Questions tagged [black-holes]
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing can escape. More formally, the future light cone of any observer within the black hole is completely contained in the black hole, and the black hole region is not within the past light cone of any observer that goes to spatial infinity in an infinite amount of time.
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If a mass moves close to the speed of light, does it turn into a black hole?
I'm a big fan of the podcast Astronomy Cast and a while back I was listening to a Q&A episode they did. A listener sent in a question that I found fascinating and have been wondering about ever ...
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How can anything ever fall into a black hole as seen from an outside observer?
The event horizon of a black hole is where gravity is such that not even light can escape. This is also the point I understand that according to Einstein time dilation will be infinite for a far-away-...
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How does gravity escape a black hole?
My understanding is that light can not escape from within a black hole (within the event horizon). I've also heard that information cannot propagate faster than the speed of light. I assume that the ...
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An explanation of Hawking Radiation
Could someone please provide an explanation for the origin of Hawking Radiation? (Ideally someone who I have been speaking with on the h-bar)
Any advanced maths beyond basic calculus will most ...
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Can black holes form in a finite amount of time?
One thing I know about black holes is that an object gets closer to the event horizon, gravitation time dilation make it move more slower from an outside perspective, so that it looks like it take an ...
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Black holes and positive/negative-energy particles
I was reading Brian Greene's "Hidden Reality" and came to the part about Hawking Radiation. Quantum jitters that occur near the event horizon of a black hole, which create both positive-energy ...
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What is the mass density distribution of an electron?
I am wondering if the mass density profile $\rho(\vec{r})$ has been characterized for atomic particles such as quarks and electrons. I am currently taking an intro class in quantum mechanics, and I ...
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Does someone falling into a black hole see the end of the universe?
This question was prompted by Can matter really fall through an event horizon?. Notoriously, if you calculate the Schwarzschild coordinate time for anything, matter or light, to reach the event ...
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Why is a black hole black?
In general relativity (ignoring Hawking radiation), why is a black hole black? Why nothing, not even light, can escape from inside a black hole? To make the question simpler, say, why is a ...
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Deriving Birkhoff's Theorem
I am trying to derive Birkhoff's theorem in GR as an exercise: a spherically symmetric gravitational field is static in the vacuum area. I managed to prove that $g_{00}$ is independent of $t$ in the ...
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Does any particle ever reach any singularity inside the black hole?
I am not a professional physicist, so I may say something rubbish in here, but this question has always popped in my mind every time I read or hear anyone speak of particles hitting singularities and "...
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Is a black hole singularity a single point?
General relativity is expressed in terms of differential geometry, which allows you to do interesting things with the coordinates: multiple coordinates may refer to a single point, eg. the ...
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Why singularity in a black hole, and not just "very dense"?
Why does there have to be a singularity in a black hole, and not just a very dense lump of matter of finite size? If there's any such thing as granularity of space, couldn't the "singularity" be just ...
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Why does Stephen Hawking say black holes don't exist?
Recently, I read in the journal Nature that Stephen Hawking wrote a paper claiming that black holes do not exist. How is this possible? Please explain it to me because I didn't understand what he ...
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From where (in space-time) does Hawking radiation originate?
According to my understanding of black hole thermodynamics, if I observe a black hole from a safe distance I should observe black body radiation emanating from it, with a temperature determined by its ...