haribert (asker) Jun 21, 2017:

Herbalchemist, Thanks for your opinion! (by the way, as a confirmation of what you said about possible reader's expectations, I must humbly admit that I initially read it as "black hole", in the sense that I didn't even realize it was "dark hole" and not "black hole"... On a second reading, though, my mind "awakened" and I noticed the difference... fortunately!!)
have a nice evening!

Herbmione Granger Jun 21, 2017:

constructive comment My comment was in response to other scientists not supporting a scientist, not translators doing their jobs, when said scientist is answering a question in their specialization within a specialization... Here, we should naturally think of the reader, and 'celebrity scientists' like Hawking and deGrasse Tyson have made terms like 'black hole' rather commonplace, so the reader might notice this inconsistency, which would break the flow of the passage. Therefore, I suggest that haribert follow through on a 'did you mean...?' note, and not simply change it. Good discussion below.

haribert (asker) Jun 19, 2017:

Charles, thank you so much for your message!
You're all pulling me out, well, of a "black hole"!! (it's a really interesting theme, though and I'm glad I've asked: thanks for all the information you've given me!)
Have a nice evening!

Charles Davis Jun 19, 2017:

@haribert If I were you I would trust M.A.B., the only astrophysicist here. If the author is not a physicist it is all the more plausible that he/she is using an incorrect term and simply means black holes, calling them "dark" by association with dark matter and energy (as M.A.B. suggests) and perhaps also because of the connotations of "dark" as "mysterious". The fact that Hawking is cited in the references doesn't necessarily imply informed engagement with Hawking's scientific ideas: he is a great scientist, but is a star in non-scientific circles too; his Brief History of Time adorns the shelves of many people who didn't make it past chapter 1. His name lends a veneer of scientific credibility without the inconvenience of having to understand the physics. And scientifically uninformed discussion of thermodynamics and quantum theory is equally widespread in popular psychology. This author probably just got it wrong.

haribert (asker) Jun 19, 2017:

Charles, M.A.B, Phil thank you for your help! What a fascinating theme! I wish I had more time to go deeper into this...
Unfortunately this is the only occurrence of "dark holes" in the book... Perhaps I should have said that this is a book on "mind", more a psychology book than a physics book, although it often refers to physics (e.g. quantum theory, thermodynamics etc.)
I guess (or - I should say - I hope) the author is treating this theme as generally as possible for a large audience, so if "black hole" makes sense in the passage - as it seems it does - maybe I can use it...
But I've just looked "Hawking" up in the References section of the book, and the author has actually included one of Hawking's text..so it may also be Charles's option 2 (maybe the author has read the book and has recalled this term... ). I tried the Google books search for this Hawking's book, but it doesn't seem to contain the term "dark hole"--it's a very old book, though
Maybe I could write a Translator's note, saying that the author has used "dark holes", a term which may refer in general to “black holes” or to Hawking's theory that "black holes" may be not so black after all!!

M.A.B. Jun 19, 2017:

I don't agree it's #3 from that list. What the RAS press release refers to are entities called 'voids' in astrophysics. We don't have to deduce their existence via "shadows of their effects" - we see them directly by just looking at the distribution of galaxies. On the other hand, black holes are similar to dark matter and dark energy in the sense that they're not observed directly but their existence is inferred from how they interact with matter and light around them.
I can only suspect that the author of the Asker's text used this term on purpose to put black holes on par with dark matter and dark energy. In translation one could still use dark holes in the target language, I agree, but I'd then add quotes.

philgoddard Jun 19, 2017:

Haribert Your reference is in very poor English, whereas the text you're translating is written by a native speaker who clearly knows what they're talking about. I don't think they'd say dark holes by mistake for black holes, and they mention dark energy earlier in your text. I think it's no. 3 on Charles' list.

M.A.B. Jun 19, 2017:

@haribert Note that the reference that you found is by (most likely) a non-native, is from a conference rather than a refereed journal, and it's not very good English.
One can of course come up with physical theories where a black hole made of dark matter would be different from a black hole made of ordinary (non-dark) matter, but it's beyond the standard physics where "black holes have no hair".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hair_theorem

M.A.B. Jun 19, 2017:

@Charles Davis I'm pretty sure it's not about #3 from your list. And I'd also think that #1 is probably the right suspicion. This term is certainly not something that is normally used, even if every (astro)physicist would probably understand if somebody said "dark hole" instead of "black hole". I think that the term is there to show its relation to dark matter and dark energy. But as I wrote, whether the stuff that collapses into a singularity is made of dark matter or anything else, the results will be the same - something which in physics is called a black hole.

Charles Davis Jun 19, 2017:

I see three possibilities:

1. The writer is using "dark hole" carelessly and improperly as a synonym for "black hole". Other examples of this can be found on the Internet.

2. The writer is referring to black holes but is calling them "dark" as an allusion to Stephen Hawking's argument that black holes are not completely "black" (in other words, that particles can escape from a black hole).

3. The writer is not referring to black holes at all but to intergalactic voids, as in the following Royal Astronomical Society news report:

"We live in a universe dominated by unseen matter, and on the largest scales, galaxies and everything they contain are concentrated into filaments that stretch around the edge of enormous voids. Thought to be almost empty until now, a group of astronomers based in Austria, Germany and the United States now believe these dark holes could contain as much as 20% of the 'normal' matter in the cosmos [...]
The culprit appears to be the supermassive black holes found in the centres of galaxies. [...]"
https://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/news-archive/264-news-...

I'm not sure, but I suspect it's (1).

haribert (asker) Jun 19, 2017:

Thank you very much M.A.B. for your help! Unfortunately I'm not an expert in this field... Do you think I can translate as "black holes" in the sentence? Would that make sense?
Actually I've found an occurrence in which the two terms are treated as if they had the same meaning (provided I've understood the text correctly..).
Maybe you can post your reply, so that I can give you points...


http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012APS..APR.K1079C

The model of dark matter such as dark hole (black hole), dark comet and dark light have the space-time center. The wave is the space-time. Because the dark matter is space-time center, so it has the ``negative'' mass.

M.A.B. Jun 19, 2017:

Such a term normally isn't used A black hole, whether made of usual non-dark or dark matter, would be the same, at least in standard physics - as the black hole formation process (gravitational collapse to a singularity) "forgets" (most of) the initial conditions. In other words, whether you make a black hole from dark matter only, or non-dark matter only, you'd get the same object as a result (if all other conditions were the same, such as rotation etc.).
On the other hand, formally black holes should be treated as dark matter as they don't emit radiation. So maybe this is what the author meant: black holes, regarded as dark matter. But normally we don't say "dark holes".