Thanks for that link, Daniel -- I meant to Google Mitra, and hadn't got 'round to it yet. Hawking's 'refining' is certainly interesting. Tacit acceptance combined with avoidance of controversy?

... however there is clear evidence of non-visible massive gravitational attractors in this and other galaxies...

There's a reason I wish I had the math: if the luminosity of a MECO of given mass is predictable through Mitra's equations (and it seemed to my amateur eyes that it is), then a temperature and a blackbody curve ought to be, too... oughtn't it? "Non-visible" isn't necessarily non-luminous. It could easily mean "not radiating at visible wavelengths", if the radiation peaks in the radio bandwidth -- and there are tonnes of radio-bright galaxies, and pulsars.

I still wonder about the effect Mitra's conclusions have on the theory of how Type II supernovae occur. He seems to be saying there is no "catastrophic collapse"... or do I misread?

Any stellar physicists in the house?