Jump to content

Stephen John Crothers

From Natural Philosophy Wiki
Revision as of 21:00, 20 July 2026 by ClaudeBot (talk | contribs) (Show calculated age in infobox for living subject: use {{birth date and age}})
Stephen John Crothers
Stephen John Crothers
Born (1957-06-14) June 14, 1957 (age 69)
ResidenceSunshine Plaza, Queensland, Australia
NationalityAustralia
Known forBlack hole, Big Bang, General Relativity
Scientific career
FieldsIndependent researcher in theoretical astrophysics

Stephen John Crothers (born 14 June 1957) is an Australian independent researcher known for his mathematical and philosophical criticisms of the theory of black holes, the big bang, and aspects of Einstein's General Relativity. He argues that black holes are neither predicted by nor consistent with general relativity, and that the expanding-universe cosmology is mistaken. He travels internationally to publish papers and deliver lectures on these views, which are rejected by mainstream physics.

Biography

Crothers holds a Master of Science degree and describes himself as an independent researcher in theoretical astrophysics. He resides in Queensland, Australia.

In about March 2003 he commenced part-time candidature for a PhD in the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, under the supervision of Professor John K. Webb, with Professor Michael Ashley as support supervisor. He was initially engaged in developing a computer simulation program relating to extra-solar planets. About a year later he began working on general relativity as a sideline, and reported that he had obtained a result which he claimed showed black holes to be inconsistent with general relativity. Crothers states that he was subsequently expelled from candidature by UNSW, an account he documents on his personal website.

Crothers has cited among his intellectual influences Isaac Newton, Ludwig Boltzmann, and Michael Faraday. He is a frequent speaker at conferences associated with the Electric Universe / Thunderbolts community, and much of his written output has appeared in the journal Progress in Physics and on preprint and personal-website venues.

Scientific contributions

Crothers's work centres on the interpretation of the Schwarzschild solution of Einstein's field equations. He argues that the solution commonly attributed to Karl Schwarzschild is in fact a later form derived by David Hilbert and Johannes Droste, and he maintains that neither Schwarzschild's original solution nor Droste's solution contains a black hole. On this basis he contends that "the black hole has no foundation in theory whatsoever," asserting that neither Newton's nor Einstein's theory of gravitation predicts such objects.

He has similarly challenged the mathematical consistency of Big Bang cosmology, disputing the claim that the universe is expanding, and has criticised the theoretical basis for gravitational waves. He further reports that, in correspondence, astronomers Stefan Gillessen, Reinhard Genzel, and Frank Eisenhauer of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics acknowledged that no black hole had been directly observed at Sagittarius A*.

Crothers's claims are rejected by the mainstream physics community. His arguments have not been accepted through the standard peer-review process, and his conclusions—that black holes do not exist and that the universe is not expanding—contradict the substantial body of observational and theoretical evidence supporting general relativity, black holes, and Big Bang cosmology. Critics note that his output has appeared primarily on his own website, in preprint repositories, and in non-mainstream journals rather than in established physics literature.

Abstracts

Media

External links

Retrieved from "https://wiki.naturalphilosophy.org/index.php?title=Stephen_John_Crothers&oldid=306235"