Astrophysics Without Black Holes, and Without Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Bursts

Contrary to common belief, it is argued that our Universe contains neither Black Holes, nor Extracalactic Gamma-Ray Bursts

OUR GALACTIC CENTER – THE NEAREST BURNING DISK

This short presentation will update my more than 25 years long attempts at understandingthe actions of the Central Engine at our Galactic Center

The physics of E × B- drifting jets

E × B- drifting jets have been generally ignored for the past 25 years even though they may well describe all the astrophysical jet sources, both on galactic and stellar scales. Here we present closed-form solutions for their joint field-and-particle distribution, argue that the observed jets are near equipartition, with extremely relativistic, monoenergetic e±-pairs of bulk Lorentz factor γ ≲ 104, and are first-order stable. We describe plausible mechanisms for the jets' (i) formation, (ii) propagation, and (iii) termination. Wherever a beam meets with resistance, its frozen-in Poynting flux transforms the delta-shaped energy distribution of the pairs into an almost white power law, E2NE~E-ε; with ε ≳ 0, via single-step falls through the huge convected potential

Critical Thoughts on Cosmology

An overview is given in section 1, of uncertain building blocks of present-day cosmologies. Thereafter, these edited lecture notes deal with the following four special problems: (1) They advertise Wiltshire's result -- making `dark energy' obsolete -- that accelerated cosmic expansion may be an artefact, due to an incorrect evaluation of the cosmic timescale in a Universe whose bulk matter is inhomogeneously distributed. (2) They cast doubt on Hawking's prediction of black-hole evaporation. (3) They point at various inconsistencies of the black-hole paradigm, in favour of nuclear-burning central engines of AGN. (4) They re-interpret (a best case of) `anomalous redshifts' as non-cosmological, kinematic redshifts in strong jet sources.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

Against the Tide. A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done

Nobody should have a monopoly of the truth in this universe. The censorship and suppression of challenging ideas against the tide of mainstream research, the blacklisting of scientists, for instance, is neither the best way to do and filter science, nor to promote progress in the human knowledge. The removal of good and novel ideas from the scientific stage is very detrimental to the pursuit of the truth. There are instances in which a mere unqualified belief can occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory through the screening action of refereed literature and meetings planned by the scientific organizing committees and through the distribution of funds controlled by "club opinions". It leads to unitary paradigms and unitary thinking not necessarily associated to the unique truth. This is the topic of this book: to critically analyze the problems of the official (and sometimes illicit) mechanisms under which current science (physics and astronomy in particular) is being administered and filtered today, along with the onerous consequences these mechanisms have on all of us.\ud \ud The authors, all of them professional researchers, reveal a pessimistic view of the miseries of the actual system, while a glimmer of hope remains in the "leitmotiv" claim towards the freedom in doing research and attaining an acceptable level of ethics in science