Related papers: Might black holes reveal their inner secrets?
Gravity warps space and time into a funnel and generates a black hole when a cosmic body undergoes a catastrophic collapse. What can one say about the interior of a black hole? The important point is that inside a black hole the space…
While extreme black hole spacetimes with smooth horizons are known at the level of mathematics, we argue that the horizons of physical extreme black holes are effectively singular. Test particles encounter a singularity the moment they…
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…
Black holes are among the most intriguing objects in modern physics. Their influence ranges from powering quasars and other active galactic nuclei, to providing key insights into quantum gravity. We review the observational evidence for…
Classical black holes shield us from the singularities that inevitably appear in general relativity. Being singularity regularization one of the main landmarks for a successful theory of quantum gravity, quantum black holes are not obliged…
We discuss some of the drawbacks of using event horizons to define black holes and suggest ways in which black holes can be described without event horizons, using trapping horizons. We show that these trapping horizons give rise to…
In this essay we argue that once quantum gravitational effects change the classical geometry of a black hole and remove the curvature singularity, the black hole would not evaporate entirely but approach a remnant. In a modified…
Black holes are perhaps the most strange and fascinating objects known to exist in the universe. Our understanding of space and time is pushed to its limits by the extreme conditions found in these objects. They can be used as natural…
We investigate what are the key physical features that cause the development of a naked singularity, rather than a black hole, as the end-state of spherical gravitational collapse. We show that sufficiently strong shearing effects near the…
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…
In general relativity, nonsingular black holes contain (at least) a Cauchy horizon, a null hypersurface beyond which determinism breaks down. Even though the strong cosmic censorship conjecture establishes the impossibility of extending…
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…
Our understanding of space and time is probed to its depths by black holes. These objects, which appear as a natural consequence of general relativity, provide a powerful analytical tool able to examine macroscopic and microscopic…
In general relativity, isolated black holes are invisible due to an infinitely large redshift of photons propagating from the event horizon to the remote observer. However, the dark shadow (silhouette) of a black hole can be visible on the…
Recently, several authors have studied the possibility of overspinning or overcharging an existing black hole to destroy its event horizon and make the central singularity naked. When all the effects are properly taken into account, any…
It is now known that when a massive star collapses under the force of its own gravity, the final fate of such a continual gravitational collapse will be either a black hole or a naked singularity under a wide variety of physically…
Black holes are presumed to have an ideal ability to absorb and keep matter. Whatever comes close to the event horizon, a boundary separating the inside region of a black hole from the outside world, inevitably goes in and remains inside…
The gravitational force harbours a fundamental instability against collapse. In standard General Relativity without Quantum Mechanics, this implies the existence of black holes as natural, stable solutions of Einstein's equations. If one…
Black holes are one of the most fascinating predictions of general relativity. They are the natural product of the complete gravitational collapse of matter and today we have a body of observational evidence supporting the existence of…
Spacetime singularities in numerical relativity can be avoided by excising a region of the computational domain from inside the apparent horizon. We report on results of such a scheme that is based on using ({\it i}) a horizon locking…