playing with theoretical models. But the success of this approach relies on the correct choice of physical model. The most stringent requirement of the model is that it suggest tests and successfully predict the outcomes. Also it is preferable to have one or more different models that are subject to falsification by observations. The black hole model fulfils neither of these criteria. It is a solitary, non-predictive model that has difficulty even explaining the jets emitted by black holes. After all, black holes are supposed to "suck," not "blow." The black hole model has always needed patching up, so it has always been "a topic of much research."

Now we have a report of rapidly flickering light from a black hole.

The simple mechanical lighthouse model, of something many times heavier than the Sun and rotating in milliseconds, is applied (and it isn't clear what generates the narrow beam of radiation). However, to put 450 flashes per second into perspective, that's a 27,000 rpm lighthouse! "I think there should be a law of nature to prevent a star from behaving in this absurd way."

There is a kind of ridiculous inevitability about the progression of such an absurd idea as the black hole. As soon as you begin dealing with infinities you can "prove black is white and white is black and go out and get yourself killed on a pedestrian crossing," as Douglas Adams expressed it. And as if to parody a parody, the black hole has been variously described as black, white, or even pink. The truly mind boggling thing is that the numerous experts can't see the absurdity. And no investigative reporter has called attention to the fact that the emperors of science have no clothes.

Mackay was spot on in 1852 when he wrote, "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds." It is a fundamental caution against academic hubris that is sorely missing in university curricula. It amplifies the hollow ring of the claim that science is logical and self-correcting. History shows that many major changes in science have had to wait upon "eminent outsiders." Bernard Newgrosh describes these people as an "interesting and important group of people who earn their living in one field whilst undertaking a hobby or other leisure study in a quite different discipline. Their amateur deliberations often result in crucial groundbreaking developments. Many of the laws of science can be credited to these people, also the foundation of new disciplines. This select band has had ideas which were truly new, momentous in the history of science."

Newgrosh continues, "It is a curious fact that almost none of these outsiders had any qualification or academic background in the discipline in which they shone - indeed many were entirely self-taught. Some are not all that well known, having just the single claim to fame but others are polymaths of astonishing intellectual calibre. I am going to call this group 'the eminent outsiders'."

The Eminent Outsider
• Occupation unrelated to discipline of achievement
• Work on hobby or other outside interest leads to discovery
• Initially purely amateur researches, etc.
• Entirely unqualified in discipline of hobby study
• Makes fundamental discoveries

Some examples of eminent outsiders are Hooke, Leibniz, Ben Franklin, Lavoisier, Priestley, Coulomb, Herschel, Young, Fresnel, Carnot, Lyell, Faraday, Ohm, Darwin, Pasteur, Westinghouse, Edison, Bell, and Einstein.

When a discipline is as far off the beam as astrophysics, the field is wide open for eminent outsiders. There are a number who will be recognized in future. The expertise they have in common is electrical engineering and/or experimental plasma science. That should be no surprise since we live in an electric universe.
They include:
• Charles-Edouard Guillaime (1883–1936), Nobel Laureate 1920.
• Kristian Birkeland (1867–1917), Nobel Prize nominee, 1917.
• Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995). 1970 Nobel Laureate for Physics.
• Irving Langmuir. 1932 Nobel Laureate for Chemistry.
• Anthony Peratt, Alfvén's student and author of Physics of the Plasma Universe.

Healy and Peratt have studied the detail of signals from those other super-rotators – pulsars – and have concluded, "[T]he source of the radiant energy may not be contained within the pulsar, but may instead derive either from the pulsar's interaction with its environment or by energy supplied by an external circuit.… [O]ur results support the 'planetary magnetosphere' view, where the extent of the magnetosphere, not emission points on a rotating surface, determines the pulsar emission." In other words, no whirling, super-condensed neutron star is required.

Plasmas transfer energy over great distances to smaller regions where it may be periodically or catastrophically released. Peratt explains the flickering of electromagnetic radiation: "The flickering of a light in Los Angeles does not mean that the supply source, a waterfall or hydroelectric dam in the Pacific Northwest, has abruptly changed dimensions or any other physical property. The flickering comes from electrical changes at the observed load or radiative source, such as the formation of instabilities or virtual anodes or cathodes in charged particle beams that are orders of magnitude smaller than the supply. Bizarre and interesting non-physical interpretations are obtained if the flickering light is interpreted by a distant observer to be both the source and supply."

Black holes and neutron stars can certainly be classified as "bizarre and non-physical" objects. It is commonsense electrical engineering to declare them non-existent. In that case the research funds currently being poured into investigation of black holes, pulsars and gamma-ray bursters is being wasted on astrophysicists and particle physicists. Rather than fritter away further decades waiting for them to "recover their senses slowly, and one by one" we should immediately fund experimental plasma cosmology under the auspices of the IEEE. That way we may at last escape a century of "delusion and madness."