Related papers: Black Holes and the Scientific Process
Black holes are extreme manifestations of general relativity, so one might hope that exotic quantum effects would be amplified in their vicinities, perhaps providing clues to quantum gravity. The commonly accepted treatment of quantum…
What is going on (as of August 2008) at the interface between theoretical general relativity, string-inspired models, and observational astrophysics? Quite a lot. In this mini-survey I will make a personal choice and focus on four specific…
S. Chandrasekhar wrote in the prologue to his book on black holes, "The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time."…
Black holes play a pivotal role in the foundations of physics, but there is an alarming discrepancy between what is considered to be a black hole in observational astronomy and theoretical studies. Despite claims to the contrary, we argue…
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…
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…
Black holes are extremely dense and compact objects from which light cannot escape. There is an overall consensus that black holes exist and many astronomical objects are identified with black holes. White holes were understood as the exact…
This article reviews the current status of black hole astrophysics, focusing on topics of interest to a physics audience. Astronomers have discovered dozens of compact objects with masses greater than 3 solar masses, the likely maximum mass…
Recent work on the dyadosphere of a black hole is reviewed with special emphasis on the explanation of gamma ray bursts. A change of paradigm in the observations of black holes is presented.
A brief, and certainly not exhaustive, survey is provided of some recent results and conjectures in four and higher spacetime dimensions, such as the Hoop Conjecture, relating the geometry of event horizons to dynamical quantities such as…
With the direct discovery of gravitational waves, black holes have regain interest in the recent years. In particular primordial black holes (PBHs), which originate from the very early Universe, may constitute (at least in part) dark…
Following the 2019 release by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration of the first pictures of a supermassive black hole, there has been an explosion of interest in black hole images, their theoretical interpretation, and their potential…
I review elements of the foundations of black-hole theory with attention to problematic issues, and describe some techniques which either seem to help with the difficulties or at least investigate their scope. The definition of black holes…
Two interesting hypotheses about black holes have been proposed. The older one states that microscopic black holes can be accountable for the observed dark matter density. The newer one states that black holes are coupled to the expansion…
The discovery that black holes emit thermal type radiation changed radically our perception of their behavior. Until then, their interior was considered as causally disconnected from the rest of the universe, so any kind of information,…
The relevant physics for the possible formation of black holes in the LHC is discussed.
We have known for more than thirty years that black holes behave as thermodynamic systems, radiating as black bodies with characteristic temperatures and entropies. This behavior is not only interesting in its own right; it could also,…
The quantum nature of a black hole is revealed using the simplest terms that one learns in undergraduate and beginning graduate courses. The exposition demonstrates -- vividly -- the importance and power of the quantum oscillator in…
We discuss and compare definitions of a black hole based on the existence of event and apparent horizons. In this connection we present a non-singular model of a black hole with a closed apparent horizon and discuss its properties. We…
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…