Last month, NASA announced that two of its space telescopes observed X-ray flares from a black hole, which contradicts conventional belief that black holes are compact particles with staggering gravity that not even light can escape.
The U.S. space agency's recent observation - seemed to be triggered by a charged particle's eruption from the black hole - appeared to confirm the theory of Indian scientist Abhas Mitra that black holes, like the sun, are actually ultra hot balls of fire.
A black hole is typically believed to form when a star reaches the end of its life, at which point it can keep growing through absorbing mass from its surroundings. Super-massive black holes may form when the star absorbs others of its kind and merges with other black holes.
The Homi Bhabha National Institute professor has his own take on black holes. "Gas streams pulled inward by gravity get extremely hot by friction and may radiate X-rays," Mitra said.
He said the NASA report does bolster his findings.
"[E]ruption of corona from a black hole is not understood, as admitted in the NASA report. On the other hand, it gets most naturally explained by the MECO paradigm by which the so-called black holes are ultra-magnetized fire (plasma) - something like the Sun," he explained in a separate interview.
Mitra said that so far there are only "black hole candidates" discovered so far, as it would be impossible to detect one if not even light can escape from it.
Such objects considered black holes are only quasi-black holes for him, citing his research showing that true ones have zero gravitational mass, meaning their positive mass-energy becomes neutralized by negative gravitational interaction energy.
"Thus no massive body can be a true black hole," he added, arguing that the NASA observation supports claims made in 15 peer-reviewed studies by him and his fellow scientists from institutions such as University of Virginia and Harvard University.
Even British physicist Stephen Hawking has been working on resolving the matter, for which he coined the term Black Hole Information Paradox in 1976. Last year, he contradicted his own theory and said that black holes may not actually exist.
According to Mitra, part of the reason the black-hole theory still survives because showing otherwise will rock the global scientific boat. "Nobody wants to kill the goose, which has been laying golden eggs," he said.
A number of American astrophysicists, Mitra shared, are in touch with him since 2000. He dismissed the alleged lack of support from his home country of his research, criticizing the tendency to get local work tagged with other foreign scholars "without giving [India's] own people the due."
