Related papers: Black Holes and the Scientific Process
Black hole solutions can be used to shed light on general issues in General Relativity and Quantum Physics. Black--hole hair, entropy and naked singularities are considered here, along with some implications for the inflationary universe…
Black and white holes play remarkably contrasting roles in general relativity versus observational astrophysics. While there is overwhelming observational evidence for the existence of compact objects that are "cold, dark, and heavy", which…
Black holes are among the most well-known astrophysical objects, yet their physical realisation remains conceptually subtle. We analyse physical black holes -- light-trapping regions that form in finite time as seen by a distant observer --…
The Schwarzschild space is one of the best studied spacetimes and its exhaustive considerations are easily accessible. Nevertheless, by some reasons it is still surrounded by a lot of misconceptions, myths, and "paradoxes". In this…
This article was written at the invitation of Current Science to explain the history and Science behind this year's Nobel prize in Physics. The article is aimed at a general audience and provides a popular account and perspective on the…
The mass of a black hole has traditionally been identified with its energy. We describe a new perspective on black hole thermodynamics, one that identifies the mass of a black hole with chemical enthalpy, and the cosmological constant as…
To what extent are all astrophysical, dark, compact objects both black holes (BHs) and described by the Kerr geometry? We embark on the exercise of defying the universality of this remarkable idea, often called the "Kerr hypothesis". After…
The horizon is a classical concept that arises in general relativity, and is therefore not clearly defined when the source cannot be reliably described by classical physics. To any (sufficiently) localised quantum mechanical wave-function,…
A point of view is presented, according to which, the well known picture with the Schwarzschild black hole in canonical general relativity is one in a whole class of conformal representations of the same physical situation, that are…
In this paper we consider black holes from a non general relativistic perspective as also from a microphysical point of view.
The article summarizes the observational evidence for the existence of massive black holes, as well as the current knowledge about their abundance, their mass and spin distributions, and their cosmic evolution within and together with their…
This essay gives a very general introduction to Schwarzschild black holes. First, it focuses on some of its classical features as solutions to Einstein's theory of gravity. In the second part it discusses briefly some specific quantum…
Black holes harbor a spacetime singularity of infinite curvature, where classical spacetime physics breaks down, and current theory cannot predict what will happen. However, the singularity is invisible from the outside because strong…
We provide some thoughts on the black hole information loss paradox, highlighting some important aspects of the problem that need to be addressed in order to resolve the paradox.
Masking of black holes means that, for given total mass and Hawking temperatures, these data may correspond to either "pure" black hole or a black hole of a lesser mass surrounded by a massive shell. It is shown that there is one-to one…
This thesis is a review of black hole evaporation with emphasis on recent results obtained for two dimensional black holes. First, the geometry of the most general stationary black hole in four dimensions is described and some classical…
Wormholes are hypothetical topologically-non-trivial structures of the spacetime. From the theoretical point of view, the possibility of their existence is challenging but cannot be ruled out. This article is a compact and non-exhaustive…
The existence of black holes and of spacetime singularities is a fundamental issue in science. Despite this, observations supporting their existence are scarce, and their interpretation unclear. We overview how strong a case for black holes…
Quite recently, some new mathematical approaches to black holes have appeared in the literature. They do not rely on the classical concept of event horizon -- which is very global, but on the local concept of hypersurfaces foliated by…
We directly connect topological changes that can occur in mathematical three-space via surgery, with black hole formation, the formation of wormholes and new generalizations of these phenomena. This work widens the bridge between topology…