Related papers: Small, dark, and heavy: But is it a black hole?
There are many observational evidences for the detection of compact objects with masses significantly larger (in galactic cases) or much larger (in extragalactic cases) than the upper limits of masses of em cold Neutron Stars. Such compact…
Black holes are real astrophysical objects, but their interiors are hidden and can only be "observed" through mathematics. The structure of rotating black holes is typically illustrated with the help of special coordinates. But any such…
The possible existence of black holes has fascinated scientists at least since Michell and Laplace's proposal that a gravitating object could exist from which light could not escape. In the 20th century, in light of the general theory of…
We review some recent results obtained for black holes using effective field theory methods applied to quantum gravity, in particular the unique effective action. Black holes are complex thermodynamical objects that not only have a…
The 3d volume inside a spherical black hole can be defined by extending an intrinsic flat-spacetime characterization of the volume inside a 2-sphere. For a collapsed object, the volume grows with time since the collapse, reaching a simple…
Black holes were predicted by Einstein General Relativity (GR). Because of unusual properties of these objects their existence is almost unbelievable. There are gravitation theories which do not predict the black hole appearance. By now,…
At the 20-th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics there was a plenary talk devoted to the recent developments in classical Relativity. In that talk the problems of gravitational collapse, collisions of black holes, and of black…
This article is based on a pair of lectures given at the 2005 SLAC Summer Institute. Our goal is to motivate why most physicists and astrophysicists accept the hypothesis that the most massive, compact objects seen in many astrophysical…
Black holes cannot be seen directly since they absorb light and emit none, the very quality which earned them their name. We suggest that black holes may be seen indirectly through a chaotic defocusing of light. A black hole can capture…
It is shown that there are large static black holes for which all curvature invariants are small near the event horizon, yet any object which falls in experiences enormous tidal forces outside the horizon. These black holes are charged and…
Possible existence of black holes remnants provides a suitable candidates for dark matter. In this paper we study the possibility of existence for such remnants. We consider quantum gravitational induced corrections of black hole's entropy…
General relativity has achieved remarkable experimental and observational success. Critically, recent data from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA, Event Horizon Telescope, and GRAVITY collaborations are often credited with \textit{demonstrating} the…
While until recently they were often considered as exotic objects of dubious existence, in the last decades there have been overwhelming observational evidences for the presence of stellar mass black holes in binary systems, supermassive…
Objects that are on the verge of being extremal black holes but actually are distinct in many ways are called quasi-black holes. Quasi-black holes are defined here and treated in a unified way through the displaying of their properties. The…
The information loss paradox is often discussed from the perspective of the observers who stay outside of a black hole. However, the interior spacetime of a black hole can be rather nontrivial. We discuss the open problems regarding the…
Black holes are the elementary particles of gravity, the final state of sufficiently massive stars and of energetic collisions. With a forty-year long history, black hole physics is a fully-blossomed field which promises to embrace several…
Black Holes are possibly the most enigmatic objects in our Universe. From their detection in gravitational waves upon their mergers, to their snapshot eating at the centres of galaxies, black hole astrophysics has undergone an observational…
Black holes are fascinating objects. As a class of solutions to the Einstein equations they have been studied a great deal, yielding a wealth of theoretical results. But do they really exist? What do astronomers really mean when they claim…
For an accretion disk around a black hole, the strong relativistic effects affect every aspect of the radiation from the disk, including its spectrum, light-curve, and image. This work investigates in detail how the images of a thin disk…
Black holes have often provided profound insights into the nature of gravity and the structure of space-time. The study of the mathematical properties of black objects is a major research theme of contemporary theoretical physics. This…