Related papers: The hole picture
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…
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…
Any observer outside black holes cannot detect any physical signal produced by the black holes themselves, since, by definition, the black holes are not located in the causal past of the outside observer. In fact, what we regard as black…
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…
Black holes are extreme outcomes of General Relativity, and can form through a variety of ways, including gravitational collapse of massive stars, or quantum fluctuations in the early universe. Here, we ask the question of whether they can…
This paper provides a brief review of the history of our understanding and knowledge of black holes. Starting with early speculations on ``dark stars'' I discuss the Schwarzschild "black hole" solution to Einstein's field equations and the…
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…
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…
Classical black holes and event horizons are highly non-local objects, defined in relation to the causal past of future null infinity. Alternative, quasilocal characterizations of black holes are often used in mathematical, quantum, and…
Recent developments have ushered in a new era in the field of black hole astrophysics, providing our first direct view of the remarkable environment near black hole event horizons. These observations have enabled astronomers to confirm…
Black holes are among the most extreme objects that can be found in the Universe and an ideal laboratory for testing fundamental physics. This article will briefly review the basic properties of black holes as expected from general…
Collapsed objects have definitely been observed: some are stellar-mass objects, the endpoint of massive stars; others, millions of times more massive, have been discovered in the cores of most galaxies. Their formation poses some…
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…
In this review, I have tried to focus on the development of the field, from the first speculations to the current lines of research. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, black holes are relatively simple objects and…
Given the great interest that black holes arouse among non-specialists, it is important to analyse misconceptions related to them. According to the author, the most common misconceptions are that: (1) black holes are formed from stellar…
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 grand challenges of contemporary fundamental physics---dark matter, dark energy, vacuum energy, inflation and early universe cosmology, singularities and the hierarchy problem---all involve gravity as a key component. And of all…
Astronomers have certainly observed things that are small, dark, and heavy. But are these objects really black holes in the sense of general relativity? The consensus opinion is simply "yes", and there is very little "wriggle room". We…
We describe the possible forms of black hole images, viewed by a distant observer. These images are numerically calculated basing on general relativity and equations of motion in the Kerr-Newman metric. Black hole image is a gravitationally…
Supermassive black holes are nowadays believed to reside in most local galaxies. Observations have revealed us vast information on the population of local and distant black holes, but the detailed physical properties of these dark massive…