Stephen William Hawking

Born January 8, 1942 (age 66)

Oxford, England
Residence United Kingdom
Nationality British
Field Applied Mathematics and
Theoretical Physics
Institutions University of Cambridge
Alma mater University of Oxford
University of Cambridge
Academic advisor Dennis Sciama
Notable students Bruce Allen
Fay Dowker
Malcolm Perry
Bernard Carr
Gary Gibbons
Known for Black holes
Theoretical cosmology
Quantum gravity
Notable awards Prince of Asturias
Award (1989)
Copley Medal (2006)

Signature

BLACK HOLE

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, black holes, as presently understood, are described by Einstein's theory of general
relativity, 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, forcing all matter and radiation to fall inward.

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.[5][6][7] However, the final, correct description of black holes, requiring a theory of
quantum gravity, is unknown.

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]

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. Black holes of this type have been proposed to have formed during the Big Bang (primordial
black holes), but no such holes have been detected as of 2008. NASA's GLAST satellite, to be
launched in 2008, will search for such primordial black holes as one of its tasks.

Astrophysicists expect to find stellar-mass and larger black holes, because a stellar mass black hole is
formed by the gravitational collapse of a star of 20 or more solar masses at the end of its life, and can
then act as a seed for the formation of a much larger black hole.

Micro black holes might be produced by:

The Big Bang, which produced pressures far larger than that of a supernova and therefore sufficient to
produce primordial black holes without needing the powerful gravity fields of collapsing large stars.
High-energy particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), if certain non-standard
assumptions are correct (typically, an assumption of large extra dimensions). However, any black holes
produced in such a manner will evaporate practically instantaneously if Hawking Radiation works as
predicted, thus posing no danger to Earth.

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 possible
to define an escape velocity which allows a test object to leave the gravitational field of any large
object. For objects as dense as black holes, this stops being the case. The effort required to leave the
hole becomes infinite, with no escape velocity definable.

There are several ways of describing the situation that causes escape to be impossible. The difference
between these descriptions is how space and time coordinates are drawn on spacetime (the choice of
coordinates depends on the choice of observation point and on additional definitions used). One
common description, based on the Schwarzschild description of black holes, is to consider the time
axis in spacetime to point inwards towards the center of the black hole once the horizon is crossed.[8]
Under these conditions, falling further into the hole is as inevitable as moving forward in time. A
related description is to consider the future light cone of a test object near the hole (all possible paths
the object or anything emitted by it could take, limited by the speed of light). As the object approaches
the event horizon at the boundary of the black hole, the future light cone tilts inwards towards the
horizon. When the test object passes the horizon, the cone tilts completely inward, and all possible
paths lead into the hole.[9]

DO BLACK HOLES HAVE "NO HAIR"?

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. 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 information about infalling matter or energy is
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 Rotating
Uncharged Schwarzschild Kerr
Charged Reissner-Nordström 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
Reissner-Nordström 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 hole—it 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 size—so 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 holes—the 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,
space-time 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 light—general 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 thickness—but 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
same—the 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 may appear either blue-shifted or red-shifted,
depending on the falling object's trajectory. Light is blue-shifted by the gravity of the black hole, but is
red-shifted by the velocity of the infalling object.

As the object passes through the event horizon

From the viewpoint of the falling object, nothing particularly special happens at the event horizon. An
infalling object takes a finite proper time (i.e. measured by its own clock) to fall past the event
horizon.

An outside observer, however, will never see an infalling object cross this surface. The object appears
to halt just above the horizon, due to gravitational redshift, fading from view as its light is red-shifted
and the rate at which it emits photons drops to approach zero. This doesn't mean that the object never
crosses the horizon; instead, it means that light from the horizon-crossing event is delayed by a time
that approaches infinity as the object approaches the horizon. The time of crossing depends on how the
outside observer chooses to define space and time axes on spacetime near 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
study 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=1.48km(M/M0) , or a characteristic timescale GM/c³=4.93 x 10 -6(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 R H=2GM/c². 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 10 10-16 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/GM 2 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= 4πG2/c4[{M+(M²-a²)1/2}²+a²]

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 stellar-mass 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 Tolman-Oppenheimer-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 this size 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 Tolman-Oppenheimer-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

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 mass-energy 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,[19] 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,[20] 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[21] 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.[22]

Quasars are thought to be caused by the accretion disks of supermassive black holes, since we know of
nothing else which is powerful enough to produce such strong emissions. While X-rays and gamma
rays have much higher frequencies and shorter wavelengths than visible light, quasars radiate mainly
radio waves, which have lower frequencies and longer wavelengths than visible light.

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.
BLACK HOLE CANDIDATES

Although black holes cannot be detected directly, many observational studies have provided
substantial evidence for black holes. Black holes may be divided into three classes of objects:
Stellar mass black holes have masses that are equivalent to the masses of individual stars (4–15 times
the mass of our Sun).
Intermediate-mass black hole have masses that are a few hundred to a few thousand times the mass of
the Sun.
Supermassive black holes have masses ranging from on the order of 105 to 1010 times the mass of the
Sun.[23]

Further details are given below.

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 hole’s 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.[23]
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[26] 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. [27][28] 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
newly-formed black holes.

In November 2004 a team of astronomers reported the discovery of the first well-confirmed
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.[29][30] 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.[31]

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.[32][33] The
most distant stellar-mass black hole ever observed is a member of a binary system located in the
Messier 33 galaxy.[34]

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,[35]. 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.[36]“
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 système 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,[37][38] showing that a black hole could
theoretically exist. The Schwarzschild radius is now known to be the radius of the event horizon of a
non-rotating 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-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit) would collapse into
black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar.[39]

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 = 2m is not a singularity but acts as a perfect unidirectional membrane:
causal influences can cross it but only in one direction".[40] 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.[41] 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.
[42]

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.[43]

BLACK HOLES AND EARTH

Black holes are sometimes listed[attribution needed] among the most serious potential threats to Earth
and humanity,[44][45] 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.
[46] 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.
[47] 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."[48]
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 collider-produced 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.[49][50] 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.[51]

Among the alternate models are magnetospheric eternally collapsing objects, clusters of elementary
particles[52] (e.g., boson stars[53]), fermion balls,[54] self-gravitating, degenerate heavy neutrinos[55]
and even clusters of very low mass (~0.04 solar mass) black holes.[52]
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[56]. 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.[57]

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.[58] 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/m³, a supermassive black hole of
109 solar masses has a density of around 20 kg/m³, 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 × 10 26 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.