What to make of this: proof or theory?

A host of hidden black holes have been revealed in a narrow region of the sky, confirming astronomers' suspicions that the universe is loaded with many undetected gravity wells.

Black holes cannot be seen directly, because they trap light and anything else that gets too close. But astronomers infer their presence by noting the behavior of material nearby: gas is superheated and accelerated to a significant fraction of light-speed just before it is consumed.

The activity releases X-rays that escape the black hole's clutches and reveal its presence

www.space.com...

This seems like another great theory to explain the strange activities of space but does not give enough evidence necessarily to qualify it as a black hole.


Thoughts?

Some other links to the matter:

www.nasa.gov...

And his home page:

www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk...

[edit on 15-8-2005 by Frosty]

I'm not really following what it is you're looking for. If you're trying to find the proof in the article, you're not going to. Space.com does a great job of dumbing down concepts for we regular laymen to understand recent astronomical discoveries, but there is a lot that's not said.

There have been countless models of black holes, and they were tested against that which we believe to be the real deal. Astrophysicists know what it is they're looking for, but only now have they been able to penetrate the dust cloud black holes, or quasars, naturally create. Inside the dust, they found exactly what they expected to find were a quasar there.

This is, however, theory, not proof. It is believed, with a lot of ample evidence supporting this belief, that there are gravity wells out there. Those objects that seem to pull in stars, dust, and even light have been dubbed "black holes" because they display no visible light. However, now, we have discovered ways to pierce the blackness using infrared detectors, x-rays and other such waves that can penetrate where visible light cannot. Yet we have not proven they exist. There could, potentially, be another explanation for our observations. After all, how did science explain the sun before fusion was understood or even known?

I was under the impression that black holes were a proven commodity although the direct measurement or imaging of one can not be done. The theories have gone through many mathematical and physical "proofs" and agree with known physics i.e. Hawking and Chandra and a host of others....

Originally posted by Frosty
This seems like another great theory to explain the strange activities of space but does not give enough evidence necessarily to qualify it as a black hole.

This seems like exactly what everyone has been saying about them for years, no? They can't be seen, and you have to find them by how they influence those around them, and they've heavy. Big whoop.