Black hole

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For other uses, see Black hole (disambiguation).

Simulated view of a black hole in front of the Milky Way. The hole has 10 solar
masses and is viewed from a distance of 600 km. An acceleration of about 400 million
g is necessary to sustain this distance constantly.[1]
General relativity

Einstein field equations

Introduction to...
Mathematical formulation of...
[show]Fundamental concepts
[hide]Phenomena
Kepler problem Lenses Waves
Frame-dragging Geodetic effect

Event horizon Singularity

Black hole
[show]Equations
[show]Advanced theories
[show]Solutions
[show]Scientists
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A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that
nothing can escape after having fallen past the event horizon. The name comes from
the fact that even electromagnetic radiation (e.g. light) is unable to escape, rendering
the interior invisible. However, black holes can be detected if they interact with matter
outside the event horizon, for example by drawing in gas from an orbiting star. The
gas spirals inward, heating up to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts
of radiation in the process.[2][3][4]
While the idea of an object with gravity strong enough to prevent light from escaping
was proposed in the 18th century,[5] black holes, as currently understood, are described
by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which was developed in 1916. This theory
predicts that when a large enough amount of mass is present within a sufficiently
small region of space, all paths through space are warped inwards towards the center
of the volume, leaving all matter and radiation with nowhere else to go.
While general relativity describes a black hole as a region of empty space with a
pointlike singularity at the center and an event horizon at the outer edge, the
description changes when the effects of quantum mechanics are taken into account.
Research on this subject indicates that, rather than holding captured matter forever,
black holes may slowly leak a form of thermal energy called Hawking radiation.[6][7][8]
However, the final, correct description of black holes, requiring a theory of quantum
gravity, is unknown.

Contents
[hide]

1 Sizes of black holes

2 What makes it impossible to escape from black
holes?
3 Black hole parameters and the "no hair
theorem"
4 Types of black holes
5 Major features of non-rotating, uncharged
black holes
o 5.1 Event horizon
o 5.2 Singularity at a single point
o 5.3 Photon sphere

o 5.4 Accretion disk

6 Major features of rotating black holes
o 6.1 Ergosphere
o 6.2 Ring-shaped singularity
o 6.3 Possibility of escaping from a
rotating black hole
7 What happens when something falls into a
black hole?
o 7.1 Spaghettification
o 7.2 Before the falling object crosses the
event horizon
o 7.3 As the object passes through the
event horizon
o 7.4 Inside the event horizon
o 7.5 Hitting the singularity
8 Black hole parameters
9 Formation and evaporation
o 9.1 Formation of stellar-mass black holes
o 9.2 Formation of larger black holes
o 9.3 Formation of smaller black holes
9.3.1 Evaporation of larger black
holes
9.3.2 Big Bang
9.3.3 Particle accelerators
o 9.4 Evaporation
10 Techniques for finding black holes
o 10.1 Accretion disks and gas jets
o 10.2 Strong radiation emissions
o 10.3 Gravitational lensing
o 10.4 Objects orbiting possible black
holes
o 10.5 Determining the mass of Black
Holes
11 Black hole candidates
o 11.1 Supermassive black holes at the
centers of galaxies
o 11.2 Intermediate-mass black holes in
globular clusters
o 11.3 Stellar-mass black holes in the
Milky Way
o 11.4 Micro black holes
12 History of the black hole concept
o 12.1 Newtonian theories (before
Einstein)
o 12.2 Theories based on Einstein's general
relativity
13 Black holes and Earth
o 13.1 Black hole wandering through our
Solar System

13.2 Micro black hole escaping from a

particle accelerator
14 Alternative models
15 More advanced topics
o 15.1 Entropy and Hawking radiation
o 15.2 Black hole unitarity
16 Mathematical theory of non-rotating,
uncharged black holes
17 References
18 Further reading
o 18.1 Popular reading
o 18.2 University textbooks and
monographs
o 18.3 Research papers
o

19 External links

Sizes of black holes

Black holes can have any mass. Since the gravitational force of a body on itself, at the
surface of a body of any shape, increases in inverse proportion to its characteristic
lengthscale squared (as volume-2/3 ), an object of any shape and mass that is
sufficiently compressed will collapse under its own gravity and form a black hole.
However, when black holes form naturally, only a few mass ranges are realistic.
Black holes can be divided into several size categories:

Supermassive black holes that contain hundreds of thousands to billions of

times the mass of the sun are believed to exist in the center of most galaxies,
including our own Milky Way. They are thought to be responsible for active
galactic nuclei.
Intermediate-mass black holes, whose sizes are measured in thousands of solar
masses, may exist. Intermediate-mass black holes have been proposed as a
possible power source for ultra-luminous X ray sources.
Stellar-mass black holes have masses ranging from about 1.5-3.0 solar masses
(the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit) to 15 solar masses. These black
holes are created by the collapse of individual stars. Stars above about 20 solar
masses may collapse to form black holes; the cores of lighter stars form
neutron stars or white dwarf stars. In all cases some of the star's material is
lost (blown away during the red giant stage for stars that turn into white
dwarfs, or lost in a supernova explosion for stars that turn into neutron stars or
black holes).
Micro black holes, which have masses at which the effects of quantum
mechanics are expected to become very important. This is usually assumed to
be near the Planck mass. Alternatively, the term micro black hole or mini
black hole may refer to any black hole with mass much less than that of a star.
NASA's GLAST satellite, to be launched in 2008, will search for such
primordial black holes as one of its tasks.

What makes it impossible to escape from black holes?

General relativity describes mass as changing the shape of spacetime, and the shape of
spacetime as describing how matter moves through space. For objects much less
dense than black holes, this results in something similar to Newton's laws of gravity:
objects with mass attract each other, but it's calcuate an escape velocity which allows
two object to move apart indefinitely. For objects as dense as black holes, this stops
being the case: neither light nor even the most powerful spaceship with an unlimited
fuel supply can escape once they get within a certain range, because the energy
required to leave the hole becomes infinite .
There are several valid ways of describing the situation that makes escape impossible.
The difference between these descriptions is in the coordinates they use to measure
positions in space and time; the choice of coordinates depends on the choice of
observation point and on additional definitions used. The cause of these complications
is that, at moderately close ranges, the black hole distorts spacetime so severely that
things look very different from different viewpoints. A rather simple analogy is the
way in which images are distorted by lenses; observers on each side of the lens see
distorted images of each other.
One common description, based on Schwarzschild's system of coordinates for black
holes, views the time axis in spacetime as pointing inwards towards the center of the
black hole from the point of view of anything within the event horizon.[9] Under these
conditions, falling further into the hole is as inevitable as moving forward in time.

Black hole parameters and the "no hair theorem"

Main article: No hair theorem
The "No hair" theorem states that black holes have only 3 independent internal
properties: mass, angular momentum and electric charge. As a consequence it is
impossible to tell the difference between a black hole formed from a highly
compressed mass of normal matter and one formed from, say, a highly compressed
mass of anti-matter; in other words, any other information (apart from mass, angular
momentum and charge) about infalling matter or energy is seemingly destroyed. This
is the black hole information paradox.
The theorem only works in some of the types of universe which the equations of
general relativity allow, but this includes four-dimensional spacetimes with a zero or
positive cosmological constant, which describes our universe at the classical level.

Types of black holes

Despite the uncertainty about whether the "No Hair" theorem applies to our universe,
astrophysicists currently classify black holes according to their angular momentum
(non-zero angular momentum means the black hole is rotating) and electric charge:

Non-rotating

Uncharged Schwarzschild

Rotating

Kerr

Charged Reissner-Nordstrm Kerr-Newman

(All black holes have non-zero mass, so mass cannot be used for this type of "yes" /
"no" classification)
Physicists do not expect that black holes with a significant electric charge will be
formed in nature, because the electromagnetic repulsion, which resists the
compression of an electrically charged mass, is about 40 orders of magnitude greater
(about 1040 times greater) than the gravitational attraction, which compresses the
mass. So this article does not cover charged black holes in detail, but the ReissnerNordstrm black hole and Kerr-Newman metric articles provide more information.
On the other hand astrophysicists expect that almost all black holes will rotate,
because the stars from which they are formed rotate. In fact most black holes are
expected to spin very rapidly, because they retain most of the angular momentum of
the stars from which they were formed, but concentrated into a much smaller radius.
The same laws of angular momentum make skaters spin faster if they pull their arms
closer to their bodies.
This article describes non-rotating, uncharged black holes first, because they are the
simplest type.

Major features of non-rotating, uncharged black

holes
Event horizon
This is the boundary of the region from which not even light can escape, but at the
same time, light does not get sucked into the black hole. Stephen Hawking, in his
book A Brief History of Time, describes the event horizon as "the point of which light
is just barely able to escape ("I like to think of it as being chased by the police but just
barely managing to stay one step away!")." Another way to think of this is that the
light is running on a spacetime "treadmill;" the light is moving away from the black
hole at the rate of c, but the spacetime is being sucked into the black hole at the same
rate, so the two cancel each other out, much like a treadmill. An observer at a safe
distance would see a dull black disc if the black hole was in a pure vacuum but in
front of a light background, such as a bright nebula. The event horizon is not a solid
surface, and does not obstruct or slow down matter or radiation that is traveling
towards the region within the event horizon.

The event horizon is the defining feature of a black holeit is black because no light
or other radiation can escape from inside it, excluding Hawking radiation. So the
event horizon hides whatever happens inside it, and we can only calculate what
happens by using the best theory available, which at present is general relativity.
The gravitational field outside the event horizon is identical to the field produced by
any other spherically symmetric object of the same mass. The popular conception of
black holes as "sucking" things in is false: objects can maintain an orbit around black
holes indefinitely, provided they stay outside the photon sphere (described below),
and also ignoring the effects of gravitational radiation, which causes orbiting objects
to lose energy, similar to the effect of electromagnetic radiation.

Singularity at a single point

According to general relativity, a black hole's mass is entirely compressed into a
region with zero volume, which means its density and gravitational pull are infinite,
and so is the curvature of space-time that it causes. These infinite values cause most
physical equations, including those of general relativity, to stop working at the center
of a black hole. So physicists call the zero-volume, infinitely dense region at the
center of a black hole a singularity.
The singularity in a non-rotating, uncharged black hole is a point, in other words it
has zero length, width, and height.
But there is an important uncertainty about this description: quantum mechanics is as
well-supported by mathematics and experimental evidence as general relativity, and it
does not allow objects to have zero sizeso quantum mechanics says the center of a
black hole is not a singularity but just a very large mass compressed into the smallest
possible volume. At present we have no well-established theory that combines
quantum mechanics and general relativity; and the most promising candidate, string
theory, also does not allow objects to have zero size.
The rest of this article will follow the predictions of general relativity, because
quantum mechanics deals with very small-scale (sub-atomic) phenomena and general
relativity is the best theory we have at present for explaining large-scale phenomena,
such as the behavior of masses similar to or larger than stars.

Photon sphere
A non-rotating black hole's photon sphere is a spherical boundary of zero thickness
such that photons moving along tangents to the sphere will be trapped in a circular
orbit. For non-rotating black holes, the photon sphere has a radius 1.5 times that of the
event horizon. This may give the impression that a black hole will accumulate a 'shell'
of captured photons, which will grow in density indefinitely, but this is not true. No
photon is likely to stay in this orbit for long, for two reasons. First, it is likely to
interact with any infalling matter in the vicinity (being absorbed or scattered). Second,
the orbit is dynamically unstable due to light's enormous speed; small deviations from
a perfectly circular path will grow into larger deviations very quickly, causing the
photon to either escape or fall into the hole.

Other extremely compact objects, such as neutron stars, can also have photon spheres.
[10]
This follows from the fact that light "captured" by a photon sphere does not pass
within the radius that would form the event horizon if the object were a black hole of
the same mass, and therefore its behavior does not depend on the presence of an event
horizon.

Accretion disk

An artist view taken from the Hubble Space Telescope website showing an accretion
disk around the black hole. The friction from the gas generates a massive amount of
heat. The heated gas emits X-rays.
Space is not a pure vacuum - even interstellar space contains a few atoms of hydrogen
per cubic centimeter.[11] The powerful gravity field of a black hole pulls this towards
and then into the black hole. The gas nearest the event horizon forms a disk and, at
this short range, the black hole's gravity is strong enough to compress the gas to a
relatively high density. The pressure, friction and other mechanisms within the disk
generate enormous energy (which causes the gases to turn into plasma) - in fact they
convert matter to energy more efficiently than the nuclear fusion processes that power
stars. As a result, the disk glows very brightly, although disks around black holes
radiate mainly X-rays rather than visible light.
Accretion disks are not proof of the presence of black holes, because other massive,
ultra-dense objects such as neutron stars and white dwarfs cause accretion disks to
form and to behave in the same ways as those around black holes.

Major features of rotating black holes

Main article: Rotating black hole

Two important surfaces around a rotating black hole. The inner sphere is the static
limit (the event horizon). It is the inner boundary of a region called the ergosphere.
The oval-shaped surface, touching the event horizon at the poles, is the outer
boundary of the ergosphere. Within the ergosphere a particle is forced (dragging of
space and time) to rotate and may gain energy at the cost of the rotational energy of
the black hole (Penrose process).
Rotating black holes share many of the features of non-rotating black holesthe
inability of light or anything else to escape from within their event horizons, accretion
disks, etc. But general relativity predicts that rapid rotation of a large mass produces
further distortions of space-time, in addition to those that a non-rotating large mass
produces; and these additional effects make rotating black holes strikingly different
from non-rotating ones.

Ergosphere
A large, ultra-dense rotating mass creates an effect called frame-dragging, so that
space-time is dragged around it in the direction of the rotation.
Rotating black holes have an ergosphere, a region bounded by

on the outside, an oblate spheroid, which coincides with the event horizon at
the poles and is noticeably wider around the "equator". This boundary is
sometimes called the "ergosurface", but it is just a boundary and has no more
solidity than the event horizon. At points exactly on the ergosurface, spacetime is dragged around at the speed of light.
on the inside, the outer event horizon.

Within the ergosphere, space-time is dragged around faster than lightgeneral

relativity forbids material objects to travel faster than light (so does special relativity),
but allows regions of space-time to move faster than light relative to other regions of
space-time.
Objects and radiation (including light) can stay in orbit within the ergosphere without
falling to the center. But they cannot hover (remain stationary, as seen by an external

observer), because that would require them to move backwards faster than light
relative to their own regions of space-time, which are moving faster than light relative
to an external observer.
Objects and radiation can also escape from the ergosphere. In fact the Penrose process
predicts that objects will sometimes fly out of the ergosphere, obtaining the energy for
this by "stealing" some of the black hole's rotational energy. If a large total mass of
objects escapes in this way, the black hole will spin more slowly and may even stop
spinning eventually.

Ring-shaped singularity
General relativity predicts that a rotating black hole will have a ring singularity which
lies in the plane of the "equator" and has zero width and thicknessbut remember
that quantum mechanics does not allow objects to have zero size in any dimension
(their wavefunction must spread), so general relativity's prediction is only the best
idea we have until someone devises a theory that combines general relativity and
quantum mechanics.

Possibility of escaping from a rotating black hole

Penrose diagrams of various Schwarzschild solutions. Time is the vertical dimension,

space is horizontal, and light travels at 45 angles. Paths less than 45 to the
horizontal are forbidden by special relativity, but rotating black holes allow for travel
to future "universes"
Kerr's solution for the equations of general relativity predicts that:

The properties of space-time between the two event horizons allow objects to
move only towards the singularity.
But the properties of space-time within the inner event horizon allow objects
to move away from the singularity, pass through another set of inner and outer

event horizons, and emerge out of the black hole into another universe or
another part of this universe without traveling faster than the speed of light.
Passing through the ring shaped singularity may allow entry to a negative
gravity universe.[12]

If this is true, rotating black holes could theoretically provide the wormholes which
often appear in science fiction. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the internal properties
of a rotating black hole are exactly as described by Kerr's solution[13] and it is not
currently known whether the actual properties of a rotating black hole would provide
a similar escape route for an object via the inner event horizon.
Even if this escape route is possible, it is unlikely to be useful because a spacecraft
which followed that path would probably be distorted beyond recognition by
spaghettification.

What happens when something falls into a black

hole?
This section describes what happens when something falls into a non-rotating,
uncharged black hole. The effects of rotating and charged black holes are more
complicated but the final result is much the samethe falling object is absorbed
(unless rotating black holes really can act as wormholes).

Spaghettification
Main article: spaghettification
An object in any very strong gravitational field feels a tidal force stretching it in the
direction of the object generating the gravitational field. This is because the inverse
square law causes nearer parts of the stretched object to feel a stronger attraction than
farther parts. Near black holes, the tidal force is expected to be strong enough to
deform any object falling into it, even atoms or composite nucleons; this is called
spaghettification.
The strength of the tidal force depends on how gravitational attraction changes with
distance, rather than on the absolute force being felt. This means that small black
holes cause spaghettification while infalling objects are still outside their event
horizons, whereas objects falling into large, supermassive black holes may not be
deformed or otherwise feel excessively large forces before passing the event horizon.

Before the falling object crosses the event horizon

An object in a gravitational field experiences a slowing down of time, called
gravitational time dilation, relative to observers outside the field. The outside observer
will see that physical processes in the object, including clocks, appear to run slowly.
As a test object approaches the event horizon, its gravitational time dilation (as
measured by an observer far from the hole) would approach infinity.

From the viewpoint of a distant observer, an object falling into a black hole appears to
slow down, approaching but never quite reaching the event horizon: and it appears to
become redder and dimmer, because of the extreme gravitational red shift caused by
the gravity of the black hole. Eventually, the falling object becomes so dim that it can
no longer be seen, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon. All of this is a
consequence of time dilation: the object's movement is one of the processes that
appear to run slower and slower, and the time dilation effect is more significant than
the acceleration due to gravity; the frequency of light from the object appears to
decrease, making it look redder, because the light appears to complete fewer cycles
per "tick" of the observer's clock; lower-frequency light has less energy and therefore
appears dimmer, as well as redder.
From the viewpoint of the falling object, distant objects generally appear blue-shifted
due the gravitational field of the black hole. This effect may be partly (or even
entirely) negated by the red shift caused by the velocity of the infalling object with
respect to the object in the distance.

As the object passes through the event horizon

From the viewpoint of the falling object, nothing particularly special happens at the
event horizon. In fact, the Earth could be passing through an event horizon at just this
moment without us ever noticing. An infalling object takes a finite proper time (i.e.
measured by its own clock) to fall past the event horizon. This in contrast with the
infinite amount of time it takes for a distant observer to see the infalling object cross
the horizon.

Inside the event horizon

The object reaches the singularity at the center within a finite amount of proper time,
as measured by the falling object. An observer on the falling object would continue to
see objects outside the event horizon, blue-shifted or red-shifted depending on the
falling object's trajectory. Objects closer to the singularity aren't seen, as all paths light
could take from objects farther in point inwards towards the singularity.
The amount of proper time a faller experiences below the event horizon depends upon
where they started from rest, with the maximum being for someone who starts from
rest at the event horizon. A paper in 2007 examined the effect of firing a rocket pack
with the black hole, showing that this can only reduce the proper time of a person who
starts from rest at the event horizon. However, for anyone else, a judicious burst of the
rocket can extend the lifetime of the faller, but overdoing it will again reduce the
proper time experienced. However, this cannot prevent the inevitable collision with
the central singularity.[14]

Hitting the singularity

As an infalling object approaches the singularity, tidal forces acting on it approach
infinity. All components of the object, including atoms and subatomic particles, are
torn away from each other before striking the singularity. At the singularity itself,
effects are unknown; a theory of quantum gravity is needed to accurately describe
events near it. Regardless, as soon as an object passes within the hole's event horizon,

it is lost to the outside universe. An observer far from the hole simply sees the hole's
mass, charge, and angular momentum change slightly, to reflect the addition of the
infalling object's matter. After the event horizon all is unknown. Anything that passes
this point cannot be retrieved to study.

Black hole parameters

Astrophysical black holes are characterized by two parameters: their mass and their
angular momentum (or spin). The mass parameter M is equivalent to a characteristic
length GM/c2=1.48 km(M/M0) , or a characteristic timescale GM/c=4.93 x 106
(M/M0) , where M0 denotes the mass of the Sun. These scales, for example, give the
order of magnitude of the radii and periods of near-hole orbits. The timescale also
applies to the process in which a developing horizon settles into its asymptotically
stationary form. For a stellar mass hole this is of order 10-5 sec , while for a
supermassive hole of 108 M0 , it is thousands of seconds.
For Schwarzschild holes, and approximately for Kerr holes, the horizon is at radius
RH=2GM/c. At the horizon the "acceleration of gravity" has no meaning, since a
falling observer cannot stop at the horizon to be weighed. What is relevant at the
horizon is the tidal stresses that stretch and distort the falling observer. This tidal
stretching is given by the same expression, the gradient of the gravitational
acceleration, as in Newtonian theory: 2GM/RH3=c6/(4G2M2) .
In the case of a solar mass black hole the tidal stress (acceleration per unit length) is
enormous at the horizon, on the order of : 3 x 109(M/M0)2 sec-2 : that is, a person
would experience a differential gravitational field of about 109 Earth gravities, enough
to rip apart ordinary materials. For a supermassive hole, by contrast, the tidal force at
the horizon is smaller by a typical factor 1010-16 and would be easily survivable.
However, at the central singularity, deep inside the event horizon, the tidal stress is
infinite. In addition to its mass M, the Kerr spacetime is described with a spin
parameter 'a' defined by the dimensionless expression a/M= cJ/GM2 where J is the
angular momentum of the hole. For the Sun (based on surface rotation) this number is
about 0.2, and is much larger for many stars. Since angular momentum is ubiquitous
in astrophysics, and since it is expected to be approximately conserved during
collapse and black hole formation, astrophysical holes are expected to have significant
values of a/M , from several tenths up to and approaching unity.
The value of a/M can be unity (an "extreme" Kerr hole), but it cannot be greater than
unity. In the mathematics of general relativity, exceeding this limit replaces the event
horizon with an inner boundary on the spacetime where tidal forces become infinite.
Because this singularity is "visible" to observers, rather than hidden behind a horizon,
as in a black hole, it is called a naked singularity. Toy models and heuristic arguments
suggest that as a/M approaches unity it becomes more and more difficult to add
angular momentum. The conjecture that such mechanisms will always keep a/M
below unity is called cosmic censorship.
The inclusion of angular momentum changes details of the description of the horizon,
so that, for example, the horizon area becomes Horizon area= 4G2/c4[{M+(Ma)1/2}+a]

This modification of the Schwarzschild (a=0) result is not significant until a/M
becomes very close to unity. For this reason, good estimates can be made in many
astrophysical scenarios with a ignored.

Formation and evaporation

Formation of stellar-mass black holes
Stellar-mass black holes are formed in two ways:

As a direct result of the gravitational collapse of a star.

By collisions between neutron stars.[15] Although neutron stars are fairly
common, collisions appear to be very rare. Neutron stars are also formed by
gravitational collapse, which is therefore ultimately responsible for all stellarmass black holes.

Stars undergo gravitational collapse when they can no longer resist the pressure of
their own gravity. This usually occurs either because a star has too little "fuel" left to
maintain its temperature, or because a star which would have been stable receives a
lot of extra matter in a way which does not raise its core temperature. In either case
the star's temperature is no longer high enough to prevent it from collapsing under its
own weight (the ideal gas law explains the connection between pressure, temperature,
and volume).
The collapse transforms the matter in the star's core into a denser state which forms
one of the types of compact star. Which type of compact star is formed depends on the
mass of the remnant - the matter left over after changes triggered by the collapse
(such as supernova or pulsations leading to a planetary nebula) have blown away the
outer layers. Note that this can be substantially less than the original star - remnants
exceeding 5 solar masses are produced by stars which were over 20 solar masses
before the collapse.
Only the largest remnants, those exceeding a particular limit (the TolmanOppenheimer-Volkoff limit, not to be confused with the Chandrasekhar limit),
generate enough pressure to produce black holes, because black holes are the most
radically transformed state of matter known to physics, and the force which resists
this level of compression, neutron degeneracy pressure, is extremely strong. But any
remnant larger than the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit will never be able to stop
collapsing, and when its outer radius falls below its Schwarzschild radius, the
transition to black hole is complete.
The collapse process for stars producing remnants this size releases energy which
usually produces a supernova, blowing the star's outer layers into space so that they
form a spectacular nebula (this sort of nebula is called a supernova remnant). But the
supernova is a side-effect and does not directly contribute to producing the black hole
(or other type of compact star). For example a few gamma ray bursts were expected to
be followed by evidence of supernovae but this evidence did not appear.[16][17] One
possible explanation is that some very large stars can form black holes fast enough to
swallow the supernova blast wave before it can reach the surface of the star.

Formation of larger black holes

There are two main ways in which black holes of larger than stellar mass can be
formed:

Stellar-mass black holes may act as "seeds" which grow by absorbing mass
from interstellar gas and dust, stars and planets or smaller black holes.
Star clusters of large total mass may be merged into single bodies by their
members' gravitational attraction. This will usually produce a supergiant or
hypergiant star which runs short of "fuel" in a few million years and then
undergoes gravitational collapse, produces a supernova or hypernova and
spends the rest of its existence as a black hole.

Formation of smaller black holes

No known process currently active in the universe can form black holes of less than
stellar mass. This is because all present known black hole formation is through
gravitational collapse, and the smallest mass which can collapse to form a black hole
produces a hole approximately 1.5-3.0 times the mass of the sun (the TolmanOppenheimer-Volkoff limit). Smaller masses collapse to form white dwarf stars or
neutron stars.
There are still a few ways in which smaller black holes might be formed, or might
have formed in the past.
Evaporation of larger black holes
Larger black holes evaporate. If the initial mass of the hole was stellar mass, the time
required for it to lose most of its mass via Hawking evaporation is much longer than
the age of the universe, so small black holes are not expected to have formed by this
method yet.
Big Bang
The Big Bang produced sufficient pressure to form smaller black holes without the
need for anything resembling a star. None of these hypothesized primordial black
holes have been detected.
Particle accelerators
In principle, a sufficiently energetic collision within a very powerful particle
accelerator could produce a micro black hole. In practice, this is expected to require
energies comparable to the Planck energy, which is vastly beyond the capability of
any present, planned, or expected future particle accelerator to produce. Some
speculative models allow the formation of black holes at much lower energies. This
would allow production of extremely short-lived black holes in terrestrial particle
accelerators. No evidence of this type of black hole production has been presented as
of 2007.

See Micro black hole escaping from a particle accelerator below.

Evaporation
Hawking radiation is a theoretical process by which black holes can evaporate into
nothing. As there is no experimental evidence to corroborate it and there are still some
major questions about the theoretical basis of the process, there is still debate about
whether Hawking radiation can enable black holes to evaporate.
Quantum mechanics says that even the purest vacuum is not completely empty but is
instead a "sea" of energy (known as zero-point energy) which has wave-like
Fluctuation (thermodynamics). We cannot observe this "sea" of energy directly
because there is no lower energy level with which we can compare it. The Heisenberg
uncertainty principle dictates that it is impossible to know the exact value of the massenergy and position pairings. The fluctuations in this sea produce pairs of particles in
which one is made of normal matter and the other is the corresponding antiparticle
(special relativity proves mass-energy equivalence, i.e. that mass can be converted
into energy and vice versa). Normally each would soon meet another instance of its
antiparticle and the two would be totally converted into energy, restoring the overall
matter-energy balance as it was before the pair of particles was created. The Hawking
radiation theory suggests that, if such a pair of particles is created just outside the
event horizon of a black hole, one of the two particles may fall into the black hole
while the other escapes, because the two particles move in slightly different directions
after their creation. From the point of view of an outside observer, the black hole has
just emitted a particle and therefore the black hole has lost a minute amount of its
mass.
If the Hawking radiation theory is correct, only the very smallest black holes are
likely to evaporate in this way. For example a black hole with the mass of our Moon
would gain as much energy (and therefore mass - mass-energy equivalence again)
from cosmic microwave background radiation as it emits by Hawking radiation, and
larger black holes will gain more energy (and mass) than they emit. To put this in
perspective, the smallest black hole which can be created naturally at present is about
5 times the mass of our sun, so most black holes have much greater mass than our
Moon.
Over time the cosmic microwave background radiation becomes weaker. Eventually it
will be weak enough so that more Hawking radiation will be emitted than the energy
of the background radiation being absorbed by the black hole. Through this process,
even the largest black holes will eventually evaporate. However, this process may take
nearly a googol years to complete.

Techniques for finding black holes

Accretion disks and gas jets

Formation of extragalactic jets from a black hole's accretion disk

Most accretion disks and gas jets are not clear proof that a stellar-mass black hole is
present, because other massive, ultra-dense objects such as neutron stars and white
dwarfs cause accretion disks and gas jets to form and to behave in the same ways as
those around black holes. But they can often help by telling astronomers where it
might be worth looking for a black hole.
On the other hand, extremely large accretion disks and gas jets may be good evidence
for the presence of supermassive black holes, because as far as we know any mass
large enough to power these phenomena must be a black hole.

Strong radiation emissions

A "Quasar" Black Hole.

Steady X-ray and gamma ray emissions also do not prove that a black hole is present,
but can tell astronomers where it might be worth looking for one - and they have the
advantage that they pass fairly easily through nebulae and gas clouds.
But strong, irregular emissions of X-rays, gamma rays and other electromagnetic
radiation can help to prove that a massive, ultra-dense object is not a black hole, so
that "black hole hunters" can move on to some other object. Neutron stars and other
very dense stars have surfaces, and matter colliding with the surface at a high
percentage of the speed of light will produce intense flares of radiation at irregular
intervals. Black holes have no material surface, so the absence of irregular flares
round a massive, ultra-dense object suggests that there is a good chance of finding a
black hole there.

Intense but one-time gamma ray bursts (GRBs) may signal the birth of "new" black
holes, because astrophysicists think that GRBs are caused either by the gravitational
collapse of giant stars[18] or by collisions between neutron stars,[15] and both types of
event involve sufficient mass and pressure to produce black holes. But it appears that
a collision between a neutron star and a black hole can also cause a GRB,[19] so a GRB
is not proof that a "new" black hole has been formed. All known GRBs come from
outside our own galaxy, and most come from billions of light years away[20] so the
black holes associated with them are actually billions of years old.
Some astrophysicists believe that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the
accretion disks of intermediate-mass black holes.[21]
Quasars are thought to be the accretion disks of supermassive black holes, since no
other known object is powerful enough to produce such strong emissions. Quasars
produce strong emission across the electromagnetic spectrum, including UV, X-rays
and gamma-rays and are visible at tremendous distances due to their high luminosity.
Between 5 and 25% of quasars are "radio loud," so called because of their powerful
radio emission.[22]

Gravitational lensing

Gravitational lensing distorts the image around a black hole in front of the Large
Magellanic Cloud (simulated view)
A gravitational lens is formed when the light from a very distant, bright source (such
as a quasar) is "bent" around a massive object (such as a black hole) between the
source object and the observer. The process is known as gravitational lensing, and is
one of the predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. According to
this theory, mass "warps" space-time to create gravitational fields and therefore bend
light as a result.
A source image behind the lens may appear as multiple images to the observer. In
cases where the source, massive lensing object, and the observer lie in a straight line,
the source will appear as a ring behind the massive object.

Gravitational lensing can be caused by objects other than black holes, because any
very strong gravitational field will bend light rays. Some of these multiple-image
effects are probably produced by distant galaxies.

Objects orbiting possible black holes

See also: Kepler problem in general relativity
Some large celestial objects are almost certainly orbiting around black holes, and the
principles behind this conclusion are surprisingly simple if we consider a circular
orbit first (although all known closed astronomical orbits are elliptical):

The radius of the central object round which the observed object is orbiting
must be less than the radius of the orbit, otherwise the two objects would
collide.
The orbital period and the radius of the orbit make it easy to calculate the
centrifugal force created by the orbiting object. Strictly speaking, the
centrifugal force also depends on the orbiting object's mass, but the next two
steps show why we can get away with pretending this is a fixed number: e.g.,
1.
The gravitational attraction between the central object and the orbiting object
must be exactly equal to the centrifugal force, otherwise the orbiting body
would either spiral into the central object or drift away.
The required gravitational attraction depends on the mass of the central object,
the mass of the orbiting object, and the radius of the orbit. But we can simplify
the calculation of both the centrifugal force and the gravitational attraction by
pretending that the mass of the orbiting object is the same fixed number: e.g.,
1. This makes it very easy to calculate the mass of the central object.
If the Schwarzschild radius for a body with the mass of the central object is
greater than the maximum radius of the central object, the central object must
be a black hole whose event horizon's radius is equal to the Schwarzschild
radius.

Unfortunately, since the time of Johannes Kepler, astronomers have had to deal with
the complications of real astronomy:

Astronomical orbits are elliptical. This complicates the calculation of the

centrifugal force, the gravitational attraction, and the maximum radius of the
central body. But Kepler could handle this without needing a computer.
The orbital periods in this type of situation are several years, so several years'
worth of observations are needed to determine the actual orbit accurately. The
"possibly a black hole" indicators (accretion disks, gas jets, radiation
emissions, etc.) help "black hole hunters" to decide which orbits are worth
observing for such long periods.
If there are other large bodies within a few light years, their gravity fields will
perturb the orbit. Adjusting the calculations to filter out the effects of
perturbation can be difficult, but astronomers are used to doing it.

Determining the mass of Black Holes

Quasi-periodic oscillations can be used to determine the mass of Black Holes.[23] The
technique uses a relationship between black holes and the inner part of their
surrounding disks, where gas spirals inward before reaching the event horizon. As the
gas collapses inwards, it radiates X-rays with an intensity that varies in a pattern that
repeats itself over a nearly regular interval. This signal is the Quasi-Periodic
Oscillation, or QPO. A QPOs frequency depends on the black holes mass; the event
horizon lies close in for small black holes, so the QPO has a higher frequency. For
black holes with a larger mass, the event horizon is farther out, so the QPO frequency
is lower.

Black hole candidates

Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies

The jet originating from the center of M87 in this image comes from an active
galactic nucleus that may contain a supermassive black hole. Credit: Hubble Space
Telescope/NASA/ESA.
According to the American Astronomical Society, every large galaxy has a
supermassive black hole at its center. The black holes mass is proportional to the
mass of the host galaxy, suggesting that the two are linked very closely. The Hubble
and ground-based telescopes in Hawaii were used in a large survey of galaxies.
For decades, astronomers have used the term "active galaxy" to describe galaxies with
unusual characteristics, such as unusual spectral line emission and very strong radio
emission.[24][25] However, theoretical and observational studies have shown that the
active galactic nuclei (AGN) in these galaxies may contain supermassive black holes.
[24][25]
The models of these AGN consist of a central black hole that may be millions or
billions of times more massive than the Sun; a disk of gas and dust called an accretion
disk; and two jets that are perpendicular to the accretion disk.[25]
Although supermassive black holes are expected to be found in most AGN, only some
galaxies' nuclei have been more carefully studied in attempts to both identify and
measure the actual masses of the central supermassive black hole candidates. Some of
the most notable galaxies with supermassive black hole candidates include the
Andromeda Galaxy, M32, M87, NGC 3115, NGC 3377, NGC 4258, and the
Sombrero Galaxy.[26]

Astronomers are confident that our own Milky Way galaxy has a supermassive black
hole at its center, in a region called Sagittarius A*:

A star called S2 (star) follows an elliptical orbit with a period of 15.2 years
and a pericenter (closest) distance of 17 light hours from the central object.
The first estimates indicated that the central object contains 2.6M (2.6 million)
solar masses and has a radius of less than 17 light hours. Only a black hole can
contain such a vast mass in such a small volume.
Further observations[27] strengthened the case for a black hole, by showing that
the central object's mass is about 3.7M solar masses and its radius no more
than 6.25 light-hours.

Intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters

In 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope produced observations indicating that globular
clusters named M15 and G1 may contain intermediate-mass black holes.[28][29] This
interpretation is based on the sizes and periods of the orbits of the stars in the globular
clusters. But the Hubble evidence is not conclusive, since a group of neutron stars
could cause similar observations. Until recent discoveries, many astronomers thought
that the complex gravitational interactions in globular clusters would eject newlyformed black holes.
In November 2004 a team of astronomers reported the discovery of the first wellconfirmed intermediate-mass black hole in our Galaxy, orbiting three light-years from
Sagittarius A*. This black hole of 1,300 solar masses is within a cluster of seven stars,
possibly the remnant of a massive star cluster that has been stripped down by the
Galactic Centre.[30][31] This observation may add support to the idea that supermassive
black holes grow by absorbing nearby smaller black holes and stars.
In January 2007, researchers at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom
reported finding a black hole, possibly of about 400 solar masses, in a globular cluster
associated with a galaxy named NGC 4472, some 55 million light-years away.[32]

Stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way

Artist's impression of a binary system consisting of a black hole and a main sequence
star. The black hole is drawing matter from the main sequence star via an accretion
disk around it, and some of this matter forms a gas jet.
Our Milky Way galaxy contains several probable stellar-mass black holes which are
closer to us than the supermassive black hole in the Sagittarius A* region. These
candidates are all members of X-ray binary systems in which the denser object draws
matter from its partner via an accretion disk. The probable black holes in these pairs
range from three to more than a dozen solar masses.[33][34] The most distant stellarmass black hole ever observed is a member of a binary system located in the Messier
33 galaxy.[35]

Micro black holes

In theory there is no smallest size for a black hole. Once created, it has the properties
of a black hole. Stephen Hawking theorized that primordial black holes could
evaporate and become even tinier, i.e. micro black holes. Searches for evaporating
primordial black holes are proposed for the GLAST satellite to be launched in 2008.
However, if micro black holes can be created by other means, such as by cosmic ray
impacts or in colliders, that does not imply that they must evaporate.
The formation of black hole analogs on Earth in particle accelerators has been
reported.[36] These black hole analogs are not the same as gravitational black holes, but
they are vital testing grounds for quantum theories of gravity.
They act like black holes because of the correspondence between the theory of the
strong nuclear force, which has nothing to do with gravity, and the quantum theory of
gravity. They are similar because both are described by string theory. So the formation
and disintegration of a fireball in quark gluon plasma can be interpreted in black hole
language. The fireball at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider [RHIC] is a phenomenon
which is closely analogous to a black hole, and many of its physical properties can be
correctly predicted using this analogy. The fireball, however, is not a gravitational
object. It is presently unknown whether the much more energetic Large Hadron
Collider [LHC] would be capable of producing the speculative large extra dimension
micro black hole, as many theorists have suggested.

History of the black hole concept

The Newtonian conceptions of Michell and Laplace are often referred to as "dark
stars" to distinguish them from the "black holes" of general relativity.

Newtonian theories (before Einstein)

The concept of a body so massive that even light could not escape was put forward by
the geologist John Michell in a letter written to Henry Cavendish in 1783 and
published by the Royal Society.[37]

If the semi-diameter of a sphere of the same density as the Sun were to

exceed that of the Sun in the proportion of 500 to 1, a body falling from an
infinite height towards it would have acquired at its surface greater
velocity than that of light, and consequently supposing light to be
attracted by the same force in proportion to its vis inertiae, with other
bodies, all light emitted from such a body would be made to return
towards it by its own proper gravity.

This assumes that light is influenced by gravity in the same way as massive objects.

In 1796, the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace promoted the same idea in the first
and second editions of his book Exposition du systme du Monde (it was removed
from later editions).
The idea of black holes was largely ignored in the nineteenth century, since light was
then thought to be a massless wave and therefore not influenced by gravity. Unlike a
modern black hole, the object behind the horizon is assumed to be stable against
collapse.

Theories based on Einstein's general relativity

In 1915, Albert Einstein developed the theory of gravity called general relativity,
having earlier shown that gravity does influence light (although light has zero rest
mass, it is not the rest mass that is the source of gravity but the energy). A few months
later, Karl Schwarzschild gave the solution for the gravitational field of a point mass
and a spherical mass,[38][39] showing that a black hole could theoretically exist. The
Schwarzschild radius is now known to be the radius of the event horizon of a nonrotating black hole, but this was not well understood at that time, for example
Schwarzschild himself thought it was not physical. Johannes Droste, a student of
Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass a few months after
Schwarzschild and wrote more extensively about its properties.
In 1930, the astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar argued that, according to
special relativity, a non-rotating body above 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar
limit), would collapse since there was nothing known at that time could stop it from
doing so. His arguments were opposed by Arthur Eddington, who believed that
something would inevitably stop the collapse. Eddington was partly right: a white
dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron
star. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer published papers (with various co-authors)
which predicted that stars above about three solar masses (the Tolman-OppenheimerVolkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by
Chandrasekhar.[40]
Oppenheimer and his co-authors used Schwarzschild's system of coordinates (the only
coordinates available in 1939), which produced mathematical singularities at the
Schwarzschild radius, in other words the equations broke down at the Schwarzschild
radius because some of the terms were infinite. This was interpreted as indicating that
the Schwarzschild radius was the boundary of a "bubble" in which time "stopped".
For a few years the collapsed stars were known as "frozen stars" because the
calculations indicated that an outside observer would see the surface of the star frozen
in time at the instant where its collapse takes it inside the Schwarzschild radius. But
many physicists could not accept the idea of time standing still inside the
Schwarzschild radius, and there was little interest in the subject for over 20 years.
In 1958 David Finkelstein broke the deadlock over "stopped time" and introduced the
concept of the event horizon by presenting the Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates,
which enabled him to show that "The Schwarzschild surface r = 2 m is not a
singularity but acts as a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross
it but only in one direction".[41] Note that at this stage all theories, including
Finkelstein's, covered only non-rotating, uncharged black holes.

In 1963 Roy Kerr extended Finkelstein's analysis by presenting the Kerr metric
(coordinates) and showing how this made it possible to predict the properties of
rotating black holes.[42] In addition to its theoretical interest, Kerr's work made black
holes more believable for astronomers, since black holes are formed from stars and all
known stars rotate.
In 1967 astronomers discovered pulsars, and within a few years could show that the
known pulsars were rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars were
also regarded as just theoretical curiosities. So the discovery of pulsars awakened
interest in all types of ultra-dense objects that might be formed by gravitational
collapse.
In December 1967 the theoretical physicist John Wheeler coined the expression
"black hole" in his public lecture Our Universe: the Known and Unknown, and this
mysterious, slightly menacing phrase attracted more attention than the static-sounding
"frozen star". The phrase was probably coined with the awareness of the Black Hole
of Calcutta incident of 1756 in which 146 Europeans were locked up overnight in
punishment cell of barracks at Fort William by Siraj ud-Daulah, and all but 23
perished.[43]
In 1970, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose proved that black holes are a feature of
all solutions to Einstein's equations of gravity, not just of Schwarzschild's, and
therefore black holes cannot be avoided in some collapsing objects.[44]

Black holes and Earth

Black holes are sometimes listed[attribution needed] among the most serious potential threats
to Earth and humanity,[45][46] on the grounds that:

A naturally-produced black hole could pass through our Solar System.

Although it is purely hypothetical, a large particle accelerator might produce a
micro black hole, and if this escaped it could gradually eat the whole of the
Earth. The black hole in this scenario may be replaced by a strangelet, another
type of object which can absorb other particles despite the Earth's gravity and
eventually accumulate enough mass to become an averaged sized black hole.

Black hole wandering through our Solar System

Stellar-mass black holes travel through the Milky Way just like stars. Consequently,
they may collide with the Solar System or another planetary system in the galaxy,
although the probability of this happening is very small. Significant gravitational
interactions between the Sun and any other star in the Milky Way (including a black
hole) are expected to occur approximately once every 1019 years.[47] For comparison,
the Sun has an age of only 5 109 years, and is expected to become a red giant about
5 109 years from now, incinerating the surface of the Earth.[25] Hence it is extremely
unlikely that a black hole will pass through the Solar System before the Sun
exterminates life on Earth.

Micro black hole escaping from a particle accelerator

There is a theoretical possibility that a micro black hole might be created inside a
particle accelerator.[48] Formation of black holes under these conditions (below the
Planck energy) requires non-standard assumptions, such as large extra dimensions.
However, many particle collisions that naturally occur as the cosmic rays hit the edge
of our atmosphere are often far more energetic than any collisions created by man. If
micro black holes can be created by current or next-generation particle accelerators,
they have probably been created by cosmic rays every day throughout most of Earth's
history, i.e. for billions of years, evidently without earth-destroying effects. However,
such natural micro black holes would be relativistic relative to earth, and should zip
safely through our planet in 1/4 second or less at 99.99+% c. Collider produced micro
black holes would be relatively "at rest" where they could become gravitationally
bound, affording repeated opportunity to interact and grow larger, travelling at a tiny
fraction of c, if Hawking Radiation is not real. This distinction between nature-made
and man-made micro black holes has not yet been addressed in any of the safety
studies on potential collider production of micro black holes.
If two protons at the Large Hadron Collider could merge to create a micro black hole,
this black hole would be unstable, and would evaporate due to Hawking radiation
before it had a chance to propagate. For a 14 TeV black hole (the center-of-mass
energy at the Large Hadron Collider), the Hawking radiation formula indicates that it
would evaporate in 10-100 seconds.
CERN conducted a study assessing the risk of producing dangerous objects such as
black holes at the Large Hadron Collider, and concluded that there is "no basis for any
conceivable threat."[49] However, due to renewed concerns about both potential
negative strangelet production, and LHC micro black holes that are "at rest" compared
to natural micro black holes that are relativistic, CERN commissioned another study
in 2007, with the results to be published in early 2008. Essentially, the concern is that
due to their tiny size, a relativistic micro black hole would barely interact while
traversing earth, being very similar to a neutrino in having a low cross-section for
interaction, and therefore harmless. Conversely, the relatively slow speed of colliderproduced micro black holes and their gravitational binding to earth would allow for
repeated opportunity to interact with matter, eventually allowing such micro black
hole to grow larger. These speculative scenarios also require that theoretical Hawking
Radiation is not real.

Alternative models
Main article: Nonsingular black hole models
Several alternative models, which behave like a black hole but avoid the singularity,
have been proposed. However, most researchers judge these concepts artificial, as
they are more complicated but do not give near term observable differences from
black holes (see Occam's razor). The most prominent alternative theory is the
Gravastar.
In March 2005, physicist George Chapline at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory in California proposed that black holes do not exist, and that objects

currently thought to be black holes are actually dark-energy stars. He draws this
conclusion from some quantum mechanical analyses. Although his proposal currently
has little support in the physics community, it was widely reported by the media.[50][51]
A similar theory about the non-existence of black holes was later developed by a
group of physicists at Case Western Reserve University in June 2007.[52]
Among the alternate models are magnetospheric eternally collapsing objects, clusters
of elementary particles[53] (e.g., boson stars[54]), fermion balls,[55] self-gravitating,
degenerate heavy neutrinos[56] and even clusters of very low mass (~0.04 solar mass)
black holes.[53]

More advanced topics

Entropy and Hawking radiation
In 1971, Stephen Hawking showed that the total area of the event horizons of any
collection of classical black holes can never decrease, even if they collide and
swallow each other; that is merge.[57] This is remarkably similar to the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, with area playing the role of entropy. As a classical object with
zero temperature it was assumed that black holes had zero entropy; if so the second
law of thermodynamics would be violated by an entropy-laden material entering the
black hole, resulting in a decrease of the total entropy of the universe. Therefore,
Jacob Bekenstein proposed that a black hole should have an entropy, and that it
should be proportional to its horizon area. Since black holes do not classically emit
radiation, the thermodynamic viewpoint seemed simply an analogy, since zero
temperature implies infinite changes in entropy with any addition of heat, which
implies infinite entropy. However, in 1974, Hawking applied quantum field theory to
the curved spacetime around the event horizon and discovered that black holes emit
Hawking radiation, a form of thermal radiation, allied to the Unruh effect, which
implied they had a positive temperature. This strengthened the analogy being drawn
between black hole dynamics and thermodynamics: using the first law of black hole
mechanics, it follows that the entropy of a non-rotating black hole is one quarter of
the area of the horizon. This is a universal result and can be extended to apply to
cosmological horizons such as in de Sitter space. It was later suggested that black
holes are maximum-entropy objects, meaning that the maximum possible entropy of a
region of space is the entropy of the largest black hole that can fit into it. This led to
the holographic principle.
The Hawking radiation reflects a characteristic temperature of the black hole, which
can be calculated from its entropy. The more its temperature falls, the more massive a
black hole becomes: the more energy a black hole absorbs, the colder it gets. A black
hole with roughly the mass of the planet Mercury would have a temperature in
equilibrium with the cosmic microwave background radiation (about 2.73 K). More
massive than this, a black hole will be colder than the background radiation, and it
will gain energy from the background faster than it gives energy up through Hawking
radiation, becoming even colder still. However, for a less massive black hole the
effect implies that the mass of the black hole will slowly evaporate with time, with the
black hole becoming hotter and hotter as it does so. Although these effects are
negligible for black holes massive enough to have been formed astronomically, they

would rapidly become significant for hypothetical smaller black holes, where
quantum-mechanical effects dominate. Indeed, small black holes are predicted to
undergo runaway evaporation and eventually vanish in a burst of radiation.

If ultra-high-energy collisions of particles in a particle accelerator can create

microscopic black holes, it is expected that all types of particles will be emitted by
black hole evaporation, providing key evidence for any grand unified theory. Above
are the high energy particles produced in a gold ion collision on the RHIC.
Although general relativity can be used to perform a semi-classical calculation of
black hole entropy, this situation is theoretically unsatisfying. In statistical mechanics,
entropy is understood as counting the number of microscopic configurations of a
system which have the same macroscopic qualities(such as mass, charge, pressure,
etc.). But without a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, one cannot perform such a
computation for black holes. Some promise has been shown by string theory,
however. There one posits that the microscopic degrees of freedom of the black hole
are D-branes. By counting the states of D-branes with given charges and energy, the
entropy for certain supersymmetric black holes has been reproduced. Extending the
region of validity of these calculations is an ongoing area of research.

Black hole unitarity

An open question in fundamental physics is the so-called information loss paradox, or
black hole unitarity paradox. Classically, the laws of physics are the same run forward
or in reverse. That is, if the position and velocity of every particle in the universe were
measured, we could (disregarding chaos) work backwards to discover the history of
the universe arbitrarily far in the past. In quantum mechanics, this corresponds to a
vital property called unitarity which has to do with the conservation of probability.[58]
Black holes, however, might violate this rule. The position under classical general
relativity is subtle but straightforward: because of the classical no hair theorem, we
can never determine what went into the black hole. However, as seen from the

outside, information is never actually destroyed, as matter falling into the black hole
takes an infinite time to reach the event horizon.
Ideas about quantum gravity, on the other hand, suggest that there can only be a
limited finite entropy (i.e. a maximum finite amount of information) associated with
the space near the horizon; but the change in the entropy of the horizon plus the
entropy of the Hawking radiation is always sufficient to take up all of the entropy of
matter and energy falling into the black hole.
Many physicists are concerned however that this is still not sufficiently well
understood. In particular, at a quantum level, is the quantum state of the Hawking
radiation uniquely determined by the history of what has fallen into the black hole;
and is the history of what has fallen into the black hole uniquely determined by the
quantum state of the black hole and the radiation? This is what determinism, and
unitarity, would require.
For a long time Stephen Hawking had opposed such ideas, holding to his original
1975 position that the Hawking radiation is entirely thermal and therefore entirely
random, containing none of the information held in material the hole has swallowed in
the past; this information he reasoned had been lost. However, on 21 July 2004 he
presented a new argument, reversing his previous position.[59] On this new calculation,
the entropy (and hence information) associated with the black hole escapes in the
Hawking radiation itself, although making sense of it, even in principle, is still
difficult until the black hole completes its evaporation; until then it is impossible to
relate in a 1:1 way the information in the Hawking radiation (embodied in its detailed
internal correlations) to the initial state of the system. Once the black hole evaporates
completely, then such an identification can be made, and unitarity is preserved.
By the time Hawking completed his calculation, it was already very clear from the
AdS/CFT correspondence that black holes decay in a unitary way. This is because the
fireballs in gauge theories, which are analogous to Hawking radiation are
unquestionably unitary. Hawking's new calculation have not really been evaluated by
the specialist scientific community, because the methods he uses are unfamiliar and of
dubious consistency; but Hawking himself found it sufficiently convincing to pay out
on a bet he had made in 1997 with Caltech physicist John Preskill, to considerable
media interest.

Mathematical theory of non-rotating, uncharged

black holes
Further information: Schwarzschild metric and Deriving the Schwarzschild
solution
In general relativity, there are many known solutions of the Einstein field equations
which describes different types of black holes. The Schwarzschild metric is one of the
earliest and simplest solutions. This solution describes the curvature of spacetime in
the vicinity of a static and spherically symmetric uncharged object, where the metric
is,

,
where

is a standard element of solid angle.

According to general relativity, a gravitating object will collapse into a black hole if
its radius is smaller than a characteristic distance, known as the Schwarzschild radius.
(Indeed, Buchdahl's theorem in general relativity shows that in the case of a perfect
fluid model of a compact object, the true lower limit is somewhat larger than the
Schwarzschild radius.) Below this radius, spacetime is so strongly curved that any
light ray emitted in this region, regardless of the direction in which it is emitted, will
travel towards the centre of the system. Because relativity forbids anything from
traveling faster than light, anything below the Schwarzschild radius including the
constituent particles of the gravitating object will collapse into the centre. A
gravitational singularity, a region of theoretically infinite density, forms at this point.
Because not even light can escape from within the Schwarzschild radius, a classical
black hole would truly appear black.
The Schwarzschild radius is given by

where G is the gravitational constant, m is the mass of the object, and c is the speed of
light. For an object with the mass of the Earth, the Schwarzschild radius is a mere 9
millimeters about the size of a marble.
The mean density inside the Schwarzschild radius decreases as the mass of the black
hole increases, so while an earth-mass black hole would have a density of
2 1030 kg/m, a supermassive black hole of 109 solar masses has a density of around
20 kg/m, less than water! The mean density is given by

Since the Earth has a mean radius of 6371 km, its volume would have to be reduced 4
1026 times to collapse into a black hole. For an object with the mass of the Sun, the
Schwarzschild radius is approximately 3 km, much smaller than the Sun's current
radius of about 696,000 km. It is also significantly smaller than the radius to which
the Sun will ultimately shrink after exhausting its nuclear fuel, which is several
thousand kilometers. More massive stars can collapse into black holes at the end of
their lifetimes.
The formula also implies that any object with a given mean density is a black hole if
its radius is large enough. The same formula applies for white holes as well. For
example, if the observable universe has a mean density equal to the critical density,
then it is a white hole, since its singularity is in the past and not in the future as should
be for a black hole.

There is also the Black Hole Entropy formula:

Where A is the area of the event horizon of the black hole, is Dirac's constant (the
"reduced Planck constant"), k is the Boltzmann constant, G is the gravitational
constant, c is the speed of light and S is the entropy.
A convenient length scale to measure black hole processes is the "gravitational
radius", which is equal to

When expressed in terms of this length scale, many phenomena appear at integer
radii. For example, the radius of a Schwarzschild black hole is two gravitational radii
and the radius of a maximally rotating Kerr black hole is one gravitational radius. The
location of the light circularization radius around a Schwarzschild black hole (where
light may orbit the hole in an unstable circular orbit) is 3rG. The location of the
marginally stable orbit, thought to be close to the inner edge of an accretion disk, is at
6rG for a Schwarzschild black hole.

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Further reading
Popular reading

Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Black Holes in Space-Time. Watts Franklin. ISBN 0531-12524-6.
Hawking, Stephen (1998). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, Inc. ISBN
0-553-38016-8.
Melia, Fulvio (2003). The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy. Princeton
U Press. ISBN 978-0-691-09505-9.
Melia, Fulvio (2003). The Edge of Infinity. Supermassive Black Holes in the
Universe. Cambridge U Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81405-8.
Pickover, Clifford (1998). Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide. Wiley, John &
Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-19704-1.
Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. Norton, W. W. &
Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-31276-3.

University textbooks and monographs

Carter, B. (1973). Black hole equilibrium states, in Black Holes, eds. DeWitt
B. S. and DeWitt C.
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1999). Mathematical Theory of Black Holes.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850370-9.
Frolov, V. P. and Novikov, I. D. (1998), Black hole physics.

Hawking, S. W. and Ellis, G. F. R. (1973), The large-scale structure of spacetime, Cambridge University Press.
Melia, Fulvio (2007). The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole. Princeton U
Press. ISBN 978-0-691-13129-0.
Taylor, Edwin F.; Wheeler, John Archibald (2000). Exploring Black Holes.
Addison Wesley Longman. ISBN 0-201-38423-X.
Thorne, Kip S.; Misner, Charles; Wheeler, John (1973). Gravitation. W. H.
Freeman and Company. ISBN 0-7167-0344-0.
Wald, Robert M. (1992). Space, Time, and Gravity: The Theory of the Big
Bang and Black Holes. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-87029-4.

Research papers

Hawking, S. W. (July 2005), Information Loss in Black Holes, arxiv:hepth/0507171. Stephen Hawking's purported solution to the black hole unitarity
paradox, first reported at a conference in July 2004.
Ghez, A.M. et al. Stellar orbits around the Galactic Center black hole,
Astrophysics J. 620 (2005). arXiv:astro-ph/0306130 More accurate mass and
position for the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
Hughes, S. A. Trust but verify: the case for astrophysical black holes,
arXiv:hep-ph/0511217. Lecture notes from 2005 SLAC Summer Institute.

External links

Yale University Video Lecture: Introduction to Black Holes at Google Video

Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull - Award-winning interactive multimedia
Web site about the physics and astronomy of black holes from the Space
Telescope Science Institute
FAQ on black holes
Schwarzschild Geometry on Andrew Hamiltons website
Tufts University: Student Project (Great Kid's Section)
Movie of Black Hole Candidate from Max Planck Institute
UT Brownsville Group Simulates Spinning Black-Hole Binaries
Black Hole Research News on ScienceDaily
Scientific American Magazine (July 2003 Issue) The Galactic Odd Couple giant black holes and stellar baby booms
Scientific American Magazine (May 2005 Issue) Quantum Black Holes
SPACE.com All About Black Holes - News, Features and Interesting Original
Videos
Black Holes Intro - Introduction to Black Holes
Advanced Mathematics of Black Hole Evaporation
HowStuffWorks: How Black Holes Work - Easy to consume guide to Black
Holes
Ted Bunn's Black Holes FAQ explains in simple language some other
consequences of the way in which black holes bend space-time.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole"

Categories: Black holes | Dark matter | Relativity
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