While the theory of black holes has been widely accepted by the astrophysics community, not all scientists are believers. University of North Carolina professor Laura Mersini-Houghton recently published a paper in the scientific journal Physics Letters B stating that the existence of black holes was simply impossible.

Mersini-Houghton strongly believes that black holes do not exist. In her paper, she claimed that she had mathematical evidence proving her theory. If her assertions are true, physicists would have to rethink their ideas about the birth of the universe.

In her paper, Mersini-Houghton theorized that stars could not collapse into a singularity, an incredibly dense small black hole. Instead, they would emit Hawking radiation, a type of radiation first predicted by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s. There would not be enough radiation left over, Mersini-Houghton explained, to cause a black hole.

This stands in direct contrast to the existing theory of black holes, which speculates that the death of a massive star compresses its radiation into a singularity. The black hole is then surrounded by an event horizon with an enormous gravitational pull that drags all particles, objects, and light into a single point.

Stephen Hawking originally hypothesized that a massive dying star would emit Hawking radiation. But Mersini-Houghton believes that the amount of Hawking radiation emitted would leave no more radiation to form a black hole. Through her recent paper, she claimed that she had solved the dilemma between quantum mechanics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which had previously not been able to resolve the issue of black holes.

“Physicists have been trying to merge these two theories – Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum mechanics – for decades, but this scenario brings these two theories together, into harmony,” Mersini-Houghton said.

Her work has been met with disdain by many in the scientific community. Professor William Unruh, a theoretical physicist at the University of British Columbia, referred to her theory as “nonsense” and declared that she had numerous “fatal flaws.” He stated that dying stars do not give off enough Hawking radiation to prevent forming a black hole surrounded by an event horizon.

The traditionally accepted view of the universe’s birth is the Big Bang Theory, in which the universe was created from a singularity. However, if black holes do not exist, that theory would be proven wrong.