From Columbia University and the “that’s heavy” department:
New Study Suggests Tens of Thousands of Black Holes Exist in Milky Way’s Center
A Columbia University-led team of astrophysicists has discovered a dozen black holes gathered around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The finding is the first to support a decades-old prediction, opening up myriad opportunities to better understand the universe.
“Everything you’d ever want to learn about the way big black holes interact with little black holes, you can learn by studying this distribution,” said Columbia Astrophysicist Chuck Hailey, co-director of the Columbia Astrophysics Lab and lead author on the study. “The Milky Way is really the only galaxy we have where we can study how supermassive black holes interact with little ones because we simply can’t see their interactions in other galaxies. In a sense, this is the only laboratory we have to study this phenomenon.”
The study appears in the April 5 issue of Nature.
For more than two decades, researchers have searched unsuccessfully for evidence to support a theory that thousands of black holes surround supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of large galaxies.
“There are only about five dozen known black holes in the entire galaxy — 100,000 light years wide — and there are supposed to be 10,000 to 20,000 of these things in a region just six light years wide that no one has been able to find,” Hailey said, adding that extensive fruitless searches have been made for black holes around Sgr A*, the closest SMBH to Earth and therefore the easiest to study. “There hasn’t been much credible evidence.”
He explained that Sgr A* is surrounded by a halo of gas and dust that provides the perfect breeding ground for the birth of massive stars, which live, die and could turn into black holes there. Additionally, black holes from outside the halo are believed to fall under the influence of the SMBH as they lose their energy, causing them to be pulled into the vicinity of the SMBH, where they are held captive by its force.
While most of the trapped black holes remain isolated, some capture and bind to a passing star, forming a stellar binary. Researchers believe there is a heavy concentration of these isolated and mated black holes in the Galactic Center, forming a density cusp which gets more crowded as distance to the SMBH decreases.
In the past, failed attempts to find evidence of such a cusp have focused on looking for the bright burst of X-ray glow that occurs when black holes mate with companion stars.
“It’s an obvious way to want to look for black holes,” Hailey said, “but the Galactic Center is so far away from Earth that those bursts are only strong and bright enough to see about once every 100 to 1,000 years.” To detect black hole binaries then, Hailey and his colleagues realized they would need to look for the fainter, but steadier X-rays emitted after the initial bonding, when the binaries are in an inactive state.
“It would be so easy if black hole binaries routinely gave off big bursts like neutron star binaries do, but they don’t, so we had to come up with another way to look for them,” Hailey said. “Isolated, unmated black holes are just black — they don’t do anything. So looking for isolated black holes is not a smart way to find them either. But when black holes mate with a low mass star, the marriage emits X-ray bursts that are weaker, but consistent and detectable. If we could find black holes that are coupled with low mass stars and we know what fraction of black holes will mate with low mass stars, we could scientifically infer the population of isolated black holes out there.”
Hailey and colleagues turned to archival data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory to test their technique. They searched for X-ray signatures of black hole-low mass binaries in their inactive state and were able to find 12 within three light years, of Sgr A*. The researchers then analyzed the properties and spatial distribution of the identified binary systems and extrapolated from their observations that there must be anywhere from 300 to 500 black hole-low mass binaries and about 10,000 isolated black holes in the area surrounding Sgr A*.
“This finding confirms a major theory and the implications are many,” Hailey said. “It is going to significantly advance gravitational wave research because knowing the number of black holes in the center of a typical galaxy can help in better predicting how many gravitational wave events may be associated with them. All the information astrophysicists need is at the center of the galaxy.”
Hailey’s co-authors on the paper include: Kaya Mori, Michael E. Berkowitz, and Benjamin J. Hord, all of Columbia University; Franz E. Bauer, of the Instituto de Astrofísica, Facultad de Física, Pontificia, Universidad Católica de Chile, Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Vicuña Mackenna, and the Space Science Institute; and Jaesub Hong, of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
My theory is that excess CO2 escapes the Earth’s atmosphere and gets sucked down black holes. Prove me wrong.
And another university had already determined there wasn’t a black hole at the center of our galaxy.
The truth is very simple… there’s an entire galaxy located around the center of our galaxy and it has a MASSIVE gravitational pull on things that go into the center. Things that go into the absolute center run into the problem of there being NO GRAVITY at one precise line on the mass axis of the galaxy.
That’s what’s happening – dumb students making assumptions based on bad education.
Black holes don’t exist. They’re a fabrication by an [pruned].
Einstein and those who predicted black holes based upon solving equations from the General Theory of Relativity were assholes? The Reverend John Michell was an asshole? The Reverend Monsignor Georges Lemaître?
Are there any physicists whom you don’t deem assholes?
“Things that go into the absolute center run into the problem of there being NO GRAVITY at one precise line on the mass axis of the galaxy.”
Not a line but a center point. This is why rotating matter under gravitational attraction form accretion disk. And this require that center of galaxies are void. “Au contraire”, density at center of galaxies increase toward a singularity and serve as the gravitational “anchor” for the rotating matter. Else around what would all the matter spins if there would be no “anchor”?
Oh dear.
Ahhhh, we’re the SWISS CHEESE Galaxy! 🆒🆒🆒
And yet despite the presences of these gravitational ‘super magnets’ right in the centre of our galaxy, ‘astronomers’ can detect the faintest echoes of the Big Bang?
They’re good.
Charles,
The cosmic microwave background radiation was indeed detected in 1964. Why does that surprise you?
How do they differentiate a low power x-ray emitting black hole from another x-ray source?
“The lower-energy emission spectra that we observed in these binaries is distinct from the higher-energy spectra associated with the population of accreting white dwarfs that dominates the central eight parsecs of the Galaxy6. The properties of these X-ray binaries, in particular their spatial distribution and luminosity function, suggest the existence of hundreds of binary systems in the central parsec of the Galaxy and many more isolated black holes. We cannot rule out a contribution to the observed emission from a population (of up to about one-half the number of X-ray binaries) of rotationally powered, millisecond pulsars.”
Frequency spectrum, spatial distribution and luminosity function.
Actually it is the accretion disk around the compact object that produces the Xrays. Look under QPOs, quasi-periodic oscillations, for the spectral signature of those objects.
How many black holes does it take to make up the missing mass that astronomers are calling “Dark Matter”? Is all of the Dark Matter actually hiding in Black Holes? If each Galaxy the size of ours has multi thousands and there are trillions of galaxies then I think I have found the missing “Dark Matter.”
Why did it take this long for astronomers to think of this and start looking for this? It appears they never walked along a river or a dam where there are whirlpools, watched these eddies and noted that quite often there are several other eddies next to the largest ones. Similar phenomenon was discovered on another planet with a cyclone like shape at one of the poles and a set of five or six peripheral and even spaced around it. I have observes these things in water since I was a child and I am an my seventies, they are not uncommon, even seen them in the wake of a boat.
Just a small fraction of the missing mass I have read.
It has long been a hypothesis that black holes account for dark matter. The problem is that there weren’t thought to be enough of them massive enough to add up to so much mass.
Just science fiction
It’s not fiction, it’s philosophy. One day, we may make near-observations beyond the fringe of our solar system. In the meantime, we receive signals which may or may not have fidelity, which may or may not be accurate representations of their emitters. However, for the foreseeable future, people will see patterns in the “clouds”, and, unfortunately, they will mix precision and accuracy, and will conflate logical domains, and even inject extra-logical domains (e.g. evolutionary creation). And the assumptions, assertions, really, will become political/social victims in the service of peoples and factions’ secular ambitions.
Another result of untestable modelling.
The center of the galaxies – or creation centers – are spawning quasars – which are inconsistent with the current astronomical dogma.
They’re ejected in pairs perpendicular to the galactic plane.
If the author claimed they were “white holes” – which is the time reversal of a black hole – it would be closed to what is observe – but like a black hole, it would take an infinite amount of time for the event to complete. And the ejection would be one sided – it wouldn’t be in pairs.
But at least a white hole could be observed.
In 1991, when Margaret Burbidge measured the atomic spectra of the X-ray quasars in NGC 4258 using the 3 meter reflector dish on Mt Hamilton outside of San Jose – a measurement that all the other major telescopes refused to measure for 85 years prior to 1991, she effectively place the last rose on the graves of the Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy and black holes.
— Cinaed
Xray astronomy began in the 1970s (I should know, I was there). 85 years before 1991 was rather earlier. Unless mrs Burbidge knew in 1906 that Xray QSOs were going to be discovered 70 years onward and that she would want to get her spectra, your reporting makes no sense.
Today my browser juxtaposes an advertisement with this report on black holes: ‘will 2018 be a good year for shares?’ I don’t think I am interested.
The inference in this article has been deprecated for years, decades, and longer through pure scientific reasoning. The latest consensus (i.e. political/social agreement) is that black holes (i.e. God-constructs) do not exist; and instead, based on near-observations and replication (i.e. scientific method and logical domain), there do exist gray holes. In the same vein, there once was catastrophic anthropogenic global cooling, then there was catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, which gave way to catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, and, today, simply global warming or climate change that are politically congruent (“=”), which are all consensus samplings of chaos (i.e. evolution).
Chimp
April 8, 2018 at 3:18 pm
The existence of black holes has been repeatedly confirmed.
Not true. The existence of objects massive and compact enough to be black holes has been repeatedly confirmed, but the existence of the required event horizons has never been verified. Since these are singular regions of spacetime and imply the existence of central singularities they probably do not exist in nature.
Stan,
As above, yes, evidence for event horizons is abundant, as links I’ve posted make clear.
Mods,
May I respectfully ask why “Sl@yers”, who question the GHE, are banned here, but creationists and the raving lunatic, ignoramus morons who advocate an “electric universe”, contrary to all observed physical phenomena, are not only tolerated, but allowed to take over whole comment sections?
Thanks.
Mods, I concur with Chimp. This interesting post was totally destroyed by a handful of trolls, to the point why bother reading anymore if a few trolls are allowed to take over a thread and denigrate others who try and make valid or at least original thoughts. It is one thing to make a valid point (as some have) that you don’t maybe believe what several generations of the keenest minds have arrived at at the forefront of Science, but to just wantonly allow some commenters to run amok and destroy most of entire post for no reason other than they don’t even want anyone else to think about it either, is wrong. If these idiots talked liked this in my living room, they would be shown the door in 9 nanoseconds, by the ear, and never be let back in. Sure would be nice to see some higher standards for comments here. And this was just a harmless article about the theory of black holes.
Chimp, I thought you made a pretty good case for the existence of black holes. I don’t think it is necessary to censor those who don’t agree. I know it does get a little frustrating arguing the same point over and over but I don’t think the mods need to intervene to fix it. Instead, make a better argument than the naysayers and let the readers decide. And I think you did just that.
Chimp, you are not well informed if you believe the electric universe model is “contrary to all observed physical phenomena”. I have been searching for a while for a cogent falsification of plasma cosmology and the electric universe, but I have yet to see one. Every post or article I’ve seen either distorts the Electric Universe theory, or dismisses its claims as far-fetched without offering any proof. You have made several assertions of things being “proved”, when in reality the observed phenomena are interpreted to fit the standard model. I’ve got to get to work, so I don’t have the exact cite handy, but i’ll come back later with it. The “missing neutrinos” problem is one of the assertions proponents of the Electric Universe make against the standard model: There are not enough neutrinos observed of the proper flavor to support the standard model of the sun. The response of standard model backers has been to propose that the neutrinos change flavor on their way to us from the sun. Two points: First, the only way to prove this is to observe the neutrino flavor distribution close to the sun and compare it with the distribution near Earth. Second, the latest experiment here on Earth did not detect any neutrinos changing flavor.
Your comment is typical of those I see from SJWs and leftist sites that will not refute someone’s points, but instead do the “bad man – I can’t hear you – la, la, la” routine. Get a grip.
….. along with other mathematical unicorns.
“New study suggests …”
oh boy … just love that.
Can’t observe the unobservable?
“Suggest” you’re right-ish regardless.
The never-ending-pudding of blackhole hoo-har.
The Chandra observations also reveal that the Milky Way galaxy has warmed 0.12 K since humans started observing it. Coincidence? I don’t think so!
Oh, dear. I didn’t close my italics properly. Here we go.
Don’t worry. You did not do so to great effect. 😉
I don’t know whether black holes exist or not, but if they do, we’re doomed.
And still doomed if they don’t.
I do like a bit of science fiction now and again, the general theme with AGW fits nicely.
Has anyone had a look at this (no joke!) highly relevant Hawking Paper from 2014?
Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes
https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5761
Basically no black holes. I only wonder if he was going to say similar things about the BigBang…
I am not sure why Hawking mentioned Weather Forecasting in that bombshell paper – I did note he was a AGW advocate.
You have got to love astrophysicists. Talk about all hat and no cattle…
Presumably the effect they have on their surrounding stars can be no more than was the case before they became black holes. There is no extra mass being created at the centre of the galaxy regardless of how that mass is manifesting itself.
That said all the idea of a black hole does is explain the gravitational effect of something we can’t see. They are a useful idea as far as they go but rather like dark energy and dark matter they don’t take us very far do they.
How many black holes and now clusters of black holes have been discovered since Zwiky’s calculations suggesting dark matter?
What happens to a pair of entangled particles, photons perhaps, when one is dragged into a black hole and the other isn’t ?
Just curious
Spooky action at a distance become more spooky!
The verified concept of pair production- the spontaneous creation of , say, electron positron pairs from quantum fields, has been around since the early days of Paul Dirac. Essentially if such a pair is produced at the boundary of a singularity and one escapes from the black hole and one is absorbed then energy (and charge) changes within the black hole. This is more likely the smaller the black hole is- basically because the gravitational gradient is greater the smaller the hole is. As a result due to mass/energy equivalence the hole gets smaller, the chances of particles escaping increases and eventually the hole evaporates. Momentum is conserved in the creation of the pair, so if one returns to the singularity at close to c, the other can escape.
The LIGO/VIRGO collaborative proved that General Relativity is almost certainly correct as the polarization of the gravitational waves that were generated by black hole/neutron star mergers corresponded to the pattern expected from a tensor- that is a squeezing/expansion perpendicular to the direction of travel of the gravitational waves.
That’s Hawking’s proposed mechanism. Those are virtual particles. The big question is why aren’t they disappearing? The “energy changes within the black hole” means negative energy. You can imagine one of the particles having negative energy to obey the conservation of energy but that will not constrain their lifetime. They will exist indefinitely like real particles, which is a contradiction. The proper interpretation is they have positive energy but their lifetime is constrained by the Uncertainty Principle so there’s no violation of energy conservation. Or more precisely, the violation is allowed under the Uncertainty Principle.
The problem with theorists like Hawking and others is they interpret the equations literally (like a true Platonist). What Dirac found in his equations was an electron with negative energy. Of course the correct interpretation is a positron, the anti-particle of electron. It has positive energy and positive charge. Another example is the equation of potential and kinetic energy:
-G M m/R = 1/2 m v^2
The left side is potential energy. It has a negative sign. The right side is kinetic energy. To Platonists, this is a mathematical proof of negative energy. But the correct interpretation is the negative sign is inverse proportionality. It means any increase in KE must be balanced by a decrease in PE and vice versa. Both energies are positive. Some physicists interpret the equation to mean the total energy in the universe is zero since PE and KE are equal and opposite signs. This is wrong. If you transpose PE to the right side of the equation:
KE + PE = 2 KE = 2 PE > 0
It means the total energy is positive and constant, which is just a statement of the conservation of energy.
In short, Hawking’s proposed mechanism is a literal interpretation of math that contradicts physics.
Well, I’m not going to debate the details here, but it appears that you are a believer in the “Dirac sea” model which has some pretty obvious, practical deficiencies that even the great Paul Dirac couldn’t fully reconcile.
Also, please discard the idea that virtual particles are indeed virtual. They are real particles, in fact in a sense all particles are “virtual particles” in that they are merely fluctuations in the appropriate quantum field.
A good example of the reality of “virtual particles” is the Casimir effect- which allows force (i.e. the exchange of “real” particles) to be applied to material objects just due to the local constraint of vacuum fluctuations- i.e “virtual” particle generating fluctuations of the quantum fields that make up “empty” space.
Clearly, those “virtual” particles behave like real particles- exchanging momentum and energy from the vacuum to “real” objects.
Besides, Hawking was a brilliant man. Have you ever read his original Doctoral Thesis- “properties of expanding universes”? If not, perhaps you should. I believe that it’s now available free on line from Cambridge University Press.
In 2014 Hawking changed his mind about event horizons and radiation –
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/08/astronomer-tens-of-thousands-of-black-holes-exist-in-our-galaxys-center/#comment-2785370
I do not believe that Hawking changed his mind about whether or not Black Holes are perfect black body radiators. He changed his mind as to whether information is conserved or not in the “black hole information paradox”. In effect he proposed that black holes have “hair”, a concept that is still being researched, I believe.
The Casimir effect does not prove virtual particles are real particles. It proves virtual particles are real, BIG DIFFERENCE. They can interact with real particles but it doesn’t have indefinite lifetime and its from vacuum energy, not from gravitational energy. The black hole.isn’t feeding energy to the vacuum. It will not lose energy via virtual particles that draws energy from the vacuum. Instead of the matter annihilation imagined by Hawking, the virtual particles will just disappear as they always do.
Sorry I’m not a fan of Hawking. His other ‘brilliant’ ideas are the wavefunction of the universe LOL and the singularity theorems. If you were to believe Sabine Hossenfelder, she said nobody believes in singularity. I don’t know, maybe she’s too harsh 🙂
I’m sorry for, apparently, being obtuse, but I do not understand the distinctions you make. The particles at the black hole boundary are generated by vacuum fluctuations. The action of gravity is what modifies their world-lines, separating the pairs, their paths are described by the solutions to GR at the boundary. Effectively energy is exchanged from the black hole event horizon to the external universe and the loss of energy represents loss of mass within the black hole.
As for the Casimir effect, again, I do not follow your logic. Again, you seem to assume that real and virtual particles are somehow different and that you can arbitrarily decide which is which.
A semi plausible argument is that “virtual” particles become “real” once an interaction occurs. For example, how do you think electrons exchange electric force? How do they “know” that a force particle needs to be exchanged with a positively charged particle, for example, or that they need to be repelled from another electron. Do you think that there’s a “real” force particle just whizzing around hoping to hit something? Does that sound reasonable to you?
By the way, there are many legitimate physicists that consider Sabine Hossenfelder to be, well, how shall we say it, a delusional kook.
Sometimes scientists can be quite catty.
BH will not lose energy by drawing particles inside its event horizon. It will gain mass and increase its gravitational field strength. The energy loss proposed by Hawking is due to matter annihilation – positive energy particle meets negative energy particle. Of course you have to believe in negative energy. I don’t.
Distinction between real and virtual particles. That’s easy. The electron in hydrogen atom is perturbed by virtual particles. You can argue invoking Copenhagen interpretation that the virtual particles are exchanging places with the real particle when we are not looking at it. Maybe. But there’s only one real electron, the others are virtual particles. We cannot mistake one particle for a hundred particles.
Yeah Sabine is kinda kooky but your legitimate physicists who advocate multiverse and string theory are kookier and that’s a lot of kooks LOL
With all due respect, you need to do some reading on Quantum Field Theory.
Unfortunately using words always leads to misunderstanding and as you are somewhat derisive of the math it’s hard to see how to proceed.
In any case, what do you mean that the real electron is perturbed? Perturbed means that there is an exchange of momentum, does it not. How does that occur? Specifically, how does it occur and obey the inverse square law for electric fields when all you have are a near infinite number of “virtual” particles and two “real” particles? You’ve already admitted that only “real” particles can exchange momentum- so how do the virtual particles become real, and if they don’t become real when an interaction of virtual/virtual particles exists then how does a transfer of momentum occur? And, if a transfer of momentum occurs between these virtual particles how does that somehow change the motion of the two “real” electrons that you posit?
As far as Hawking radiation is concerned, again I beg to disagree. No particle/anti particle annihilation is required. When the particle pair is produced just beyond the event horizon the black hole (due to the action of GR) boosts the escaping particle, converting, if you will, gravitational energy (black hole mass) into some other form as it reifies the escaping particle. Meanwhile the remaining virtual particle is absorbed within the black hole but no mass is added because the particle is “virtual” and has infinitesimally small energy (mass).
So, in this process the black hole loses mass, not gains it, and the lost mass is, if you will, converted to Hawking radiation, which can, theoretically, be observed.
My apologies, but I think that I misinterpreted what you said.
I believe that the negative energy that you refer to is gravitational potential, and that in essence is what gives the virtual particle a boost to become real.
If the particle appears essentially from nothing, it will have a large negative gravitational potential at the event horizon, but as it escapes that gravity potential becomes more positive giving the gravity boost that was mentioned and under the correct circumstances, making the particle real and allowing it to escape the event horizon.
If so, not believing in having a negative sign on the gravitational formula is unfortunate.
I recommend a look at that Hawking paper (only 4 pages) – understated with almost no “heavy” maths :
No event horizons, only apparent, so no Black Holes in the usual sense of the term.
“The chaotic collapsed object will radiate deterministically but chaotically. It will
be like weather forecasting on Earth. That is unitary, but chaotic, so there is effective
information loss. One can’t predict the weather more than a few days in advance.”
Strangely enough this arises from gravitational quantisation, light years from Climate.
We have all been reading about how galaxies must have some unseen mass in order to rotate the way they do. And I don’t doubt that is true.
But I saw an interesting item in Astronomy magazine recently that claimed a small galaxy had been found that apparently has no dark matter incorporated into it.
We have a long way to go in our understanding of the workings of the universe.
This has got to be the most exciting time to be alive for human beings who are interested in understanding the universe. The only better time would be a couple of hundred years in the future when we know so much more than we do now. The advances in science in my lifetime have been just amazing and wonderful to behold. Thanks to all those curious humans out there.
Here’s what the Editor of Astronomy magazine has to say about CAGW skeptics:
“How did our universe give rise to tardigrades and Trump supporters and other bizarre creatures?”
Jeff Hester, Editor, Astronomy Magazine, May 2018, p. 11.
Hester preaches to be open to all possibilities, but doesn’t practice his own advice when it comes to some areas of science. A hypocrit, in other words.
I saw a few posts on WUWT criticizing Astronomy magazine as going the way of Scientific American and National Geographic in their blatant promoting of the CAGW speculation, but I don’t see that happening in Astronomy magazine just yet, despite Mr. Hester’s comments.
So far, comments like these have been limited to the comment or editorial section of the magazine and have not polluted the science in the astronomy articles in the magazine.
Note to Mr. Hester: If your CAGW/Trump propaganda ever does seep into the articles in your magazine, I will no longer subscribe to it, just like I no longer subscribe to all those other magazines that pretend to be unbiased science information purveyors while pushing the unverified claims for CAGW being real.
TA
About that galaxy without dark matter. Physicists think dark matter can be explained by either undetected particles or a revised theory of gravity, the so-called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). I’m in the particle camp (I have my own particle dark matter theory) Galaxy DF2 does not rule out particle dark matter. It probably rules out MOND. See Stacy McGaugh’s defense of MOND (and my comment and his troll-bot rant LOL)
https://tritonstation.wordpress.com/2018/04/04/the-dwarf-galaxy-ngc1052-df2/
A couple of comments on this and also your rejection of the concept that gravity does not have a negative sign.
I’ll specify my own “spherical cow”- a universe with only two massive objects, separated at infinite distance.
The kinetic energy of this system is zero, and the gravitational potential is also zero so the net energy is also zero. By definition, the objects do not come together due to the action of gravity. Next, separate the two masses by an infinitesimally smaller amount. Now there is gravitational attraction and acceleration occurs so that kinetic energy of the masses slowly, but inevitably, increases, until the objects come together . At that point the kinetic energy is not zero, but conservation of energy requires that the net energy is, indeed, zero, so the gravitational potential must be negative- the energy function requires it!
As for MOND. Tracey makes a number of good points, although the inability of MOND (and any of its derivatives so far) to preserve Lorentz Invariance means that most physicists discard it out of hand despite its predictive qualities.
Of course, there are other issues with it- such as its inability to correctly predict the CMBR acoustic peaks- that the lambda-CDM model handles brilliantly.
Otherwise, dark matter seems to be pretty arbitrary in its presence or absence and our inability to detect any candidates for its makeup is disturbing. Perhaps some modification to the gravity force law is not totally implausible, or perhaps inertia itself is variable.
“two massive objects, separated at infinite distance. The kinetic energy of this system is zero, and the gravitational potential is also zero”
Nope. Math says PE is zero. Physics says it’s infinite. Start with the two objects together and separate them to infinite distance. PE increases to infinity. Don’t take the math literally. The equation is for finite PE and KE
A quote from Hyperphysics.
“Gravitational potential at infinity
In this case we generally choose the zero of gravitational potential energy at infinity, since the gravitational force approaches zero at infinity. This is a logical way to define the zero since the potential energy with respect to a point at infinity tells us the energy with which an object is bound to the earth.”
I respectfully suggest that your redefinition of gravitational potential is the source of your confusion.
Black Hole Lives Matter
+100
How do we know Black Hole Lives Matter?
If you cross the event horizon, no one an hear you protest…..