Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 25 of 27
  1. #1
    you are a faggot Phillip's Avatar
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Post Count
    5,774
    lol bonner

    lol jefferson

    lol griffin

    lol clippers

    lol spurs

    lol fail

  2. #2
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,536
    gfy

  3. #3
    No darkness Cry Havoc's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Post Count
    33,683
    A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.[1] Quantum mechanics predicts that black holes also emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature decreases with the mass of the black hole, making it unlikely to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass.

    Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can be observed through its interaction with other matter. A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space. Alternatively, when gas falls into a stellar black hole from a companion star, the gas spirals inward, heating to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and Earth-orbiting telescopes.

    Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates, and have also found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. In 1998, astronomers found compelling evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than 2 million solar masses is located near the Sagittarius A* region in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and more recent results using additional data find evidence that the supermassive black hole is more than 4 million solar masses.
    Contents
    [hide]

    * 1 History
    o 1.1 General relativity
    o 1.2 Golden age
    * 2 Properties and structure
    o 2.1 Physical properties
    o 2.2 Event horizon
    o 2.3 Singularity
    o 2.4 Photon sphere
    o 2.5 Ergosphere
    * 3 Formation and evolution
    o 3.1 Gravitational collapse
    + 3.1.1 Primordial black holes in the Big Bang
    o 3.2 High-energy collisions
    o 3.3 Growth
    o 3.4 Evaporation
    * 4 Observational evidence
    o 4.1 Accretion of matter
    o 4.2 X-ray binaries
    + 4.2.1 Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow
    + 4.2.2 Quasi-periodic oscillations
    o 4.3 Gamma ray bursts
    o 4.4 Galactic nuclei
    o 4.5 Gravitational lensing
    o 4.6 Alternatives
    * 5 Open questions
    o 5.1 Entropy and thermodynamics
    o 5.2 Black hole unitarity
    * 6 See also
    * 7 Notes
    * 8 References
    * 9 Further reading
    * 10 External links

    History
    Schwarzschild black hole
    Simulation of gravitational lensing by a black hole which distorts the image of a galaxy in the background (click here for larger animation)

    The idea of a body so massive that even light could not escape was first put forward by geologist John Mic in a letter written to Henry Cavendish in 1783 to the Royal Society:

    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.
    —John Mic [2]

    In 1796, 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).[3][4] Such "dark stars" were largely ignored in the nineteenth century, since it was not understood how a massless wave such as light could be influenced by gravity.[5]
    General relativity

    In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, having earlier shown that gravity does influence light's motion. A few months later, Karl Schwarzschild gave the solution for the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass.[6] A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass and wrote more extensively about its properties.[7] This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, where it became singular, meaning that some of the terms in the Einstein equations became infinite. The nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time. In 1924, Arthur Eddington showed that the singularity disappeared after a change of coordinates (see Eddington coordinates), although it took until 1933 for Georges Lemaître to realize that this meant the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was an unphysical coordinate singularity.[8]

    In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using general relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit) would collapse.[citation needed] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[9] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[10] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately three solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[11]

    Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this property, the collapsed stars were called "frozen stars,"[12] because 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. This is a known property of modern black holes, but it must be emphasized that the light from the surface of the frozen star becomes redshifted very fast, turning the black hole black very quickly. Many physicists could not accept the idea of time standing still at the Schwarzschild radius, and there was little interest in the subject for over 20 years.
    Golden age
    See also: Golden age of general relativity

    In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface r = 2m [in geometrized units, i.e. 2Gm/c2, where r is the radius of the surface and m is the mass of the black hole] as an event horizon, "a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction".[13] This did not strictly contradict Oppenheimer's results, but extended them to include the point of view of infalling observers. Finkelstein's solution extended the Schwarzschild solution for the future of observers falling into the black hole. A complete extension had already been found by Martin Kruskal, who was urged to publish it.[14]

    These results came at the beginning of the golden age of general relativity, which is marked by general relativity and black holes becoming mainstream subjects of research. This process was helped by the discovery of pulsars in 1967,[15][16] which were within a few years shown to be rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars, like black holes, were regarded as just theoretical curiosities; but the discovery of pulsars showed their physical relevance and spurred a further interest in all types of compact objects that might be formed by gravitational collapse.

    In this period more general black hole solutions where found. In 1963, Roy Kerr found the exact solution for a rotating black hole. Two years later Ezra T. Newman found the axisymmetric solution for a black hole which is both rotating and electrically charged.[17] Through the work of Werner Israel,[18] Brandon Carter,[19][20] and D. C. Robinson[21] the no-hair theorem emerged, stating that a stationary black hole solution is completely described by the three parameters of the Kerr–Newman metric; mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.[22]

    For a long time, it was suspected that the strange features of the black hole solutions were pathological artefacts from the symmetry conditions imposed, and that the singularities would not appear in generic situations. This view was held in particular by Belinsky, Khalatnikov, and Lif z, who tried to prove that no singularities appear in generic solutions. However, in the late sixties Roger Penrose[23] and Stephen Hawking used global techniques to prove that singularities are generic.[24]

    Work by James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, and Hawking in the early 1970s led to the formulation of the laws of black hole mechanics.[25] These laws describe the behaviour of a black hole in close analogy to the laws of thermodynamics by relating mass to energy, area to entropy, and surface gravity to temperature. The analogy was completed when Hawking, in 1974, showed that quantum field theory predicts that black holes should radiate like a black body with a temperature proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole.[26]

    The term "black hole" was first publicly used by John Wheeler during a lecture in 1967. Although he is usually credited with coining the phrase, he always insisted that it was suggested to him by somebody else. The first recorded use of the term is in a 1964 letter by Anne Ewing to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[27] After Wheeler's use of the term, it was quickly adopted in general use.
    Properties and structure

    The no-hair theorem states that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, charge, and angular momentum.[22] Any two black holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable according to classical (i.e. non-quantum) mechanics.

    These properties are special because they are visible from outside the black hole. For example, a charged black hole repels other like charges just like any other charged object. Similarly, the total mass inside a sphere containing a black hole can be found by using the gravitational analog of Gauss's law, the ADM mass, far away from the black hole.[28] Likewise, the angular momentum can be measured from far away using frame dragging by the gravitomagnetic field.

    When an object falls into a black hole, any information about the shape of the object or distribution of charge on it is evenly distributed along the horizon of the black hole, and is lost to outside observers. The behavior of the horizon in this situation is closely analogous to that of a conductive stretchy membrane with friction and electrical resistance, a dissipative system (see membrane paradigm).[29] This is different from other field theories like electromagnetism, which does not have any friction or resistivity at the microscopic level, because they are time-reversible. Because the black hole eventually achieves a stable state with only three parameters, there is no way to avoid losing information about the initial conditions: the gravitational and electric fields of the black hole give very little information about what went in. The information that is lost includes every quan y that cannot be measured far away from the black hole horizon, including the total baryon number, lepton number, and all the other nearly conserved pseudo-charges of particle physics. This behavior is so puzzling that it has been called the black hole information loss paradox.[30][31][32]
    Physical properties

    The simplest black hole has mass but neither electric charge nor angular momentum. These black holes are often referred to as Schwarzschild black holes after the physicist Karl Schwarzschild who discovered this solution in 1915.[6] According to Birkhoff's theorem, it is the only vacuum solution that is spherically symmetric.[33] This means that there is no observable difference between the gravitational field of such a black hole and that of any other spherical object of the same mass. The popular notion of a black hole "sucking in everything" in its surroundings is therefore only correct near the black hole horizon; far away, the external gravitational field is identical to that of any other body of the same mass.[34]

    Solutions describing more general black holes also exist. Charged black holes are described by the Reissner-Nordström metric, while the Kerr metric describes a rotating black hole. The most general stationary black hole solution known is the Kerr-Newman metric, which describes a black hole with both charge and angular momentum.

    While the mass of a black hole can take any positive value, the charge and angular momentum are constrained by the mass. In Planck units, the total electric charge Q and the total angular momentum J are expected to satisfy

    Q^2+\left ( \tfrac{J}{M} \right )^2\le M^2\,

    for a black hole of mass M. Black holes saturating this inequality are called extremal. Solutions of Einstein's equations violating the inequality exist, but do not have a horizon. These solutions have naked singularities and are deemed unphysical. The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter.[35] This is supported by numerical simulations.[36]

    Due to the relatively large strength of the electromagnetic force, black holes forming from the collapse of stars are expected to retain the nearly neutral charge of the star. Rotation, however, is expected to be a common feature of compact objects, and the black-hole candidate binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105[37] appears to have an angular momentum near the maximum allowed value.
    Class Mass Size
    Supermassive black hole ~105–109 MSun ~0.001–10 AU
    Intermediate-mass black hole ~103 MSun ~103 km = REarth
    Stellar black hole ~10 MSun ~30 km
    Micro black hole up to ~MMoon up to ~0.1 mm

    Black holes are commonly classified according to their mass, independent of angular momentum J or electric charge Q. The size of a black hole, as determined by the radius of the event horizon, or Schwarzschild radius, is roughly proportional to the mass M through

    r_\mathrm{sh} =\frac{2GM}{c^2} \approx 2.95\, \frac{M}{M_\mathrm{Sun}}~\mathrm{km,}

    where rsh is the Schwarzschild radius and MSun is the mass of the Sun. This relation is exact only for black holes with zero charge and angular momentum, for more general black holes it can differ up to a factor of 2. The table on the right lists the various classes of black hole that are distinguished.
    Event horizon
    Main article: Event horizon
    Image:BH-no-escape-1.svg
    Far away from the black hole a particle can move in any direction. It is only restricted by the speed of light.
    Image:BH-no-escape-2.svg
    Closer to the black hole spacetime starts to deform. There are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away.
    Image:BH-no-escape-3.svg
    Inside of the event horizon all paths bring the particle closer to the center of the black hole. It is no longer possible for the particle to escape.

    The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon—a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.[38]

    As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a large mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole.[39]

    To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole.[40] Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it.[41] At the same time, all processes on this object slow down causing emitted light to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift.[42] Eventually, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen.

    On the other hand, an observer falling into a black hole does not notice any of these effects as he crosses the event horizon. According to his own clock, he crosses the event horizon after a finite time, although he is unable to determine exactly when he crosses it, as it is impossible to determine the location of the event horizon from local observations.[43]

    For a non rotating (static) black hole, the Schwarzschild radius delimits a spherical event horizon. The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to the mass.[44] Rotating black holes have distorted, nonspherical event horizons. Since the event horizon is not a material surface but rather merely a mathematically defined demarcation boundary, nothing prevents matter or radiation from entering a black hole, only from exiting one. The description of black holes given by general relativity is known to be an approximation, and some scientists expect that quantum gravity effects will become significant near the vicinity of the event horizon.[45] This would allow observations of matter near a black hole's event horizon to be used to indirectly study general relativity and proposed extensions to it.
    Singularity
    Main article: Gravitational singularity

    At the center of a black hole as described by general relativity lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite.[46] For a non-rotating black hole this region takes the shape of a single point and for a rotating black hole it is smeared out to form a ring singularity lying in the plane of rotation.[47] In both cases the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution.[48] The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density.

    An observer falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e. non-rotating and no charges) cannot avoid the singularity. Any attempt to do so will only shorten the time taken to get there.[49] When they reach the singularity, they are crushed to infinite density and their mass is added to the total of the black hole. Before that happens, they will have been torn apart by the growing tidal forces in a process sometimes referred to as spaghettification or the noodle effect.[50]

    In the case of a charged (Reissner–Nordström) or rotating (Kerr) black hole it is possible to avoid the singularity. Extending these solutions as far as possible reveals the hypothetical possibility of exiting the black hole into a different spacetime with the black hole acting as a wormhole.[51] The possibility of traveling to another universe is however only theoretical, since any perturbation will destroy this possibility.[52] It also appears to be possible to follow closed timelike curves (going back to one's own past) around the Kerr singularity, which lead to problems with causality like the grandfather paradox.[53] It is expected that none of these peculiar effects would survive in a proper quantum mechanical treatment of rotating and charged black holes.[54]

    The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory.[55] This breakdown, however, is expected; it occurs in a situation where quantum mechanical effects should describe these actions due to the extremely high density and therefore particle interactions. To date it has not been possible to combine quantum and gravitational effects into a single theory. It is generally expected that a theory of quantum gravity will feature black holes without singularities.[56][57]
    Photon sphere
    Main article: Photon sphere

    The 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 the Schwarzschild radius. The orbits are dynamically unstable, hence any small perturbation (such as a particle of infalling matter) will grow over time, either setting it on an outward trajectory escaping the black hole or on an inward spiral eventually crossing the event horizon.

    While light can still escape from inside the photon sphere, any light that crosses the photon sphere on an inbound trajectory will be captured by the black hole. Hence any light reaching an outside observer from inside the photon sphere must have been emitted by objects inside the photon sphere but still outside of the event horizon.

    Other compact objects, such as neutron stars, can also have photon spheres.[58] This follows from the fact that the gravitational field of an object does not depend on its actual size, hence any object that is smaller than 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to its mass will indeed have a photon sphere.
    Ergosphere
    Main article: Ergosphere
    The ergosphere is an oblate spheroid region outside of the event horizon, where objects cannot remain stationary.

    Rotating black holes are surrounded by a region of spacetime in which it is impossible to stand still, called the ergosphere. This is the result of a process known as frame-dragging; general relativity predicts that any rotating mass will tend to slightly "drag" along the spacetime immediately surrounding it. Any object near the rotating mass will tend to start moving in the direction of rotation. For a rotating black hole this effect becomes so strong near the event horizon that an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in the opposite direction to just stand still.[59]

    The ergosphere of a black hole is bounded by the (outer) event horizon on the inside and an oblate spheroid, which coincides with the event horizon at the poles and is noticeably wider around the equator. The outer boundary is sometimes called the ergosurface.

    Objects and radiation can escape normally from the ergosphere. Through the Penrose process, objects can emerge from the ergosphere with more energy than they entered. This energy is taken from the rotational energy of the black hole causing it to slow down.[60]
    Formation and evolution

    Considering the exotic nature of black holes, it may be natural to question if such bizarre objects could exist in nature or to suggest that they are merely pathological solutions to Einstein's equations. Einstein himself wrongly thought that black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius.[61] This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years. However, a minority of relativists continued to contend that black holes were physical objects,[62] and by the end of the 1960s, they had persuaded the majority of researchers in the field that there is no obstacle to forming an event horizon.

    Once an event horizon forms, Roger Penrose proved that a singularity will form somewhere inside it.[23] Shortly afterwards, Stephen Hawking showed that many cosmological solutions describing the Big Bang have singularities without scalar fields or other exotic matter (see Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems). The Kerr solution, the no-hair theorem and the laws of black hole thermodynamics showed that the physical properties of black holes were simple and comprehensible, making them respectable subjects for research.[63] The primary formation process for black holes is expected to be the gravitational collapse of heavy objects such as stars, but there are also more exotic processes that can lead to the production of black holes.
    Gravitational collapse
    Main article: Gravitational collapse

    Gravitational collapse occurs when an object's internal pressure is insufficient to resist the object's own gravity. For stars this usually occurs either because a star has too little "fuel" left to maintain its temperature through stellar nucleosynthesis, or because a star which would have been stable receives 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).[64]

    The collapse may be stopped by the degeneracy pressure of the star's cons uents, condensing the matter in an exotic denser state. The result is one of the various 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.[64]

    If the mass of the remnant exceeds about 3–4 solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit)—either because the original star was very heavy or because the remnant collected additional mass through accretion of matter—even the degeneracy pressure of neutrons is insufficient to stop the collapse. After this, no known mechanism (except possibly quark degeneracy pressure, see quark star) is powerful enough to stop the collapse and the object will inevitably collapse to a black hole.[64]

    This gravitational collapse of heavy stars is assumed to be responsible for the formation of stellar mass black holes. Star formation in the young universe may have resulted in very heavy stars, which upon their collapse would have produced black holes of up to 103 solar masses. These heavy black holes could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of most galaxies.[65]

    While most of the energy released during gravitational collapse is emitted very quickly, an outside observer does not actually see the end of this process. Even though the collapse takes a finite amount of time from the reference frame of infalling matter, a distant observer sees the infalling material slow and halt just above the event horizon, due to gravitational time dilation. Light from the collapsing material takes longer and longer to reach the observer, with the light emitted just before the event horizon forms delayed an infinite amount of time. Thus the external observer never sees the formation of the event horizon; instead, the collapsing material seems to become dimmer and increasingly red-shifted, eventually fading away.[66]
    Primordial black holes in the Big Bang

    Gravitational collapse requires great densities. In the current epoch of the universe these high densities are only found in stars, but in the early universe shortly after the big bang densities were much greater, possibly allowing for the creation of black holes. The high density alone is not enough to allow the formation of black holes since a uniform mass distribution will not allow the mass to bunch up. In order for primordial black holes to form in such a dense medium, there must be initial density perturbations which can then grow under their own gravity. Different models for the early universe vary widely in their predictions of the size of these perturbations. Various models predict the creation of black holes, ranging from a Planck mass to hundreds of thousands of solar masses.[67] Primordial black holes could thus account for the creation of any type of black hole.
    High-energy collisions
    A simulated event in the CMS detector, a collision in which a micro black hole may be created.

    Gravitational collapse is not the only process that could create black holes. In principle, black holes could also be created in high-energy collisions that create sufficient density. However, to date, no such events have ever been detected either directly or indirectly as a deficiency of the mass balance in particle accelerator experiments.[68] This suggests that there must be a lower limit for the mass of black holes. Theoretically, this boundary is expected to lie around the Planck mass (mP = √ħc/G ≈ 1.2×1019 GeV/c2 ≈ 2.2×10−8 kg), where quantum effects are expected to make the theory of general relativity break down completely.[69] This would put the creation of black holes firmly out of reach of any high energy process occurring on or near the Earth. Certain developments in quantum gravity however suggest that the Planck mass could be much lower: some braneworld scenarios for example put it much lower, maybe even as low as 1 TeV/c2[70] This would make it possible for micro black holes to be created in the high energy collisions occurring when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, or possibly in the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These theories are however very speculative, and the creation of black holes in these processes is deemed unlikely by many specialists.[71] Even if such micro black holes should be formed in these collisions, it is expected that they would evaporate in about 10−25 seconds, posing no threat to Earth[72]
    Growth

    Once a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing additional matter. Any black hole will continually absorb gas and interstellar dust from its direct surroundings and omnipresent cosmic background radiation. This is the primary process through which supermassive black holes seem to have grown.[65] A similar process has been suggested for the formation of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters.[73]

    Another possibility is for a black hole to merge with other objects such as stars or even other black holes. This is thought to have been important especially for the early development of supermassive black holes, which are thought to have formed from the coagulation of many smaller objects.[65] The process has also been proposed as the origin of some intermediate-mass black holes.[74][75]
    Evaporation
    Main article: Hawking radiation

    In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes are not entirely black but emit small amounts of thermal radiation.[26] He got this result by applying quantum field theory in a static black hole background. The result of his calculations is that a black hole should emit particles in a perfect black body spectrum. This effect has become known as Hawking radiation. Since Hawking's result, many others have verified the effect through various methods.[76] If his theory of black hole radiation is correct, then black holes are expected to emit a thermal spectrum of radiation, and thereby lose mass, because according to the theory of relativity mass is just highly condensed energy (E = mc2).[26] Black holes will shrink and evaporate over time. The temperature of this spectrum (Hawking temperature) is proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole, which for a Schwarzschild black hole is inversely proportional to the mass. Large black holes, therefore, emit less radiation than small black holes.

    A stellar black hole of one solar mass has a Hawking temperature of about 100 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background. Stellar mass (and larger) black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and will thus grow instead of shrink. To have a Hawking temperature larger than 2.7 K (and be able to evaporate), a black hole needs to be lighter than the Moon (and therefore a diameter of less than a tenth of a millimeter).[77]

    On the other hand, if a black hole is very small the radiation effects are expected to become very strong. Even a black hole that is heavy compared to a human would evaporate in an instant. A black hole the weight of a car (~10−24 m) would only take a nanosecond to evaporate, during which time it would briefly have a luminosity more than 200 times that of the sun. Lighter black holes are expected to evaporate even faster, for example a black hole of mass 1 TeV/c2 would take less than 10−88 seconds to evaporate completely. Of course, for such a small black hole quantum gravitation effects are expected to play an important role and could even – although current developments in quantum gravity do not indicate so[78] – hypothetically make such a small black hole stable.[79]
    Observational evidence

    By their very nature, black holes do not directly emit any signals other than the hypothetical Hawking radiation; since the Hawking radiation for an astrophysical black hole is predicted to be very weak, this makes it impossible to directly detect astrophysical black holes from the Earth. A possible exception to the Hawking radiation being weak is the last stage of the evaporation of light (primordial) black holes; searches for such flashes in the past has proven unsuccessful and provides stringent limits on the possibility of existence of light primordial black holes.[80] NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 will continue the search for these flashes.[81]

    Astrophysicists searching for black holes thus have to rely on indirect observations. A black hole's existence can sometimes be inferred by observing its gravitational interactions with its surroundings.
    Accretion of matter
    See also: Accretion disc
    Formation of extragalactic jets from a black hole's accretion disk

    Due to conservation of angular momentum, gas falling into the gravitational well created by a massive object will typically form a disc-like structure around the object. Friction within the disc causes angular momentum to be transported outward allowing matter to fall further inward releasing potential energy and increasing the temperature of the gas.[82] In the case of compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, the gas in the inner regions becomes so hot that it will emit vast amounts of radiation (mainly X-rays), which may be detected by telescopes. This process of accretion is one of the most efficient energy producing process known; up to 40% of the rest mass of the accreted material can be emitted in radiation.[82] (In nuclear fusion only about 0.7% of the rest mass will be emitted as energy.) In many cases, accretion discs are accompanied by relativistic jets emitted along the poles, which carry away much of the energy. The mechanism for the creation of these jets is currently not well understood.

    As such many of the universe's more energetic phenomena have been attributed to the accretion of matter on black holes. In particular, active galactic nuclei and quasars are thought to be the accretion discs of supermassive black holes.[83] Similarly, X-ray binaries are thought to be binary star systems in which one of the two stars is a compact object accreting matter from its companion.[83] It has also been suggested that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the accretion disks of intermediate-mass black holes.[84]
    X-ray binaries
    See also: X-ray binary

    X-ray binaries are binary star systems that are luminous in the X-ray part of the spectrum. These X-ray emissions are generally thought to be caused by one of the component stars being a compact object accreting matter from the other (regular) star. The presence of an ordinary star in such a system provides a unique opportunity for studying the central object and determining if it might be a black hole.
    Artist impression of a binary system with an accretion disk around a compact object being fed by material from the companion star.

    If such a system emits signals that can be directly traced back to the compact object, it cannot be a black hole. The absence of such a signal does, however, not exclude the possibility that the compact object is a neutron star. By studying the companion star it is often possible to obtain the orbital parameters of the system and obtain an estimate for the mass of the compact object. If this is much larger than the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (that is, the maximum mass a neutron star can have before collapsing) then the object cannot be a neutron star and is generally expected to be a black hole.[83]

    The first strong candidate for a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in this way by Charles Thomas Bolton[85] and Webster and Murdin[86] in 1972.[87][88] Some doubt, however, remained due to the uncertainties resultant from the companion star being much heavier than the candidate black hole.[83] Currently, better candidates for black holes are found in a class of X-ray binaries called soft X-ray transients.[83] In this class of system the companion star is relatively low mass allowing for more accurate estimates in the black hole mass. Moreover, these systems are only active in X-ray for several months once every 10–50 years. During the period of low X-ray emission (called quiescence), the accretion disc is extremely faint allowing for detailed observation of the companion star during this period. One of the best such candidates is V404 Cyg.
    Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow

    The faintness of the accretion disc during quiescence is thought to be caused by the flow entering a mode called an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). In this mode, almost all the energy generated by friction in the disc is swept along with the flow instead of radiated away. If this model is correct, then it forms strong qualitative evidence for the presence of an event horizon.[89] Because, if the object at the center of the disc had a solid surface, it would emit large amounts of radiation as the highly energetic gas hits the surface, an effect that is observed for neutron stars in a similar state.[82]
    Quasi-periodic oscillations
    See also: Quasi-periodic oscillations

    The X-ray emissions from accretion disks sometimes exhibit a flickering around certain frequencies. These signals are called quasi-periodic oscillations and are thought to be caused by material moving along the inner edge of the accretion disk (the innermost stable circular orbit). As such their frequency is linked to the mass of the compact object. They can thus be used as an alternative way to determine the mass of potential black holes.[90]
    Gamma ray bursts

    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[91] or by collisions between neutron stars,[92] and both types of event involve sufficient mass and pressure to produce black holes. It appears that a collision between a neutron star and a black hole can also cause a GRB,[93] 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[94] so the black holes associated with them are billions of years old.
    Galactic nuclei
    See also: Active galactic nucleus
    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.

    It is now widely accepted that the center of every or at least nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.[95] The close observational correlation between the mass of this hole and the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy's bulge, known as the M-sigma relation, strongly suggests a connection between the formation of the black hole and the galaxy itself. [96]

    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.[97][98] However, theoretical and observational studies have shown that the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in these galaxies may contain supermassive black holes.[97][98] 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.[98]

    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.[99]

    Currently, the best evidence for a supermassive black hole comes from studying the proper motion of stars near the center of our own Milky Way.[100] Since 1995 astronomers have tracked the motion of 90 stars in a region called Sagittarius A*. By fitting their motion to Keplerian orbits they were able to infer in 1998 that 2.6 million solar masses must be contained in a volume with a radius of 0.02 lightyears.[101] Since then one of the stars—called S2—has completed a full orbit. From the orbital data they were able to place better constraints on the mass and size of the object causing the orbital motion of stars in the Sagittarius A* region, finding that there is a spherical mass of 4.3 million solar masses contained within a radius of less than 0.002 lightyears.[100] While this is more than 3000 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to that mass, it is at least consistent with the central object being a supermassive black hole, and no "realistic cluster [of stars] is physically tenable."[101]
    Gravitational lensing
    Further information: Gravitational lens

    The deformation of spacetime around a massive object causes light rays to be deflected much like light passing through an optic lens. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing. Observations have been made of weak gravitational lensing, in which photons are deflected by only a few arcseconds. However, it has never been directly observed for a black hole.[102] One possibility for observing gravitational lensing by a black hole would be to observe stars in orbit around the black hole. There are several candidates for such an observation in orbit around Sagittarius A*.[102]
    Alternatives

    The evidence for stellar black holes strongly relies on the existence of an upper limit for the mass of a neutron star. The size of this limit heavily depends on the assumptions made about the properties of dense matter. New exotic phases of matter could push up this bound.[83] A phase of free quarks at high density might allow the existence of dense quark stars,[103] and some supersymmetric models predict the existence of Q stars.[104] Some extensions of the standard model posit the existence of preons as fundamental building blocks of quarks and leptons which could hypothetically form preon stars.[105] These hypothetical models could potentially explain a number of observations of stellar black hole candidates. However, it can be shown from general arguments in general relativity that any such object will have a maximum mass.[83]

    Since the average density of a black hole inside its Schwarzschild radius is inversely proportional to the square of its mass, supermassive black holes are much less dense than stellar black holes (the average density of a large supermassive black hole is comparable to that of water).[83] Consequently, the physics of matter forming a supermassive black hole is much better understood and the possible alternative explanations for supermassive black hole observations are much more mundane. For example, a supermassive black hole could be modelled by a large cluster of very dark objects. However, typically such alternatives are not stable enough to explain the supermassive black hole candidates.[83]

    The evidence for stellar and supermassive black holes implies that in order for black holes not to form, general relativity must fail as a theory of gravity, perhaps due to the onset of quantum mechanical corrections. A much anticipated feature of a theory of quantum gravity is that it will not feature singularities or event horizons (and thus no black holes).[106] In recent years, much attention has been drawn by the fuzzball model in string theory. Based on calculations in specific situations in string theory, the proposal suggest that generically the individual states of a black hole solution do not have an event horizon or singularity (and can thus not really be considered to be a black hole), but that for a distant observer the statistical average of such states does appear just like an ordinary black hole in general relativity.[107]
    Open questions
    Entropy and thermodynamics
    Further information: Black hole thermodynamics
    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.

    In 1971, Stephen Hawking showed under general conditions[Note 1] that the total area of the event horizons of any collection of classical black holes can never decrease, even if they collide and merge.[108] This result, now known as the second law of black hole mechanics, is remarkably similar to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of a system can never decrease. As with classical objects at absolute zero temperature, it was assumed that black holes had zero entropy. If this were the case, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated by entropy-laden matter 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.[109]

    The link with the laws of thermodynamics was further strengthened by Hawking's discovery that quantum field theory predicts that a black hole radiates blackbody radiation at a constant temperature. This seemingly causes a violation of the second law of black hole mechanics, since the radiation will carry away energy from the black hole causing it to shrink. The radiation, however also carries away entropy, and it can be proven under general assumptions that the sum of the entropy of the matter surrounding the black hole and one quarter of the area of the horizon as measured in Planck units is in fact always increasing. This allows the formulation of the first law of black hole mechanics as an analogue of the first law of thermodynamics, with the mass acting as energy, the surface gravity as temperature and the area as entropy.[109]

    One puzzling feature is that the entropy of a black hole scales with its area rather than with its volume, since entropy is normally an extensive quan y that scales linearly with the volume of the system. This odd property led 't Hooft and Susskind to propose the holographic principle, which suggests that anything that happens in volume of spacetime can be described by data on the boundary of that volume.[110]

    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.). Without a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, one cannot perform such a computation for black holes. Some progress has been made in various approaches to quantum gravity. In 1995, Strominger and Vafa showed that counting the microstates of a specific supersymmetric black hole in string theory reproduced the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy.[111] Since then, similar results have been reported for different black holes both in string theory and in other approaches to quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity.[112]
    Black hole unitarity
    Main article: Black hole information paradox
    Unsolved problems in physics Is physical information lost in black holes? Question mark2.svg

    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 (T-symmetry). Liouville's theorem dictates conservation of phase space volume, which can be thought of as "conservation of information", so there is some problem even in classical physics. In quantum mechanics, this corresponds to a vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the conservation of probability (it can also be thought of as a conservation of quantum phase space volume as expressed by the density matrix).[113]
    See also

    * Black holes in fiction
    * Black string
    * Kugelblitz (astrophysics)
    * List of black holes
    * Susskind-Hawking battle


    He1523a.jpg Star portal

    * Timeline of black hole physics
    * White hole
    * Wormhole

    Notes

    1. ^ In particular, he assumed that all matter satisfies the weak energy condition.

    References

    1. ^ Davies, P. C. W. (1978). "Thermodynamics of Black Holes". Rep. Prog. Phys. 41: 1313–1355. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/41/8/004. http://cosmos.asu.edu/publications/p...Holes%2034.pdf.
    2. ^ Mic , J. (1784). "On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude, &c. of the Fixed Stars, in Consequence of the Diminution of the Velocity of Their Light, in Case Such a Diminution Should be Found to Take Place in any of Them, and Such Other Data Should be Procured from Observations, as Would be Farther Necessary for That Purpose". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (London) (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 74) 74: 35–57. http://www.jstor.org/pss/106576.
    3. ^ "Dark Stars (1783)". Thinkquest. 1999. http://library.thinkquest.org/25715/....htm#darkstars. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
    4. ^ Laplace; see Israel, Werner (1987), "Dark stars: the evolution of an idea", in Hawking, Stephen W. & Israel, Werner, 300 Years of Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, Sec. 7.4
    5. ^ Thorne (1994:123–124).
    6. ^ a b Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 189–196. and Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Kugel aus inkompressibler Flüssigkeit nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 424–434.
    7. ^ Droste, J. (1915). "On the field of a single centre in Einstein's theory of gravitation". Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen Proceedings 17 (3): 998–1011.
    8. ^ 't Hooft, G. (2009). Introduction to the Theory of Black Holes. pp. 47–48. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectur...cturenotes.pdf.
    9. ^ Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    10. ^ Harpaz, Amos (1994). Stellar evolution. A K Peters, Ltd. p. 105. ISBN 1-568-81012-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4VEZv8oo0C. , Extract of page 105
    11. ^ Oppenheimer, J. R. and Volkoff, G. M. (1939-01-03). "On Massive Neutron Cores". Physical Review 55 (4): 374–381. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.55.374. http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v55/i4/p374_1.
    12. ^ Ruffini, Remo and Wheeler, John A. (January 1971). "Introducing the black hole". Physics Today: 30–41. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/1...Phys_Today.pdf.
    13. ^ Finkelstein, David (1958). "Past-Future Asymmetry of the Gravitational Field of a Point Particle". Phys. Rev. 110: 965–967. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.110.965.
    14. ^ Kruskal, M. (1960). "Maximal Extension of Schwarzschild Metric". Physical Review 119: 1743. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.119.1743. edit
    15. ^ Hewish, Antony; Bell, S. J.; Pilkington, J. D. H.; Scott, P. F.; Collins, R. A. (1968). "Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source". Nature 217: 709–713. doi:10.1038/217709a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../235037a0.html. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    16. ^ Pilkington, J D H; Hewish, A.; Bell, S. J.; Cole, T. W. (1968). "Observations of some further Pulsed Radio Sources". Nature 218: 126–129. doi:10.1038/218126a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...f/218126a0.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    17. ^ Newman, E. T.; Couch, E.; Chinnapared, K.; Exton, A.; Prakash, A.; Torrence, R. (1965). "Metric of a Rotating, Charged Mass". Journal of Mathematical Physics 6: 918. doi:10.1063/1.1704351. edit
    18. ^ Israel, W. (1967). "Event Horizons in Static Vacuum Space-Times". Physical Review 164: 1776. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.164.1776. edit
    19. ^ Carter, B. (1971). "Axisymmetric Black Hole Has Only Two Degrees of Freedom". Physical Review Letters 26: 331. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.26.331. edit
    20. ^ Carter, B. (1977). "The vacuum black hole uniqueness theorem and its conceivable generalisations.". Proceedings of the 1st Marcel Grossmann meeting on general relativity. pp. 243–254.
    21. ^ Robinson, D. (1975). "Uniqueness of the Kerr Black Hole". Physical Review Letters 34: 905. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.34.905. edit
    22. ^ a b Heusler, M. (1998). "Stationary Black Holes: Uniqueness and Beyond". Living Rev. Relativity 1 (6). http://www.livingreviews.org/Article...1998-6heusler/. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    23. ^ a b Penrose, R. (1965). "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities". Physical Review Letters 14: 57. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.57. edit
    24. ^ Ford, L. H. (2003). International Journal of Theoretical Physics 42: 1219–1227. doi:10.1023/A:1025754515197. edit
    25. ^ Bardeen, J.M.; Carter, B.; Hawking, S.W. (1973). "The four laws of black hole mechanics". Comm. Math. Phys. 31 (2): 161–170.. doi:10.1007/BF01645742. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.cmp/1103858973.
    26. ^ a b c Hawking, S.W. (1974). "Black hole explosions?". Nature 248: 30–31. doi:10.1038/248030a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../248030a0.html.
    27. ^ Michael Quinion. "Black Hole". World Wide Words. http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-bla1.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-17.
    28. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 253
    29. ^ Black Holes, The Membrane Paradigm. ISBN 9780300037708.
    30. ^ Anderson, Warren G. (1996). "The Black Hole Information Loss Problem". http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...info_loss.html. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
    31. ^ John Preskill(1994)"Black holes and information: A crisis in quantum physics"
    32. ^ Daniel Carmody(2008)"The Fate of Quantum Information in a Black Hole"
    33. ^ "Garrett Birkhoff’s Theorem". http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~whittyr/Mat...tDBirkhoff.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    34. ^ "Black Holes do not suck!". 2006-02-17. http://astro.airynothing.com/2006/02..._not_suck.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    35. ^ For a review see Wald, Robert. M. (1997). "Gravitational Collapse and Cosmic Censorship". http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9710068.
    36. ^ For a discussion of these numerical simulations see Berger, Beverly K. (2002). "Numerical Approaches to Spacetime Singularities". Living Rev. Relativity 5. http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2002-1. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
    37. ^ McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Shafee, Rebecca; Narayan, Ramesh; Remillard, Ronald A.; Davis, Shane W.; Li, Li-Xin (2006). "The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105". Astrophys.J. 652: 518–539. doi:10.1086/508457. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606076.
    38. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 179
    39. ^ "Anatomy of a Black Hole". http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia...kHoleAnat.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    40. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 217
    41. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 218
    42. ^ "Inside a black hole". http://nrumiano.free.fr/Estars/int_bh.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    43. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 222
    44. ^ "Black Holes". Archived from the original on September 13, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/200609131...der/l16_BH.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    45. ^ "Physical nature of the event horizon". http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/pramana/51/693-698.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    46. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 205
    47. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 264–265
    48. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 252
    49. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 237 Exercise 3.
    50. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 182
    51. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 257–259 and 265–266
    52. ^ Droz, S.; Israel, W.; Morsink, S.M. (1996). "Black holes: the inside story". Physics World 9: 34–37.
    53. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 266
    54. ^ Poisson, E.; Israel, W. (1990). "Internal structure of black holes". Physical Review D 41: 1796. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.41.1796. edit
    55. ^ Giamb�o, Roberto. "The geometry of gravitational collapse". http://www.mat.unb.br/~matcont/28_8.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    56. ^ "Black Holes and Quantum Gravity". http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_hawk.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    57. ^ "Ask an Astrophysicist : Quantum Gravity and Black Holes". http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...s/980420b.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    58. ^ Nemiroff, Robert J. (1993). "Visual distortions near a neutron star and black hole". American Journal of Physics 61: 619. doi:10.1119/1.17224.
    59. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.6
    60. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.7
    61. ^ Einstein, A. (1939). "On A Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses". Annals of Mathematics (The Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 40, No. 4) 40 (4): 922–936. doi:10.2307/1968902. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1968902.
    62. ^ "Discovering the Kerr and Kerr-Schild metrics". To appear in "The Kerr Spacetime", Eds D.L. Wiltshire, M. Visser and S.M. Scott, Cambridge Univ. Press. Roy P. Kerr. http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0706.1109. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
    63. ^ Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, R. (January 1970). "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 314 (1519): 529–548. doi:10.1098/rspa.1970.0021. http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.o...9/529.abstract.
    64. ^ a b c Carroll 2004, Section 5.8
    65. ^ a b c Rees, M.J.; Volonteri, M. (2007). "Massive black holes: formation and evolution". In Karas, V.; Matt, G.. Black Holes from Stars to Galaxies – Across the Range of Masses. Cambridge University Press. pp. 51–58. arXiv:astro-ph/0701512.
    66. ^ Penrose, R. (2002). General Relativity and Gravitation 34: 1141–1165. doi:10.1023/A:1016578408204. edit
    67. ^ Carr, B. J. (2005). "Primordial Black Holes: Do They Exist and Are They Useful?". arΧiv:astro-ph/0511743v1 [astro-ph].
    68. ^ Giddings, Steven B.; Thomas, Scott (2002). "High energy colliders as black hole factories: The end of short distance physics". Physical Review D 65: 056010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.65.056010. arXiv:hep-ph/0106219v4.
    69. ^ Harada, T. (2006). "Is there a black hole minimum mass?". Physical Review D 74: 084004. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.74.084004. edit
    70. ^ Arkani–Hamed, N (1998). "The hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter". Physics Letters B 429: 263. doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(98)00466-3. arXiv:9803315v1.
    71. ^ LHC Safety Assessment Group. "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions". CERN. http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf.
    72. ^ Cavaglià, Marco (29 January 2007). "Particle accelerators as black hole factories?". Einstein-Online. Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Ins ute).
    73. ^ Vesperini, E.; McMillan, S.L.W.; D'Ercole, A.; D'Antona, F. (2010). "Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Early Globular Clusters". arΧiv:1003.3470 [astro-ph.GA].
    74. ^ Zwart, S.; Baumgardt, H.; Hut, P.; Makino, J.; McMillan, S. (2004). "Formation of massive black holes through runaway collisions in dense young star clusters". Nature 428 (6984): 724–726. doi:10.1038/nature02448. PMID 15085124. edit
    75. ^ O’leary, R. M.; Rasio, F. A.; Fregeau, J. M.; Ivanova, N.; O’shaughnessy, R. (2006). "Binary Mergers and Growth of Black Holes in Dense Star Clusters". The Astrophysical Journal 637: 937. doi:10.1086/498446. edit
    76. ^ Page, Don N (2005). "Hawking radiation and black hole thermodynamics". New Journal of Physics 7: 203. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/203. arXiv:hep-th/0409024v3.
    77. ^ "Einstein online". Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics. 2010. http://www.einstein-online.info/elem...et_language=en. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    78. ^ Giddings, S. B.; Mangano, M. L. (2008). "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes". Physical Review D 78: 035009. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.78.035009. edit
    79. ^ Peskin, M. (2008). "The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider?". Physics 1: 14–20. doi:10.1103/Physics.1.14. edit
    80. ^ Fichtel, C.E.; Bertsch, D.L.; Dingus, B.L.; Esposito, J.A.; Hartman, R.C.; Hunter, S.D.; Kanbach, G.;; Kniffen, D.A. et al. (1994). "Search of the energetic gamma-ray experiment telescope (EGRET) data for high-energy gamma-ray microsecond bursts". Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 434 (2): 557–559. doi:10.1086/174758. ISSN 0004-637X.
    81. ^ Naeye, Robert. Testing Fundamental Physics. NASA.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...l_physics.html. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
    82. ^ a b c McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Remillard, Ronald A. (2006). "Black Hole Binaries". In Lewin, Walter; van der Klis, Michiel. Compact Stellar X-ray Sources. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521826594. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306213. section 4.1.5.
    83. ^ a b c d e f g h i Celotti, A.; Miller, J.C.; Sciama, D.W. (1999). "Astrophysical evidence for the existence of black holes". Class. Quant. Grav. 16. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9912186
    84. ^ Winter, Lisa M.; Mushotzky, Richard F.; Reynolds, Christopher S. (2006). "XMM‐Newton Archival Study of the Ultraluminous X‐Ray Population in Nearby Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 649: 730. doi:10.1086/506579. arXiv:astro-ph/0512480v2.
    85. ^ Bolton, C. T. (1972). "Identification of Cygnus X-1 with HDE 226868". Nature 235: 271–273. doi:10.1038/235271b0.
    86. ^ Webster, B.L; Murdin, P. (1972). "Cygnus X-1—a Spectroscopic Binary with a Heavy Companion ?". Nature 235: 37–38. doi:10.1038/235037a0.
    87. ^ Rolston, Bruce (10 November 1997). The First Black Hole. University of Toronto. http://news.utoronto.ca/bin/bulletin/nov10_97/art4.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    88. ^ Shipman, H. L. (1 January 1975). "The implausible history of triple star models for Cygnus X-1 Evidence for a black hole". Astrophysical Letters 16 (1): 9–12. doi:10.1016/S0304-8853(99)00384-4. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975ApL....16....9S. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    89. ^ Narayan, R.; McClintock, J. (2008). "Advection-dominated accretion and the black hole event horizon". New Astronomy Reviews 51: 733. doi:10.1016/j.newar.2008.03.002. edit
    90. ^ Goddard Space Flight Center (2008-04-01). "NASA scientists identify smallest known black hole". Press release. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-nsi040108.php. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
    91. ^ Bloom, J. S.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Djorgovski, S. G. (2002). "The Observed Offset Distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Their Host Galaxies: A Robust Clue to the Nature of the Progenitors". The Astronomical Journal 123: 1111. doi:10.1086/338893. arXiv:0010176.
    92. ^ Blinnikov, S (1984). "Exploding Neutron Stars in Close Binaries". Soviet Astronomy Letters 10: 177. Bibcode: 1984SvAL...10..177B.
    93. ^ Lattimer, J. M.; Schramm, D. N. (1976). "The tidal disruption of neutron stars by black holes in close binaries". The Astrophysical Journal 210: 549. doi:10.1086/154860.
    94. ^ Paczynski, Bohdan (1995). "How Far Away Are Gamma-Ray Bursters?". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107: 1167. doi:10.1086/133674. arXiv:astro-ph/9505096.
    95. ^ King, Andrew (2003-09-15). "Black Holes, Galaxy Formation, and the MBH-σ Relation". The Astrophysical Journal (The American Astronomical Society.): 596:L27–L29. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4...7559.text.html.
    96. ^ Ferrarese, Laura; Merritt, David (August 2000). "A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and their Host Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) 539 (1): L9–L12. doi:10.1086/312838. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000ApJ...539L...9F
    97. ^ a b J. H. Krolik (1999). Active Galactic Nuclei. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01151-6. [page needed]
    98. ^ a b c L. S. Sparke, J. S. Gallagher III (2000). Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59704-4. [page needed]
    99. ^ J. Kormendy, D. Richstone (1995). "Inward Bound---The Search For Supermassive Black Holes In Galactic Nuclei". Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics 33: 581–624. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.33.090195.003053. Bibcode: 1995ARA&A..33..581K.
    100. ^ a b Gillessen, S.; Eisenhauer, F.; Trippe, S.; Alexander, T.; Genzel, R.; Martins, F.; Ott, T. (2009). "Monitoring Stellar Orbits Around the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center". Astrophysical Journal 692: 1075–1109. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/692/2/1075. arXiv:0810.4674. edit
    101. ^ a b Ghez, A. M.; Klein, B. L.; Morris, M.; Becklin, E. E. (1998). "High Proper‐Motion Stars in the Vicinity of Sagittarius A*: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy". The Astrophysical Journal 509: 678. doi:10.1086/306528. edit
    102. ^ a b Bozza, Valerio (2009). "Gravitational Lensing by Black Holes". arΧiv:0911.2187 [gr-qc].
    103. ^ Kovacs; Cheng; Harko (2009). "Can stellar mass black holes be quark stars?". arΧiv:0908.2672 [astro-ph.HE].
    104. ^ Alexander Kusenko (2006). "Properties and signatures of supersymmetric Q-balls". arΧiv:hep-ph/0612159 [hep-ph].
    105. ^ Hansson, J.; Sandin, F. (2005). "Preon stars: a new class of cosmic compact objects". Physics Letters B 616: 1. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2005.04.034. edit
    106. ^ Kiefer, C. (2006). "Quantum gravity: general introduction and recent developments". Annalen der Physik 15: 129–148. doi:10.1002/andp.200510175. edit
    107. ^ Skenderis, K.; Taylor, M. (2008). "The fuzzball proposal for black holes". Physics Reports 467: 117. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2008.08.001. edit
    108. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1998). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. [page needed]
    109. ^ a b Wald (1999). "The Thermodynamics of Black Holes". arΧiv:gr-qc/9912119v2 [gr-qc].
    110. ^ Gerard 't Hooft (2000). "The Holographic Principle". arΧiv:hep-th/0003004 [hep-th].
    111. ^ Strominger, A.; Vafa, C. (1996). "Microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy". Physics Letters B 379: 99. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(96)00345-0. edit
    112. ^ Carlip, S. (2009). "Black Hole Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics". Lect.Notes Phys. 769: 89–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88460-6_3. edit
    113. ^ Hawking, Stephen. "Does God Play Dice?". http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/...liclectures/64. Retrieved 2009-03-14.

    Further reading

    Popular reading

    * Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Black Holes in Space-Time. Watts Franklin. ISBN 0-531-12524-6. .
    * Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, Inc. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. .
    * Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, Roger (1996). The Nature of Space and Time. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03791-2. http://books.google.com/?id=LstaQTXP65cC. .
    * 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. .
    * Stern, B. (2008). "Blackhole". http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Blackhole_%28Stern%29. , poem.
    * Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-31276-3. .
    * Wheeler, J. Craig (2007). Cosmic Catastrophes (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85714-7.

    University textbooks and monographs

    * Carroll, Sean M. (2004). Spacetime and Geometry. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-8732-3. , the lecture notes on which the book was based are available for free from Sean Carroll's website.
    * Carter, B. (1973). "Black hole equilibrium states". In DeWitt, B.S.; DeWitt, C.. Black Holes. .
    * Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1999). Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850370-9. .
    * Frolov, V.P.; Novikov, I.D. (1998). Black hole physics. .
    * Hawking, S.W.; Ellis, G.F.R. (1973). Large Scale Structure of space time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521099064. http://books.google.com/?id=QagG_KI7Ll8C. .
    * 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. .

    Review papers

    * Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    * Gallo, E.; Marolf, D. (2009). "Resource Letter BH-2: Black Holes". American Journal of Physics 77: 294. doi:10.1119/1.3056569. arXiv:0806.2316. edit
    * Hughes, Scott A. (2005). "Trust but verify: The case for astrophysical black holes". arΧiv:hep-ph/0511217v2 [hep-ph]. Lecture notes from 2005 SLAC Summer Ins ute.

    External links
    Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Black holes

    * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Singularities and Black Holes" by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich.
    * "Black hole" on Scholarpedia.
    * Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull - Interactive multimedia Web site about the physics and astronomy of black holes from the Space Telescope Science Ins ute
    * FAQ on black holes
    * "Schwarzschild Geometry" on Andrew Hamilton’s website
    * UT Brownsville Group Simulates Spinning Black-Hole Binaries
    * Advanced Mathematics of Black Hole Evaporation

    Videos

    * 16-year long study tracks stars orbiting Milky Way black hole
    * Yale University Video Lecture: Introduction to Black Holes at Google Video.
    * Movie of Black Hole Candidate from Max Planck Ins ute

    News

    * "Black Hole confirmed in Milky Way." Retrieved December 10, 2008
    * Black Hole Research News

  4. #4
    808s & Heartbreak Kool Bob Love's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Post Count
    8,867
    A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.[1] Quantum mechanics predicts that black holes also emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature decreases with the mass of the black hole, making it unlikely to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass.

    Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can be observed through its interaction with other matter. A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space. Alternatively, when gas falls into a stellar black hole from a companion star, the gas spirals inward, heating to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and Earth-orbiting telescopes.

    Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates, and have also found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. In 1998, astronomers found compelling evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than 2 million solar masses is located near the Sagittarius A* region in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and more recent results using additional data find evidence that the supermassive black hole is more than 4 million solar masses.
    Contents
    [hide]

    * 1 History
    o 1.1 General relativity
    o 1.2 Golden age
    * 2 Properties and structure
    o 2.1 Physical properties
    o 2.2 Event horizon
    o 2.3 Singularity
    o 2.4 Photon sphere
    o 2.5 Ergosphere
    * 3 Formation and evolution
    o 3.1 Gravitational collapse
    + 3.1.1 Primordial black holes in the Big Bang
    o 3.2 High-energy collisions
    o 3.3 Growth
    o 3.4 Evaporation
    * 4 Observational evidence
    o 4.1 Accretion of matter
    o 4.2 X-ray binaries
    + 4.2.1 Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow
    + 4.2.2 Quasi-periodic oscillations
    o 4.3 Gamma ray bursts
    o 4.4 Galactic nuclei
    o 4.5 Gravitational lensing
    o 4.6 Alternatives
    * 5 Open questions
    o 5.1 Entropy and thermodynamics
    o 5.2 Black hole unitarity
    * 6 See also
    * 7 Notes
    * 8 References
    * 9 Further reading
    * 10 External links

    History
    Schwarzschild black hole
    Simulation of gravitational lensing by a black hole which distorts the image of a galaxy in the background (click here for larger animation)

    The idea of a body so massive that even light could not escape was first put forward by geologist John Mic in a letter written to Henry Cavendish in 1783 to the Royal Society:

    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.
    —John Mic [2]

    In 1796, 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).[3][4] Such "dark stars" were largely ignored in the nineteenth century, since it was not understood how a massless wave such as light could be influenced by gravity.[5]
    General relativity

    In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, having earlier shown that gravity does influence light's motion. A few months later, Karl Schwarzschild gave the solution for the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass.[6] A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass and wrote more extensively about its properties.[7] This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, where it became singular, meaning that some of the terms in the Einstein equations became infinite. The nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time. In 1924, Arthur Eddington showed that the singularity disappeared after a change of coordinates (see Eddington coordinates), although it took until 1933 for Georges Lemaître to realize that this meant the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was an unphysical coordinate singularity.[8]

    In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using general relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit) would collapse.[citation needed] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[9] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[10] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately three solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[11]

    Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this property, the collapsed stars were called "frozen stars,"[12] because 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. This is a known property of modern black holes, but it must be emphasized that the light from the surface of the frozen star becomes redshifted very fast, turning the black hole black very quickly. Many physicists could not accept the idea of time standing still at the Schwarzschild radius, and there was little interest in the subject for over 20 years.
    Golden age
    See also: Golden age of general relativity

    In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface r = 2m [in geometrized units, i.e. 2Gm/c2, where r is the radius of the surface and m is the mass of the black hole] as an event horizon, "a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction".[13] This did not strictly contradict Oppenheimer's results, but extended them to include the point of view of infalling observers. Finkelstein's solution extended the Schwarzschild solution for the future of observers falling into the black hole. A complete extension had already been found by Martin Kruskal, who was urged to publish it.[14]

    These results came at the beginning of the golden age of general relativity, which is marked by general relativity and black holes becoming mainstream subjects of research. This process was helped by the discovery of pulsars in 1967,[15][16] which were within a few years shown to be rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars, like black holes, were regarded as just theoretical curiosities; but the discovery of pulsars showed their physical relevance and spurred a further interest in all types of compact objects that might be formed by gravitational collapse.

    In this period more general black hole solutions where found. In 1963, Roy Kerr found the exact solution for a rotating black hole. Two years later Ezra T. Newman found the axisymmetric solution for a black hole which is both rotating and electrically charged.[17] Through the work of Werner Israel,[18] Brandon Carter,[19][20] and D. C. Robinson[21] the no-hair theorem emerged, stating that a stationary black hole solution is completely described by the three parameters of the Kerr–Newman metric; mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.[22]

    For a long time, it was suspected that the strange features of the black hole solutions were pathological artefacts from the symmetry conditions imposed, and that the singularities would not appear in generic situations. This view was held in particular by Belinsky, Khalatnikov, and Lif z, who tried to prove that no singularities appear in generic solutions. However, in the late sixties Roger Penrose[23] and Stephen Hawking used global techniques to prove that singularities are generic.[24]

    Work by James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, and Hawking in the early 1970s led to the formulation of the laws of black hole mechanics.[25] These laws describe the behaviour of a black hole in close analogy to the laws of thermodynamics by relating mass to energy, area to entropy, and surface gravity to temperature. The analogy was completed when Hawking, in 1974, showed that quantum field theory predicts that black holes should radiate like a black body with a temperature proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole.[26]

    The term "black hole" was first publicly used by John Wheeler during a lecture in 1967. Although he is usually credited with coining the phrase, he always insisted that it was suggested to him by somebody else. The first recorded use of the term is in a 1964 letter by Anne Ewing to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[27] After Wheeler's use of the term, it was quickly adopted in general use.
    Properties and structure

    The no-hair theorem states that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, charge, and angular momentum.[22] Any two black holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable according to classical (i.e. non-quantum) mechanics.

    These properties are special because they are visible from outside the black hole. For example, a charged black hole repels other like charges just like any other charged object. Similarly, the total mass inside a sphere containing a black hole can be found by using the gravitational analog of Gauss's law, the ADM mass, far away from the black hole.[28] Likewise, the angular momentum can be measured from far away using frame dragging by the gravitomagnetic field.

    When an object falls into a black hole, any information about the shape of the object or distribution of charge on it is evenly distributed along the horizon of the black hole, and is lost to outside observers. The behavior of the horizon in this situation is closely analogous to that of a conductive stretchy membrane with friction and electrical resistance, a dissipative system (see membrane paradigm).[29] This is different from other field theories like electromagnetism, which does not have any friction or resistivity at the microscopic level, because they are time-reversible. Because the black hole eventually achieves a stable state with only three parameters, there is no way to avoid losing information about the initial conditions: the gravitational and electric fields of the black hole give very little information about what went in. The information that is lost includes every quan y that cannot be measured far away from the black hole horizon, including the total baryon number, lepton number, and all the other nearly conserved pseudo-charges of particle physics. This behavior is so puzzling that it has been called the black hole information loss paradox.[30][31][32]
    Physical properties

    The simplest black hole has mass but neither electric charge nor angular momentum. These black holes are often referred to as Schwarzschild black holes after the physicist Karl Schwarzschild who discovered this solution in 1915.[6] According to Birkhoff's theorem, it is the only vacuum solution that is spherically symmetric.[33] This means that there is no observable difference between the gravitational field of such a black hole and that of any other spherical object of the same mass. The popular notion of a black hole "sucking in everything" in its surroundings is therefore only correct near the black hole horizon; far away, the external gravitational field is identical to that of any other body of the same mass.[34]

    Solutions describing more general black holes also exist. Charged black holes are described by the Reissner-Nordström metric, while the Kerr metric describes a rotating black hole. The most general stationary black hole solution known is the Kerr-Newman metric, which describes a black hole with both charge and angular momentum.

    While the mass of a black hole can take any positive value, the charge and angular momentum are constrained by the mass. In Planck units, the total electric charge Q and the total angular momentum J are expected to satisfy

    Q^2+\left ( \tfrac{J}{M} \right )^2\le M^2\,

    for a black hole of mass M. Black holes saturating this inequality are called extremal. Solutions of Einstein's equations violating the inequality exist, but do not have a horizon. These solutions have naked singularities and are deemed unphysical. The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter.[35] This is supported by numerical simulations.[36]

    Due to the relatively large strength of the electromagnetic force, black holes forming from the collapse of stars are expected to retain the nearly neutral charge of the star. Rotation, however, is expected to be a common feature of compact objects, and the black-hole candidate binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105[37] appears to have an angular momentum near the maximum allowed value.
    Class Mass Size
    Supermassive black hole ~105–109 MSun ~0.001–10 AU
    Intermediate-mass black hole ~103 MSun ~103 km = REarth
    Stellar black hole ~10 MSun ~30 km
    Micro black hole up to ~MMoon up to ~0.1 mm

    Black holes are commonly classified according to their mass, independent of angular momentum J or electric charge Q. The size of a black hole, as determined by the radius of the event horizon, or Schwarzschild radius, is roughly proportional to the mass M through

    r_\mathrm{sh} =\frac{2GM}{c^2} \approx 2.95\, \frac{M}{M_\mathrm{Sun}}~\mathrm{km,}

    where rsh is the Schwarzschild radius and MSun is the mass of the Sun. This relation is exact only for black holes with zero charge and angular momentum, for more general black holes it can differ up to a factor of 2. The table on the right lists the various classes of black hole that are distinguished.
    Event horizon
    Main article: Event horizon
    Image:BH-no-escape-1.svg
    Far away from the black hole a particle can move in any direction. It is only restricted by the speed of light.
    Image:BH-no-escape-2.svg
    Closer to the black hole spacetime starts to deform. There are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away.
    Image:BH-no-escape-3.svg
    Inside of the event horizon all paths bring the particle closer to the center of the black hole. It is no longer possible for the particle to escape.

    The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon—a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.[38]

    As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a large mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole.[39]

    To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole.[40] Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it.[41] At the same time, all processes on this object slow down causing emitted light to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift.[42] Eventually, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen.

    On the other hand, an observer falling into a black hole does not notice any of these effects as he crosses the event horizon. According to his own clock, he crosses the event horizon after a finite time, although he is unable to determine exactly when he crosses it, as it is impossible to determine the location of the event horizon from local observations.[43]

    For a non rotating (static) black hole, the Schwarzschild radius delimits a spherical event horizon. The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to the mass.[44] Rotating black holes have distorted, nonspherical event horizons. Since the event horizon is not a material surface but rather merely a mathematically defined demarcation boundary, nothing prevents matter or radiation from entering a black hole, only from exiting one. The description of black holes given by general relativity is known to be an approximation, and some scientists expect that quantum gravity effects will become significant near the vicinity of the event horizon.[45] This would allow observations of matter near a black hole's event horizon to be used to indirectly study general relativity and proposed extensions to it.
    Singularity
    Main article: Gravitational singularity

    At the center of a black hole as described by general relativity lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite.[46] For a non-rotating black hole this region takes the shape of a single point and for a rotating black hole it is smeared out to form a ring singularity lying in the plane of rotation.[47] In both cases the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution.[48] The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density.

    An observer falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e. non-rotating and no charges) cannot avoid the singularity. Any attempt to do so will only shorten the time taken to get there.[49] When they reach the singularity, they are crushed to infinite density and their mass is added to the total of the black hole. Before that happens, they will have been torn apart by the growing tidal forces in a process sometimes referred to as spaghettification or the noodle effect.[50]

    In the case of a charged (Reissner–Nordström) or rotating (Kerr) black hole it is possible to avoid the singularity. Extending these solutions as far as possible reveals the hypothetical possibility of exiting the black hole into a different spacetime with the black hole acting as a wormhole.[51] The possibility of traveling to another universe is however only theoretical, since any perturbation will destroy this possibility.[52] It also appears to be possible to follow closed timelike curves (going back to one's own past) around the Kerr singularity, which lead to problems with causality like the grandfather paradox.[53] It is expected that none of these peculiar effects would survive in a proper quantum mechanical treatment of rotating and charged black holes.[54]

    The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory.[55] This breakdown, however, is expected; it occurs in a situation where quantum mechanical effects should describe these actions due to the extremely high density and therefore particle interactions. To date it has not been possible to combine quantum and gravitational effects into a single theory. It is generally expected that a theory of quantum gravity will feature black holes without singularities.[56][57]
    Photon sphere
    Main article: Photon sphere

    The 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 the Schwarzschild radius. The orbits are dynamically unstable, hence any small perturbation (such as a particle of infalling matter) will grow over time, either setting it on an outward trajectory escaping the black hole or on an inward spiral eventually crossing the event horizon.

    While light can still escape from inside the photon sphere, any light that crosses the photon sphere on an inbound trajectory will be captured by the black hole. Hence any light reaching an outside observer from inside the photon sphere must have been emitted by objects inside the photon sphere but still outside of the event horizon.

    Other compact objects, such as neutron stars, can also have photon spheres.[58] This follows from the fact that the gravitational field of an object does not depend on its actual size, hence any object that is smaller than 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to its mass will indeed have a photon sphere.
    Ergosphere
    Main article: Ergosphere
    The ergosphere is an oblate spheroid region outside of the event horizon, where objects cannot remain stationary.

    Rotating black holes are surrounded by a region of spacetime in which it is impossible to stand still, called the ergosphere. This is the result of a process known as frame-dragging; general relativity predicts that any rotating mass will tend to slightly "drag" along the spacetime immediately surrounding it. Any object near the rotating mass will tend to start moving in the direction of rotation. For a rotating black hole this effect becomes so strong near the event horizon that an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in the opposite direction to just stand still.[59]

    The ergosphere of a black hole is bounded by the (outer) event horizon on the inside and an oblate spheroid, which coincides with the event horizon at the poles and is noticeably wider around the equator. The outer boundary is sometimes called the ergosurface.

    Objects and radiation can escape normally from the ergosphere. Through the Penrose process, objects can emerge from the ergosphere with more energy than they entered. This energy is taken from the rotational energy of the black hole causing it to slow down.[60]
    Formation and evolution

    Considering the exotic nature of black holes, it may be natural to question if such bizarre objects could exist in nature or to suggest that they are merely pathological solutions to Einstein's equations. Einstein himself wrongly thought that black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius.[61] This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years. However, a minority of relativists continued to contend that black holes were physical objects,[62] and by the end of the 1960s, they had persuaded the majority of researchers in the field that there is no obstacle to forming an event horizon.

    Once an event horizon forms, Roger Penrose proved that a singularity will form somewhere inside it.[23] Shortly afterwards, Stephen Hawking showed that many cosmological solutions describing the Big Bang have singularities without scalar fields or other exotic matter (see Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems). The Kerr solution, the no-hair theorem and the laws of black hole thermodynamics showed that the physical properties of black holes were simple and comprehensible, making them respectable subjects for research.[63] The primary formation process for black holes is expected to be the gravitational collapse of heavy objects such as stars, but there are also more exotic processes that can lead to the production of black holes.
    Gravitational collapse
    Main article: Gravitational collapse

    Gravitational collapse occurs when an object's internal pressure is insufficient to resist the object's own gravity. For stars this usually occurs either because a star has too little "fuel" left to maintain its temperature through stellar nucleosynthesis, or because a star which would have been stable receives 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).[64]

    The collapse may be stopped by the degeneracy pressure of the star's cons uents, condensing the matter in an exotic denser state. The result is one of the various 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.[64]

    If the mass of the remnant exceeds about 3–4 solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit)—either because the original star was very heavy or because the remnant collected additional mass through accretion of matter—even the degeneracy pressure of neutrons is insufficient to stop the collapse. After this, no known mechanism (except possibly quark degeneracy pressure, see quark star) is powerful enough to stop the collapse and the object will inevitably collapse to a black hole.[64]

    This gravitational collapse of heavy stars is assumed to be responsible for the formation of stellar mass black holes. Star formation in the young universe may have resulted in very heavy stars, which upon their collapse would have produced black holes of up to 103 solar masses. These heavy black holes could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of most galaxies.[65]

    While most of the energy released during gravitational collapse is emitted very quickly, an outside observer does not actually see the end of this process. Even though the collapse takes a finite amount of time from the reference frame of infalling matter, a distant observer sees the infalling material slow and halt just above the event horizon, due to gravitational time dilation. Light from the collapsing material takes longer and longer to reach the observer, with the light emitted just before the event horizon forms delayed an infinite amount of time. Thus the external observer never sees the formation of the event horizon; instead, the collapsing material seems to become dimmer and increasingly red-shifted, eventually fading away.[66]
    Primordial black holes in the Big Bang

    Gravitational collapse requires great densities. In the current epoch of the universe these high densities are only found in stars, but in the early universe shortly after the big bang densities were much greater, possibly allowing for the creation of black holes. The high density alone is not enough to allow the formation of black holes since a uniform mass distribution will not allow the mass to bunch up. In order for primordial black holes to form in such a dense medium, there must be initial density perturbations which can then grow under their own gravity. Different models for the early universe vary widely in their predictions of the size of these perturbations. Various models predict the creation of black holes, ranging from a Planck mass to hundreds of thousands of solar masses.[67] Primordial black holes could thus account for the creation of any type of black hole.
    High-energy collisions
    A simulated event in the CMS detector, a collision in which a micro black hole may be created.

    Gravitational collapse is not the only process that could create black holes. In principle, black holes could also be created in high-energy collisions that create sufficient density. However, to date, no such events have ever been detected either directly or indirectly as a deficiency of the mass balance in particle accelerator experiments.[68] This suggests that there must be a lower limit for the mass of black holes. Theoretically, this boundary is expected to lie around the Planck mass (mP = √ħc/G ≈ 1.2×1019 GeV/c2 ≈ 2.2×10−8 kg), where quantum effects are expected to make the theory of general relativity break down completely.[69] This would put the creation of black holes firmly out of reach of any high energy process occurring on or near the Earth. Certain developments in quantum gravity however suggest that the Planck mass could be much lower: some braneworld scenarios for example put it much lower, maybe even as low as 1 TeV/c2[70] This would make it possible for micro black holes to be created in the high energy collisions occurring when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, or possibly in the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These theories are however very speculative, and the creation of black holes in these processes is deemed unlikely by many specialists.[71] Even if such micro black holes should be formed in these collisions, it is expected that they would evaporate in about 10−25 seconds, posing no threat to Earth[72]
    Growth

    Once a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing additional matter. Any black hole will continually absorb gas and interstellar dust from its direct surroundings and omnipresent cosmic background radiation. This is the primary process through which supermassive black holes seem to have grown.[65] A similar process has been suggested for the formation of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters.[73]

    Another possibility is for a black hole to merge with other objects such as stars or even other black holes. This is thought to have been important especially for the early development of supermassive black holes, which are thought to have formed from the coagulation of many smaller objects.[65] The process has also been proposed as the origin of some intermediate-mass black holes.[74][75]
    Evaporation
    Main article: Hawking radiation

    In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes are not entirely black but emit small amounts of thermal radiation.[26] He got this result by applying quantum field theory in a static black hole background. The result of his calculations is that a black hole should emit particles in a perfect black body spectrum. This effect has become known as Hawking radiation. Since Hawking's result, many others have verified the effect through various methods.[76] If his theory of black hole radiation is correct, then black holes are expected to emit a thermal spectrum of radiation, and thereby lose mass, because according to the theory of relativity mass is just highly condensed energy (E = mc2).[26] Black holes will shrink and evaporate over time. The temperature of this spectrum (Hawking temperature) is proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole, which for a Schwarzschild black hole is inversely proportional to the mass. Large black holes, therefore, emit less radiation than small black holes.

    A stellar black hole of one solar mass has a Hawking temperature of about 100 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background. Stellar mass (and larger) black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and will thus grow instead of shrink. To have a Hawking temperature larger than 2.7 K (and be able to evaporate), a black hole needs to be lighter than the Moon (and therefore a diameter of less than a tenth of a millimeter).[77]

    On the other hand, if a black hole is very small the radiation effects are expected to become very strong. Even a black hole that is heavy compared to a human would evaporate in an instant. A black hole the weight of a car (~10−24 m) would only take a nanosecond to evaporate, during which time it would briefly have a luminosity more than 200 times that of the sun. Lighter black holes are expected to evaporate even faster, for example a black hole of mass 1 TeV/c2 would take less than 10−88 seconds to evaporate completely. Of course, for such a small black hole quantum gravitation effects are expected to play an important role and could even – although current developments in quantum gravity do not indicate so[78] – hypothetically make such a small black hole stable.[79]
    Observational evidence

    By their very nature, black holes do not directly emit any signals other than the hypothetical Hawking radiation; since the Hawking radiation for an astrophysical black hole is predicted to be very weak, this makes it impossible to directly detect astrophysical black holes from the Earth. A possible exception to the Hawking radiation being weak is the last stage of the evaporation of light (primordial) black holes; searches for such flashes in the past has proven unsuccessful and provides stringent limits on the possibility of existence of light primordial black holes.[80] NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 will continue the search for these flashes.[81]

    Astrophysicists searching for black holes thus have to rely on indirect observations. A black hole's existence can sometimes be inferred by observing its gravitational interactions with its surroundings.
    Accretion of matter
    See also: Accretion disc
    Formation of extragalactic jets from a black hole's accretion disk

    Due to conservation of angular momentum, gas falling into the gravitational well created by a massive object will typically form a disc-like structure around the object. Friction within the disc causes angular momentum to be transported outward allowing matter to fall further inward releasing potential energy and increasing the temperature of the gas.[82] In the case of compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, the gas in the inner regions becomes so hot that it will emit vast amounts of radiation (mainly X-rays), which may be detected by telescopes. This process of accretion is one of the most efficient energy producing process known; up to 40% of the rest mass of the accreted material can be emitted in radiation.[82] (In nuclear fusion only about 0.7% of the rest mass will be emitted as energy.) In many cases, accretion discs are accompanied by relativistic jets emitted along the poles, which carry away much of the energy. The mechanism for the creation of these jets is currently not well understood.

    As such many of the universe's more energetic phenomena have been attributed to the accretion of matter on black holes. In particular, active galactic nuclei and quasars are thought to be the accretion discs of supermassive black holes.[83] Similarly, X-ray binaries are thought to be binary star systems in which one of the two stars is a compact object accreting matter from its companion.[83] It has also been suggested that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the accretion disks of intermediate-mass black holes.[84]
    X-ray binaries
    See also: X-ray binary

    X-ray binaries are binary star systems that are luminous in the X-ray part of the spectrum. These X-ray emissions are generally thought to be caused by one of the component stars being a compact object accreting matter from the other (regular) star. The presence of an ordinary star in such a system provides a unique opportunity for studying the central object and determining if it might be a black hole.
    Artist impression of a binary system with an accretion disk around a compact object being fed by material from the companion star.

    If such a system emits signals that can be directly traced back to the compact object, it cannot be a black hole. The absence of such a signal does, however, not exclude the possibility that the compact object is a neutron star. By studying the companion star it is often possible to obtain the orbital parameters of the system and obtain an estimate for the mass of the compact object. If this is much larger than the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (that is, the maximum mass a neutron star can have before collapsing) then the object cannot be a neutron star and is generally expected to be a black hole.[83]

    The first strong candidate for a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in this way by Charles Thomas Bolton[85] and Webster and Murdin[86] in 1972.[87][88] Some doubt, however, remained due to the uncertainties resultant from the companion star being much heavier than the candidate black hole.[83] Currently, better candidates for black holes are found in a class of X-ray binaries called soft X-ray transients.[83] In this class of system the companion star is relatively low mass allowing for more accurate estimates in the black hole mass. Moreover, these systems are only active in X-ray for several months once every 10–50 years. During the period of low X-ray emission (called quiescence), the accretion disc is extremely faint allowing for detailed observation of the companion star during this period. One of the best such candidates is V404 Cyg.
    Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow

    The faintness of the accretion disc during quiescence is thought to be caused by the flow entering a mode called an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). In this mode, almost all the energy generated by friction in the disc is swept along with the flow instead of radiated away. If this model is correct, then it forms strong qualitative evidence for the presence of an event horizon.[89] Because, if the object at the center of the disc had a solid surface, it would emit large amounts of radiation as the highly energetic gas hits the surface, an effect that is observed for neutron stars in a similar state.[82]
    Quasi-periodic oscillations
    See also: Quasi-periodic oscillations

    The X-ray emissions from accretion disks sometimes exhibit a flickering around certain frequencies. These signals are called quasi-periodic oscillations and are thought to be caused by material moving along the inner edge of the accretion disk (the innermost stable circular orbit). As such their frequency is linked to the mass of the compact object. They can thus be used as an alternative way to determine the mass of potential black holes.[90]
    Gamma ray bursts

    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[91] or by collisions between neutron stars,[92] and both types of event involve sufficient mass and pressure to produce black holes. It appears that a collision between a neutron star and a black hole can also cause a GRB,[93] 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[94] so the black holes associated with them are billions of years old.
    Galactic nuclei
    See also: Active galactic nucleus
    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.

    It is now widely accepted that the center of every or at least nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.[95] The close observational correlation between the mass of this hole and the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy's bulge, known as the M-sigma relation, strongly suggests a connection between the formation of the black hole and the galaxy itself. [96]

    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.[97][98] However, theoretical and observational studies have shown that the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in these galaxies may contain supermassive black holes.[97][98] 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.[98]

    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.[99]

    Currently, the best evidence for a supermassive black hole comes from studying the proper motion of stars near the center of our own Milky Way.[100] Since 1995 astronomers have tracked the motion of 90 stars in a region called Sagittarius A*. By fitting their motion to Keplerian orbits they were able to infer in 1998 that 2.6 million solar masses must be contained in a volume with a radius of 0.02 lightyears.[101] Since then one of the stars—called S2—has completed a full orbit. From the orbital data they were able to place better constraints on the mass and size of the object causing the orbital motion of stars in the Sagittarius A* region, finding that there is a spherical mass of 4.3 million solar masses contained within a radius of less than 0.002 lightyears.[100] While this is more than 3000 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to that mass, it is at least consistent with the central object being a supermassive black hole, and no "realistic cluster [of stars] is physically tenable."[101]
    Gravitational lensing
    Further information: Gravitational lens

    The deformation of spacetime around a massive object causes light rays to be deflected much like light passing through an optic lens. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing. Observations have been made of weak gravitational lensing, in which photons are deflected by only a few arcseconds. However, it has never been directly observed for a black hole.[102] One possibility for observing gravitational lensing by a black hole would be to observe stars in orbit around the black hole. There are several candidates for such an observation in orbit around Sagittarius A*.[102]
    Alternatives

    The evidence for stellar black holes strongly relies on the existence of an upper limit for the mass of a neutron star. The size of this limit heavily depends on the assumptions made about the properties of dense matter. New exotic phases of matter could push up this bound.[83] A phase of free quarks at high density might allow the existence of dense quark stars,[103] and some supersymmetric models predict the existence of Q stars.[104] Some extensions of the standard model posit the existence of preons as fundamental building blocks of quarks and leptons which could hypothetically form preon stars.[105] These hypothetical models could potentially explain a number of observations of stellar black hole candidates. However, it can be shown from general arguments in general relativity that any such object will have a maximum mass.[83]

    Since the average density of a black hole inside its Schwarzschild radius is inversely proportional to the square of its mass, supermassive black holes are much less dense than stellar black holes (the average density of a large supermassive black hole is comparable to that of water).[83] Consequently, the physics of matter forming a supermassive black hole is much better understood and the possible alternative explanations for supermassive black hole observations are much more mundane. For example, a supermassive black hole could be modelled by a large cluster of very dark objects. However, typically such alternatives are not stable enough to explain the supermassive black hole candidates.[83]

    The evidence for stellar and supermassive black holes implies that in order for black holes not to form, general relativity must fail as a theory of gravity, perhaps due to the onset of quantum mechanical corrections. A much anticipated feature of a theory of quantum gravity is that it will not feature singularities or event horizons (and thus no black holes).[106] In recent years, much attention has been drawn by the fuzzball model in string theory. Based on calculations in specific situations in string theory, the proposal suggest that generically the individual states of a black hole solution do not have an event horizon or singularity (and can thus not really be considered to be a black hole), but that for a distant observer the statistical average of such states does appear just like an ordinary black hole in general relativity.[107]
    Open questions
    Entropy and thermodynamics
    Further information: Black hole thermodynamics
    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.

    In 1971, Stephen Hawking showed under general conditions[Note 1] that the total area of the event horizons of any collection of classical black holes can never decrease, even if they collide and merge.[108] This result, now known as the second law of black hole mechanics, is remarkably similar to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of a system can never decrease. As with classical objects at absolute zero temperature, it was assumed that black holes had zero entropy. If this were the case, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated by entropy-laden matter 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.[109]

    The link with the laws of thermodynamics was further strengthened by Hawking's discovery that quantum field theory predicts that a black hole radiates blackbody radiation at a constant temperature. This seemingly causes a violation of the second law of black hole mechanics, since the radiation will carry away energy from the black hole causing it to shrink. The radiation, however also carries away entropy, and it can be proven under general assumptions that the sum of the entropy of the matter surrounding the black hole and one quarter of the area of the horizon as measured in Planck units is in fact always increasing. This allows the formulation of the first law of black hole mechanics as an analogue of the first law of thermodynamics, with the mass acting as energy, the surface gravity as temperature and the area as entropy.[109]

    One puzzling feature is that the entropy of a black hole scales with its area rather than with its volume, since entropy is normally an extensive quan y that scales linearly with the volume of the system. This odd property led 't Hooft and Susskind to propose the holographic principle, which suggests that anything that happens in volume of spacetime can be described by data on the boundary of that volume.[110]

    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.). Without a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, one cannot perform such a computation for black holes. Some progress has been made in various approaches to quantum gravity. In 1995, Strominger and Vafa showed that counting the microstates of a specific supersymmetric black hole in string theory reproduced the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy.[111] Since then, similar results have been reported for different black holes both in string theory and in other approaches to quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity.[112]
    Black hole unitarity
    Main article: Black hole information paradox
    Unsolved problems in physics Is physical information lost in black holes? Question mark2.svg

    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 (T-symmetry). Liouville's theorem dictates conservation of phase space volume, which can be thought of as "conservation of information", so there is some problem even in classical physics. In quantum mechanics, this corresponds to a vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the conservation of probability (it can also be thought of as a conservation of quantum phase space volume as expressed by the density matrix).[113]
    See also

    * Black holes in fiction
    * Black string
    * Kugelblitz (astrophysics)
    * List of black holes
    * Susskind-Hawking battle


    He1523a.jpg Star portal

    * Timeline of black hole physics
    * White hole
    * Wormhole

    Notes

    1. ^ In particular, he assumed that all matter satisfies the weak energy condition.

    References

    1. ^ Davies, P. C. W. (1978). "Thermodynamics of Black Holes". Rep. Prog. Phys. 41: 1313–1355. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/41/8/004. http://cosmos.asu.edu/publications/p...Holes%2034.pdf.
    2. ^ Mic , J. (1784). "On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude, &c. of the Fixed Stars, in Consequence of the Diminution of the Velocity of Their Light, in Case Such a Diminution Should be Found to Take Place in any of Them, and Such Other Data Should be Procured from Observations, as Would be Farther Necessary for That Purpose". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (London) (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 74) 74: 35–57. http://www.jstor.org/pss/106576.
    3. ^ "Dark Stars (1783)". Thinkquest. 1999. http://library.thinkquest.org/25715/....htm#darkstars. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
    4. ^ Laplace; see Israel, Werner (1987), "Dark stars: the evolution of an idea", in Hawking, Stephen W. & Israel, Werner, 300 Years of Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, Sec. 7.4
    5. ^ Thorne (1994:123–124).
    6. ^ a b Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 189–196. and Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Kugel aus inkompressibler Flüssigkeit nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 424–434.
    7. ^ Droste, J. (1915). "On the field of a single centre in Einstein's theory of gravitation". Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen Proceedings 17 (3): 998–1011.
    8. ^ 't Hooft, G. (2009). Introduction to the Theory of Black Holes. pp. 47–48. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectur...cturenotes.pdf.
    9. ^ Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    10. ^ Harpaz, Amos (1994). Stellar evolution. A K Peters, Ltd. p. 105. ISBN 1-568-81012-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4VEZv8oo0C. , Extract of page 105
    11. ^ Oppenheimer, J. R. and Volkoff, G. M. (1939-01-03). "On Massive Neutron Cores". Physical Review 55 (4): 374–381. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.55.374. http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v55/i4/p374_1.
    12. ^ Ruffini, Remo and Wheeler, John A. (January 1971). "Introducing the black hole". Physics Today: 30–41. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/1...Phys_Today.pdf.
    13. ^ Finkelstein, David (1958). "Past-Future Asymmetry of the Gravitational Field of a Point Particle". Phys. Rev. 110: 965–967. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.110.965.
    14. ^ Kruskal, M. (1960). "Maximal Extension of Schwarzschild Metric". Physical Review 119: 1743. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.119.1743. edit
    15. ^ Hewish, Antony; Bell, S. J.; Pilkington, J. D. H.; Scott, P. F.; Collins, R. A. (1968). "Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source". Nature 217: 709–713. doi:10.1038/217709a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../235037a0.html. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    16. ^ Pilkington, J D H; Hewish, A.; Bell, S. J.; Cole, T. W. (1968). "Observations of some further Pulsed Radio Sources". Nature 218: 126–129. doi:10.1038/218126a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...f/218126a0.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    17. ^ Newman, E. T.; Couch, E.; Chinnapared, K.; Exton, A.; Prakash, A.; Torrence, R. (1965). "Metric of a Rotating, Charged Mass". Journal of Mathematical Physics 6: 918. doi:10.1063/1.1704351. edit
    18. ^ Israel, W. (1967). "Event Horizons in Static Vacuum Space-Times". Physical Review 164: 1776. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.164.1776. edit
    19. ^ Carter, B. (1971). "Axisymmetric Black Hole Has Only Two Degrees of Freedom". Physical Review Letters 26: 331. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.26.331. edit
    20. ^ Carter, B. (1977). "The vacuum black hole uniqueness theorem and its conceivable generalisations.". Proceedings of the 1st Marcel Grossmann meeting on general relativity. pp. 243–254.
    21. ^ Robinson, D. (1975). "Uniqueness of the Kerr Black Hole". Physical Review Letters 34: 905. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.34.905. edit
    22. ^ a b Heusler, M. (1998). "Stationary Black Holes: Uniqueness and Beyond". Living Rev. Relativity 1 (6). http://www.livingreviews.org/Article...1998-6heusler/. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    23. ^ a b Penrose, R. (1965). "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities". Physical Review Letters 14: 57. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.57. edit
    24. ^ Ford, L. H. (2003). International Journal of Theoretical Physics 42: 1219–1227. doi:10.1023/A:1025754515197. edit
    25. ^ Bardeen, J.M.; Carter, B.; Hawking, S.W. (1973). "The four laws of black hole mechanics". Comm. Math. Phys. 31 (2): 161–170.. doi:10.1007/BF01645742. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.cmp/1103858973.
    26. ^ a b c Hawking, S.W. (1974). "Black hole explosions?". Nature 248: 30–31. doi:10.1038/248030a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../248030a0.html.
    27. ^ Michael Quinion. "Black Hole". World Wide Words. http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-bla1.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-17.
    28. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 253
    29. ^ Black Holes, The Membrane Paradigm. ISBN 9780300037708.
    30. ^ Anderson, Warren G. (1996). "The Black Hole Information Loss Problem". http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...info_loss.html. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
    31. ^ John Preskill(1994)"Black holes and information: A crisis in quantum physics"
    32. ^ Daniel Carmody(2008)"The Fate of Quantum Information in a Black Hole"
    33. ^ "Garrett Birkhoff’s Theorem". http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~whittyr/Mat...tDBirkhoff.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    34. ^ "Black Holes do not suck!". 2006-02-17. http://astro.airynothing.com/2006/02..._not_suck.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    35. ^ For a review see Wald, Robert. M. (1997). "Gravitational Collapse and Cosmic Censorship". http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9710068.
    36. ^ For a discussion of these numerical simulations see Berger, Beverly K. (2002). "Numerical Approaches to Spacetime Singularities". Living Rev. Relativity 5. http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2002-1. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
    37. ^ McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Shafee, Rebecca; Narayan, Ramesh; Remillard, Ronald A.; Davis, Shane W.; Li, Li-Xin (2006). "The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105". Astrophys.J. 652: 518–539. doi:10.1086/508457. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606076.
    38. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 179
    39. ^ "Anatomy of a Black Hole". http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia...kHoleAnat.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    40. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 217
    41. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 218
    42. ^ "Inside a black hole". http://nrumiano.free.fr/Estars/int_bh.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    43. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 222
    44. ^ "Black Holes". Archived from the original on September 13, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/200609131...der/l16_BH.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    45. ^ "Physical nature of the event horizon". http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/pramana/51/693-698.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    46. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 205
    47. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 264–265
    48. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 252
    49. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 237 Exercise 3.
    50. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 182
    51. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 257–259 and 265–266
    52. ^ Droz, S.; Israel, W.; Morsink, S.M. (1996). "Black holes: the inside story". Physics World 9: 34–37.
    53. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 266
    54. ^ Poisson, E.; Israel, W. (1990). "Internal structure of black holes". Physical Review D 41: 1796. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.41.1796. edit
    55. ^ Giamb�o, Roberto. "The geometry of gravitational collapse". http://www.mat.unb.br/~matcont/28_8.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    56. ^ "Black Holes and Quantum Gravity". http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_hawk.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    57. ^ "Ask an Astrophysicist : Quantum Gravity and Black Holes". http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...s/980420b.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    58. ^ Nemiroff, Robert J. (1993). "Visual distortions near a neutron star and black hole". American Journal of Physics 61: 619. doi:10.1119/1.17224.
    59. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.6
    60. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.7
    61. ^ Einstein, A. (1939). "On A Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses". Annals of Mathematics (The Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 40, No. 4) 40 (4): 922–936. doi:10.2307/1968902. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1968902.
    62. ^ "Discovering the Kerr and Kerr-Schild metrics". To appear in "The Kerr Spacetime", Eds D.L. Wiltshire, M. Visser and S.M. Scott, Cambridge Univ. Press. Roy P. Kerr. http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0706.1109. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
    63. ^ Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, R. (January 1970). "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 314 (1519): 529–548. doi:10.1098/rspa.1970.0021. http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.o...9/529.abstract.
    64. ^ a b c Carroll 2004, Section 5.8
    65. ^ a b c Rees, M.J.; Volonteri, M. (2007). "Massive black holes: formation and evolution". In Karas, V.; Matt, G.. Black Holes from Stars to Galaxies – Across the Range of Masses. Cambridge University Press. pp. 51–58. arXiv:astro-ph/0701512.
    66. ^ Penrose, R. (2002). General Relativity and Gravitation 34: 1141–1165. doi:10.1023/A:1016578408204. edit
    67. ^ Carr, B. J. (2005). "Primordial Black Holes: Do They Exist and Are They Useful?". arΧiv:astro-ph/0511743v1 [astro-ph].
    68. ^ Giddings, Steven B.; Thomas, Scott (2002). "High energy colliders as black hole factories: The end of short distance physics". Physical Review D 65: 056010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.65.056010. arXiv:hep-ph/0106219v4.
    69. ^ Harada, T. (2006). "Is there a black hole minimum mass?". Physical Review D 74: 084004. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.74.084004. edit
    70. ^ Arkani–Hamed, N (1998). "The hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter". Physics Letters B 429: 263. doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(98)00466-3. arXiv:9803315v1.
    71. ^ LHC Safety Assessment Group. "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions". CERN. http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf.
    72. ^ Cavaglià, Marco (29 January 2007). "Particle accelerators as black hole factories?". Einstein-Online. Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Ins ute).
    73. ^ Vesperini, E.; McMillan, S.L.W.; D'Ercole, A.; D'Antona, F. (2010). "Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Early Globular Clusters". arΧiv:1003.3470 [astro-ph.GA].
    74. ^ Zwart, S.; Baumgardt, H.; Hut, P.; Makino, J.; McMillan, S. (2004). "Formation of massive black holes through runaway collisions in dense young star clusters". Nature 428 (6984): 724–726. doi:10.1038/nature02448. PMID 15085124. edit
    75. ^ O’leary, R. M.; Rasio, F. A.; Fregeau, J. M.; Ivanova, N.; O’shaughnessy, R. (2006). "Binary Mergers and Growth of Black Holes in Dense Star Clusters". The Astrophysical Journal 637: 937. doi:10.1086/498446. edit
    76. ^ Page, Don N (2005). "Hawking radiation and black hole thermodynamics". New Journal of Physics 7: 203. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/203. arXiv:hep-th/0409024v3.
    77. ^ "Einstein online". Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics. 2010. http://www.einstein-online.info/elem...et_language=en. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    78. ^ Giddings, S. B.; Mangano, M. L. (2008). "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes". Physical Review D 78: 035009. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.78.035009. edit
    79. ^ Peskin, M. (2008). "The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider?". Physics 1: 14–20. doi:10.1103/Physics.1.14. edit
    80. ^ Fichtel, C.E.; Bertsch, D.L.; Dingus, B.L.; Esposito, J.A.; Hartman, R.C.; Hunter, S.D.; Kanbach, G.;; Kniffen, D.A. et al. (1994). "Search of the energetic gamma-ray experiment telescope (EGRET) data for high-energy gamma-ray microsecond bursts". Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 434 (2): 557–559. doi:10.1086/174758. ISSN 0004-637X.
    81. ^ Naeye, Robert. Testing Fundamental Physics. NASA.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...l_physics.html. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
    82. ^ a b c McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Remillard, Ronald A. (2006). "Black Hole Binaries". In Lewin, Walter; van der Klis, Michiel. Compact Stellar X-ray Sources. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521826594. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306213. section 4.1.5.
    83. ^ a b c d e f g h i Celotti, A.; Miller, J.C.; Sciama, D.W. (1999). "Astrophysical evidence for the existence of black holes". Class. Quant. Grav. 16. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9912186
    84. ^ Winter, Lisa M.; Mushotzky, Richard F.; Reynolds, Christopher S. (2006). "XMM‐Newton Archival Study of the Ultraluminous X‐Ray Population in Nearby Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 649: 730. doi:10.1086/506579. arXiv:astro-ph/0512480v2.
    85. ^ Bolton, C. T. (1972). "Identification of Cygnus X-1 with HDE 226868". Nature 235: 271–273. doi:10.1038/235271b0.
    86. ^ Webster, B.L; Murdin, P. (1972). "Cygnus X-1—a Spectroscopic Binary with a Heavy Companion ?". Nature 235: 37–38. doi:10.1038/235037a0.
    87. ^ Rolston, Bruce (10 November 1997). The First Black Hole. University of Toronto. http://news.utoronto.ca/bin/bulletin/nov10_97/art4.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    88. ^ Shipman, H. L. (1 January 1975). "The implausible history of triple star models for Cygnus X-1 Evidence for a black hole". Astrophysical Letters 16 (1): 9–12. doi:10.1016/S0304-8853(99)00384-4. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975ApL....16....9S. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    89. ^ Narayan, R.; McClintock, J. (2008). "Advection-dominated accretion and the black hole event horizon". New Astronomy Reviews 51: 733. doi:10.1016/j.newar.2008.03.002. edit
    90. ^ Goddard Space Flight Center (2008-04-01). "NASA scientists identify smallest known black hole". Press release. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-nsi040108.php. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
    91. ^ Bloom, J. S.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Djorgovski, S. G. (2002). "The Observed Offset Distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Their Host Galaxies: A Robust Clue to the Nature of the Progenitors". The Astronomical Journal 123: 1111. doi:10.1086/338893. arXiv:0010176.
    92. ^ Blinnikov, S (1984). "Exploding Neutron Stars in Close Binaries". Soviet Astronomy Letters 10: 177. Bibcode: 1984SvAL...10..177B.
    93. ^ Lattimer, J. M.; Schramm, D. N. (1976). "The tidal disruption of neutron stars by black holes in close binaries". The Astrophysical Journal 210: 549. doi:10.1086/154860.
    94. ^ Paczynski, Bohdan (1995). "How Far Away Are Gamma-Ray Bursters?". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107: 1167. doi:10.1086/133674. arXiv:astro-ph/9505096.
    95. ^ King, Andrew (2003-09-15). "Black Holes, Galaxy Formation, and the MBH-σ Relation". The Astrophysical Journal (The American Astronomical Society.): 596:L27–L29. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4...7559.text.html.
    96. ^ Ferrarese, Laura; Merritt, David (August 2000). "A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and their Host Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) 539 (1): L9–L12. doi:10.1086/312838. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000ApJ...539L...9F
    97. ^ a b J. H. Krolik (1999). Active Galactic Nuclei. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01151-6. [page needed]
    98. ^ a b c L. S. Sparke, J. S. Gallagher III (2000). Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59704-4. [page needed]
    99. ^ J. Kormendy, D. Richstone (1995). "Inward Bound---The Search For Supermassive Black Holes In Galactic Nuclei". Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics 33: 581–624. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.33.090195.003053. Bibcode: 1995ARA&A..33..581K.
    100. ^ a b Gillessen, S.; Eisenhauer, F.; Trippe, S.; Alexander, T.; Genzel, R.; Martins, F.; Ott, T. (2009). "Monitoring Stellar Orbits Around the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center". Astrophysical Journal 692: 1075–1109. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/692/2/1075. arXiv:0810.4674. edit
    101. ^ a b Ghez, A. M.; Klein, B. L.; Morris, M.; Becklin, E. E. (1998). "High Proper‐Motion Stars in the Vicinity of Sagittarius A*: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy". The Astrophysical Journal 509: 678. doi:10.1086/306528. edit
    102. ^ a b Bozza, Valerio (2009). "Gravitational Lensing by Black Holes". arΧiv:0911.2187 [gr-qc].
    103. ^ Kovacs; Cheng; Harko (2009). "Can stellar mass black holes be quark stars?". arΧiv:0908.2672 [astro-ph.HE].
    104. ^ Alexander Kusenko (2006). "Properties and signatures of supersymmetric Q-balls". arΧiv:hep-ph/0612159 [hep-ph].
    105. ^ Hansson, J.; Sandin, F. (2005). "Preon stars: a new class of cosmic compact objects". Physics Letters B 616: 1. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2005.04.034. edit
    106. ^ Kiefer, C. (2006). "Quantum gravity: general introduction and recent developments". Annalen der Physik 15: 129–148. doi:10.1002/andp.200510175. edit
    107. ^ Skenderis, K.; Taylor, M. (2008). "The fuzzball proposal for black holes". Physics Reports 467: 117. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2008.08.001. edit
    108. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1998). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. [page needed]
    109. ^ a b Wald (1999). "The Thermodynamics of Black Holes". arΧiv:gr-qc/9912119v2 [gr-qc].
    110. ^ Gerard 't Hooft (2000). "The Holographic Principle". arΧiv:hep-th/0003004 [hep-th].
    111. ^ Strominger, A.; Vafa, C. (1996). "Microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy". Physics Letters B 379: 99. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(96)00345-0. edit
    112. ^ Carlip, S. (2009). "Black Hole Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics". Lect.Notes Phys. 769: 89–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88460-6_3. edit
    113. ^ Hawking, Stephen. "Does God Play Dice?". http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/...liclectures/64. Retrieved 2009-03-14.

    Further reading

    Popular reading

    * Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Black Holes in Space-Time. Watts Franklin. ISBN 0-531-12524-6. .
    * Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, Inc. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. .
    * Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, Roger (1996). The Nature of Space and Time. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03791-2. http://books.google.com/?id=LstaQTXP65cC. .
    * 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. .
    * Stern, B. (2008). "Blackhole". http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Blackhole_%28Stern%29. , poem.
    * Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-31276-3. .
    * Wheeler, J. Craig (2007). Cosmic Catastrophes (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85714-7.

    University textbooks and monographs

    * Carroll, Sean M. (2004). Spacetime and Geometry. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-8732-3. , the lecture notes on which the book was based are available for free from Sean Carroll's website.
    * Carter, B. (1973). "Black hole equilibrium states". In DeWitt, B.S.; DeWitt, C.. Black Holes. .
    * Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1999). Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850370-9. .
    * Frolov, V.P.; Novikov, I.D. (1998). Black hole physics. .
    * Hawking, S.W.; Ellis, G.F.R. (1973). Large Scale Structure of space time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521099064. http://books.google.com/?id=QagG_KI7Ll8C. .
    * 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. .

    Review papers

    * Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    * Gallo, E.; Marolf, D. (2009). "Resource Letter BH-2: Black Holes". American Journal of Physics 77: 294. doi:10.1119/1.3056569. arXiv:0806.2316. edit
    * Hughes, Scott A. (2005). "Trust but verify: The case for astrophysical black holes". arΧiv:hep-ph/0511217v2 [hep-ph]. Lecture notes from 2005 SLAC Summer Ins ute.

    External links
    Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Black holes

    * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Singularities and Black Holes" by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich.
    * "Black hole" on Scholarpedia.
    * Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull - Interactive multimedia Web site about the physics and astronomy of black holes from the Space Telescope Science Ins ute
    * FAQ on black holes
    * "Schwarzschild Geometry" on Andrew Hamilton’s website
    * UT Brownsville Group Simulates Spinning Black-Hole Binaries
    * Advanced Mathematics of Black Hole Evaporation

    Videos

    * 16-year long study tracks stars orbiting Milky Way black hole
    * Yale University Video Lecture: Introduction to Black Holes at Google Video.
    * Movie of Black Hole Candidate from Max Planck Ins ute

    News

    * "Black Hole confirmed in Milky Way." Retrieved December 10, 2008
    * Black Hole Research News

  5. #5
    PRICELESS SPURS FAN polandprzem's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Post Count
    16,433
    I've read all the thread and i must to say that I do agree with some point and disagree with another

  6. #6
    808s & Heartbreak Kool Bob Love's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Post Count
    8,867
    I've read all the thread and i must to say that I do agree with some point and disagree with another

    Same.

  7. #7
    selbstverständlich Agloco's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Post Count
    9,019
    A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.[1] Quantum mechanics predicts that black holes also emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature decreases with the mass of the black hole, making it unlikely to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass.

    Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can be observed through its interaction with other matter. A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space. Alternatively, when gas falls into a stellar black hole from a companion star, the gas spirals inward, heating to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and Earth-orbiting telescopes.

    Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates, and have also found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. In 1998, astronomers found compelling evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than 2 million solar masses is located near the Sagittarius A* region in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and more recent results using additional data find evidence that the supermassive black hole is more than 4 million solar masses.
    Contents
    [hide]

    * 1 History
    o 1.1 General relativity
    o 1.2 Golden age
    * 2 Properties and structure
    o 2.1 Physical properties
    o 2.2 Event horizon
    o 2.3 Singularity
    o 2.4 Photon sphere
    o 2.5 Ergosphere
    * 3 Formation and evolution
    o 3.1 Gravitational collapse
    + 3.1.1 Primordial black holes in the Big Bang
    o 3.2 High-energy collisions
    o 3.3 Growth
    o 3.4 Evaporation
    * 4 Observational evidence
    o 4.1 Accretion of matter
    o 4.2 X-ray binaries
    + 4.2.1 Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow
    + 4.2.2 Quasi-periodic oscillations
    o 4.3 Gamma ray bursts
    o 4.4 Galactic nuclei
    o 4.5 Gravitational lensing
    o 4.6 Alternatives
    * 5 Open questions
    o 5.1 Entropy and thermodynamics
    o 5.2 Black hole unitarity
    * 6 See also
    * 7 Notes
    * 8 References
    * 9 Further reading
    * 10 External links

    History
    Schwarzschild black hole
    Simulation of gravitational lensing by a black hole which distorts the image of a galaxy in the background (click here for larger animation)

    The idea of a body so massive that even light could not escape was first put forward by geologist John Mic in a letter written to Henry Cavendish in 1783 to the Royal Society:

    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.
    —John Mic [2]

    In 1796, 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).[3][4] Such "dark stars" were largely ignored in the nineteenth century, since it was not understood how a massless wave such as light could be influenced by gravity.[5]
    General relativity

    In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, having earlier shown that gravity does influence light's motion. A few months later, Karl Schwarzschild gave the solution for the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass.[6] A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass and wrote more extensively about its properties.[7] This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, where it became singular, meaning that some of the terms in the Einstein equations became infinite. The nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time. In 1924, Arthur Eddington showed that the singularity disappeared after a change of coordinates (see Eddington coordinates), although it took until 1933 for Georges Lemaître to realize that this meant the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was an unphysical coordinate singularity.[8]

    In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using general relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit) would collapse.[citation needed] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[9] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[10] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately three solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[11]

    Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this property, the collapsed stars were called "frozen stars,"[12] because 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. This is a known property of modern black holes, but it must be emphasized that the light from the surface of the frozen star becomes redshifted very fast, turning the black hole black very quickly. Many physicists could not accept the idea of time standing still at the Schwarzschild radius, and there was little interest in the subject for over 20 years.
    Golden age
    See also: Golden age of general relativity

    In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface r = 2m [in geometrized units, i.e. 2Gm/c2, where r is the radius of the surface and m is the mass of the black hole] as an event horizon, "a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction".[13] This did not strictly contradict Oppenheimer's results, but extended them to include the point of view of infalling observers. Finkelstein's solution extended the Schwarzschild solution for the future of observers falling into the black hole. A complete extension had already been found by Martin Kruskal, who was urged to publish it.[14]

    These results came at the beginning of the golden age of general relativity, which is marked by general relativity and black holes becoming mainstream subjects of research. This process was helped by the discovery of pulsars in 1967,[15][16] which were within a few years shown to be rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars, like black holes, were regarded as just theoretical curiosities; but the discovery of pulsars showed their physical relevance and spurred a further interest in all types of compact objects that might be formed by gravitational collapse.

    In this period more general black hole solutions where found. In 1963, Roy Kerr found the exact solution for a rotating black hole. Two years later Ezra T. Newman found the axisymmetric solution for a black hole which is both rotating and electrically charged.[17] Through the work of Werner Israel,[18] Brandon Carter,[19][20] and D. C. Robinson[21] the no-hair theorem emerged, stating that a stationary black hole solution is completely described by the three parameters of the Kerr–Newman metric; mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.[22]

    For a long time, it was suspected that the strange features of the black hole solutions were pathological artefacts from the symmetry conditions imposed, and that the singularities would not appear in generic situations. This view was held in particular by Belinsky, Khalatnikov, and Lif z, who tried to prove that no singularities appear in generic solutions. However, in the late sixties Roger Penrose[23] and Stephen Hawking used global techniques to prove that singularities are generic.[24]

    Work by James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, and Hawking in the early 1970s led to the formulation of the laws of black hole mechanics.[25] These laws describe the behaviour of a black hole in close analogy to the laws of thermodynamics by relating mass to energy, area to entropy, and surface gravity to temperature. The analogy was completed when Hawking, in 1974, showed that quantum field theory predicts that black holes should radiate like a black body with a temperature proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole.[26]

    The term "black hole" was first publicly used by John Wheeler during a lecture in 1967. Although he is usually credited with coining the phrase, he always insisted that it was suggested to him by somebody else. The first recorded use of the term is in a 1964 letter by Anne Ewing to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[27] After Wheeler's use of the term, it was quickly adopted in general use.
    Properties and structure

    The no-hair theorem states that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, charge, and angular momentum.[22] Any two black holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable according to classical (i.e. non-quantum) mechanics.

    These properties are special because they are visible from outside the black hole. For example, a charged black hole repels other like charges just like any other charged object. Similarly, the total mass inside a sphere containing a black hole can be found by using the gravitational analog of Gauss's law, the ADM mass, far away from the black hole.[28] Likewise, the angular momentum can be measured from far away using frame dragging by the gravitomagnetic field.

    When an object falls into a black hole, any information about the shape of the object or distribution of charge on it is evenly distributed along the horizon of the black hole, and is lost to outside observers. The behavior of the horizon in this situation is closely analogous to that of a conductive stretchy membrane with friction and electrical resistance, a dissipative system (see membrane paradigm).[29] This is different from other field theories like electromagnetism, which does not have any friction or resistivity at the microscopic level, because they are time-reversible. Because the black hole eventually achieves a stable state with only three parameters, there is no way to avoid losing information about the initial conditions: the gravitational and electric fields of the black hole give very little information about what went in. The information that is lost includes every quan y that cannot be measured far away from the black hole horizon, including the total baryon number, lepton number, and all the other nearly conserved pseudo-charges of particle physics. This behavior is so puzzling that it has been called the black hole information loss paradox.[30][31][32]
    Physical properties

    The simplest black hole has mass but neither electric charge nor angular momentum. These black holes are often referred to as Schwarzschild black holes after the physicist Karl Schwarzschild who discovered this solution in 1915.[6] According to Birkhoff's theorem, it is the only vacuum solution that is spherically symmetric.[33] This means that there is no observable difference between the gravitational field of such a black hole and that of any other spherical object of the same mass. The popular notion of a black hole "sucking in everything" in its surroundings is therefore only correct near the black hole horizon; far away, the external gravitational field is identical to that of any other body of the same mass.[34]

    Solutions describing more general black holes also exist. Charged black holes are described by the Reissner-Nordström metric, while the Kerr metric describes a rotating black hole. The most general stationary black hole solution known is the Kerr-Newman metric, which describes a black hole with both charge and angular momentum.

    While the mass of a black hole can take any positive value, the charge and angular momentum are constrained by the mass. In Planck units, the total electric charge Q and the total angular momentum J are expected to satisfy

    Q^2+\left ( \tfrac{J}{M} \right )^2\le M^2\,

    for a black hole of mass M. Black holes saturating this inequality are called extremal. Solutions of Einstein's equations violating the inequality exist, but do not have a horizon. These solutions have naked singularities and are deemed unphysical. The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter.[35] This is supported by numerical simulations.[36]

    Due to the relatively large strength of the electromagnetic force, black holes forming from the collapse of stars are expected to retain the nearly neutral charge of the star. Rotation, however, is expected to be a common feature of compact objects, and the black-hole candidate binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105[37] appears to have an angular momentum near the maximum allowed value.
    Class Mass Size
    Supermassive black hole ~105–109 MSun ~0.001–10 AU
    Intermediate-mass black hole ~103 MSun ~103 km = REarth
    Stellar black hole ~10 MSun ~30 km
    Micro black hole up to ~MMoon up to ~0.1 mm

    Black holes are commonly classified according to their mass, independent of angular momentum J or electric charge Q. The size of a black hole, as determined by the radius of the event horizon, or Schwarzschild radius, is roughly proportional to the mass M through

    r_\mathrm{sh} =\frac{2GM}{c^2} \approx 2.95\, \frac{M}{M_\mathrm{Sun}}~\mathrm{km,}

    where rsh is the Schwarzschild radius and MSun is the mass of the Sun. This relation is exact only for black holes with zero charge and angular momentum, for more general black holes it can differ up to a factor of 2. The table on the right lists the various classes of black hole that are distinguished.
    Event horizon
    Main article: Event horizon
    Image:BH-no-escape-1.svg
    Far away from the black hole a particle can move in any direction. It is only restricted by the speed of light.
    Image:BH-no-escape-2.svg
    Closer to the black hole spacetime starts to deform. There are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away.
    Image:BH-no-escape-3.svg
    Inside of the event horizon all paths bring the particle closer to the center of the black hole. It is no longer possible for the particle to escape.

    The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon—a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.[38]

    As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a large mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole.[39]

    To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole.[40] Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it.[41] At the same time, all processes on this object slow down causing emitted light to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift.[42] Eventually, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen.

    On the other hand, an observer falling into a black hole does not notice any of these effects as he crosses the event horizon. According to his own clock, he crosses the event horizon after a finite time, although he is unable to determine exactly when he crosses it, as it is impossible to determine the location of the event horizon from local observations.[43]

    For a non rotating (static) black hole, the Schwarzschild radius delimits a spherical event horizon. The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to the mass.[44] Rotating black holes have distorted, nonspherical event horizons. Since the event horizon is not a material surface but rather merely a mathematically defined demarcation boundary, nothing prevents matter or radiation from entering a black hole, only from exiting one. The description of black holes given by general relativity is known to be an approximation, and some scientists expect that quantum gravity effects will become significant near the vicinity of the event horizon.[45] This would allow observations of matter near a black hole's event horizon to be used to indirectly study general relativity and proposed extensions to it.
    Singularity
    Main article: Gravitational singularity

    At the center of a black hole as described by general relativity lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite.[46] For a non-rotating black hole this region takes the shape of a single point and for a rotating black hole it is smeared out to form a ring singularity lying in the plane of rotation.[47] In both cases the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution.[48] The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density.

    An observer falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e. non-rotating and no charges) cannot avoid the singularity. Any attempt to do so will only shorten the time taken to get there.[49] When they reach the singularity, they are crushed to infinite density and their mass is added to the total of the black hole. Before that happens, they will have been torn apart by the growing tidal forces in a process sometimes referred to as spaghettification or the noodle effect.[50]

    In the case of a charged (Reissner–Nordström) or rotating (Kerr) black hole it is possible to avoid the singularity. Extending these solutions as far as possible reveals the hypothetical possibility of exiting the black hole into a different spacetime with the black hole acting as a wormhole.[51] The possibility of traveling to another universe is however only theoretical, since any perturbation will destroy this possibility.[52] It also appears to be possible to follow closed timelike curves (going back to one's own past) around the Kerr singularity, which lead to problems with causality like the grandfather paradox.[53] It is expected that none of these peculiar effects would survive in a proper quantum mechanical treatment of rotating and charged black holes.[54]

    The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory.[55] This breakdown, however, is expected; it occurs in a situation where quantum mechanical effects should describe these actions due to the extremely high density and therefore particle interactions. To date it has not been possible to combine quantum and gravitational effects into a single theory. It is generally expected that a theory of quantum gravity will feature black holes without singularities.[56][57]
    Photon sphere
    Main article: Photon sphere

    The 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 the Schwarzschild radius. The orbits are dynamically unstable, hence any small perturbation (such as a particle of infalling matter) will grow over time, either setting it on an outward trajectory escaping the black hole or on an inward spiral eventually crossing the event horizon.

    While light can still escape from inside the photon sphere, any light that crosses the photon sphere on an inbound trajectory will be captured by the black hole. Hence any light reaching an outside observer from inside the photon sphere must have been emitted by objects inside the photon sphere but still outside of the event horizon.

    Other compact objects, such as neutron stars, can also have photon spheres.[58] This follows from the fact that the gravitational field of an object does not depend on its actual size, hence any object that is smaller than 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to its mass will indeed have a photon sphere.
    Ergosphere
    Main article: Ergosphere
    The ergosphere is an oblate spheroid region outside of the event horizon, where objects cannot remain stationary.

    Rotating black holes are surrounded by a region of spacetime in which it is impossible to stand still, called the ergosphere. This is the result of a process known as frame-dragging; general relativity predicts that any rotating mass will tend to slightly "drag" along the spacetime immediately surrounding it. Any object near the rotating mass will tend to start moving in the direction of rotation. For a rotating black hole this effect becomes so strong near the event horizon that an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in the opposite direction to just stand still.[59]

    The ergosphere of a black hole is bounded by the (outer) event horizon on the inside and an oblate spheroid, which coincides with the event horizon at the poles and is noticeably wider around the equator. The outer boundary is sometimes called the ergosurface.

    Objects and radiation can escape normally from the ergosphere. Through the Penrose process, objects can emerge from the ergosphere with more energy than they entered. This energy is taken from the rotational energy of the black hole causing it to slow down.[60]
    Formation and evolution

    Considering the exotic nature of black holes, it may be natural to question if such bizarre objects could exist in nature or to suggest that they are merely pathological solutions to Einstein's equations. Einstein himself wrongly thought that black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius.[61] This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years. However, a minority of relativists continued to contend that black holes were physical objects,[62] and by the end of the 1960s, they had persuaded the majority of researchers in the field that there is no obstacle to forming an event horizon.

    Once an event horizon forms, Roger Penrose proved that a singularity will form somewhere inside it.[23] Shortly afterwards, Stephen Hawking showed that many cosmological solutions describing the Big Bang have singularities without scalar fields or other exotic matter (see Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems). The Kerr solution, the no-hair theorem and the laws of black hole thermodynamics showed that the physical properties of black holes were simple and comprehensible, making them respectable subjects for research.[63] The primary formation process for black holes is expected to be the gravitational collapse of heavy objects such as stars, but there are also more exotic processes that can lead to the production of black holes.
    Gravitational collapse
    Main article: Gravitational collapse

    Gravitational collapse occurs when an object's internal pressure is insufficient to resist the object's own gravity. For stars this usually occurs either because a star has too little "fuel" left to maintain its temperature through stellar nucleosynthesis, or because a star which would have been stable receives 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).[64]

    The collapse may be stopped by the degeneracy pressure of the star's cons uents, condensing the matter in an exotic denser state. The result is one of the various 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.[64]

    If the mass of the remnant exceeds about 3–4 solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit)—either because the original star was very heavy or because the remnant collected additional mass through accretion of matter—even the degeneracy pressure of neutrons is insufficient to stop the collapse. After this, no known mechanism (except possibly quark degeneracy pressure, see quark star) is powerful enough to stop the collapse and the object will inevitably collapse to a black hole.[64]

    This gravitational collapse of heavy stars is assumed to be responsible for the formation of stellar mass black holes. Star formation in the young universe may have resulted in very heavy stars, which upon their collapse would have produced black holes of up to 103 solar masses. These heavy black holes could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of most galaxies.[65]

    While most of the energy released during gravitational collapse is emitted very quickly, an outside observer does not actually see the end of this process. Even though the collapse takes a finite amount of time from the reference frame of infalling matter, a distant observer sees the infalling material slow and halt just above the event horizon, due to gravitational time dilation. Light from the collapsing material takes longer and longer to reach the observer, with the light emitted just before the event horizon forms delayed an infinite amount of time. Thus the external observer never sees the formation of the event horizon; instead, the collapsing material seems to become dimmer and increasingly red-shifted, eventually fading away.[66]
    Primordial black holes in the Big Bang

    Gravitational collapse requires great densities. In the current epoch of the universe these high densities are only found in stars, but in the early universe shortly after the big bang densities were much greater, possibly allowing for the creation of black holes. The high density alone is not enough to allow the formation of black holes since a uniform mass distribution will not allow the mass to bunch up. In order for primordial black holes to form in such a dense medium, there must be initial density perturbations which can then grow under their own gravity. Different models for the early universe vary widely in their predictions of the size of these perturbations. Various models predict the creation of black holes, ranging from a Planck mass to hundreds of thousands of solar masses.[67] Primordial black holes could thus account for the creation of any type of black hole.
    High-energy collisions
    A simulated event in the CMS detector, a collision in which a micro black hole may be created.

    Gravitational collapse is not the only process that could create black holes. In principle, black holes could also be created in high-energy collisions that create sufficient density. However, to date, no such events have ever been detected either directly or indirectly as a deficiency of the mass balance in particle accelerator experiments.[68] This suggests that there must be a lower limit for the mass of black holes. Theoretically, this boundary is expected to lie around the Planck mass (mP = √ħc/G ≈ 1.2×1019 GeV/c2 ≈ 2.2×10−8 kg), where quantum effects are expected to make the theory of general relativity break down completely.[69] This would put the creation of black holes firmly out of reach of any high energy process occurring on or near the Earth. Certain developments in quantum gravity however suggest that the Planck mass could be much lower: some braneworld scenarios for example put it much lower, maybe even as low as 1 TeV/c2[70] This would make it possible for micro black holes to be created in the high energy collisions occurring when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, or possibly in the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These theories are however very speculative, and the creation of black holes in these processes is deemed unlikely by many specialists.[71] Even if such micro black holes should be formed in these collisions, it is expected that they would evaporate in about 10−25 seconds, posing no threat to Earth[72]
    Growth

    Once a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing additional matter. Any black hole will continually absorb gas and interstellar dust from its direct surroundings and omnipresent cosmic background radiation. This is the primary process through which supermassive black holes seem to have grown.[65] A similar process has been suggested for the formation of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters.[73]

    Another possibility is for a black hole to merge with other objects such as stars or even other black holes. This is thought to have been important especially for the early development of supermassive black holes, which are thought to have formed from the coagulation of many smaller objects.[65] The process has also been proposed as the origin of some intermediate-mass black holes.[74][75]
    Evaporation
    Main article: Hawking radiation

    In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes are not entirely black but emit small amounts of thermal radiation.[26] He got this result by applying quantum field theory in a static black hole background. The result of his calculations is that a black hole should emit particles in a perfect black body spectrum. This effect has become known as Hawking radiation. Since Hawking's result, many others have verified the effect through various methods.[76] If his theory of black hole radiation is correct, then black holes are expected to emit a thermal spectrum of radiation, and thereby lose mass, because according to the theory of relativity mass is just highly condensed energy (E = mc2).[26] Black holes will shrink and evaporate over time. The temperature of this spectrum (Hawking temperature) is proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole, which for a Schwarzschild black hole is inversely proportional to the mass. Large black holes, therefore, emit less radiation than small black holes.

    A stellar black hole of one solar mass has a Hawking temperature of about 100 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background. Stellar mass (and larger) black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and will thus grow instead of shrink. To have a Hawking temperature larger than 2.7 K (and be able to evaporate), a black hole needs to be lighter than the Moon (and therefore a diameter of less than a tenth of a millimeter).[77]

    On the other hand, if a black hole is very small the radiation effects are expected to become very strong. Even a black hole that is heavy compared to a human would evaporate in an instant. A black hole the weight of a car (~10−24 m) would only take a nanosecond to evaporate, during which time it would briefly have a luminosity more than 200 times that of the sun. Lighter black holes are expected to evaporate even faster, for example a black hole of mass 1 TeV/c2 would take less than 10−88 seconds to evaporate completely. Of course, for such a small black hole quantum gravitation effects are expected to play an important role and could even – although current developments in quantum gravity do not indicate so[78] – hypothetically make such a small black hole stable.[79]
    Observational evidence

    By their very nature, black holes do not directly emit any signals other than the hypothetical Hawking radiation; since the Hawking radiation for an astrophysical black hole is predicted to be very weak, this makes it impossible to directly detect astrophysical black holes from the Earth. A possible exception to the Hawking radiation being weak is the last stage of the evaporation of light (primordial) black holes; searches for such flashes in the past has proven unsuccessful and provides stringent limits on the possibility of existence of light primordial black holes.[80] NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 will continue the search for these flashes.[81]

    Astrophysicists searching for black holes thus have to rely on indirect observations. A black hole's existence can sometimes be inferred by observing its gravitational interactions with its surroundings.
    Accretion of matter
    See also: Accretion disc
    Formation of extragalactic jets from a black hole's accretion disk

    Due to conservation of angular momentum, gas falling into the gravitational well created by a massive object will typically form a disc-like structure around the object. Friction within the disc causes angular momentum to be transported outward allowing matter to fall further inward releasing potential energy and increasing the temperature of the gas.[82] In the case of compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, the gas in the inner regions becomes so hot that it will emit vast amounts of radiation (mainly X-rays), which may be detected by telescopes. This process of accretion is one of the most efficient energy producing process known; up to 40% of the rest mass of the accreted material can be emitted in radiation.[82] (In nuclear fusion only about 0.7% of the rest mass will be emitted as energy.) In many cases, accretion discs are accompanied by relativistic jets emitted along the poles, which carry away much of the energy. The mechanism for the creation of these jets is currently not well understood.

    As such many of the universe's more energetic phenomena have been attributed to the accretion of matter on black holes. In particular, active galactic nuclei and quasars are thought to be the accretion discs of supermassive black holes.[83] Similarly, X-ray binaries are thought to be binary star systems in which one of the two stars is a compact object accreting matter from its companion.[83] It has also been suggested that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the accretion disks of intermediate-mass black holes.[84]
    X-ray binaries
    See also: X-ray binary

    X-ray binaries are binary star systems that are luminous in the X-ray part of the spectrum. These X-ray emissions are generally thought to be caused by one of the component stars being a compact object accreting matter from the other (regular) star. The presence of an ordinary star in such a system provides a unique opportunity for studying the central object and determining if it might be a black hole.
    Artist impression of a binary system with an accretion disk around a compact object being fed by material from the companion star.

    If such a system emits signals that can be directly traced back to the compact object, it cannot be a black hole. The absence of such a signal does, however, not exclude the possibility that the compact object is a neutron star. By studying the companion star it is often possible to obtain the orbital parameters of the system and obtain an estimate for the mass of the compact object. If this is much larger than the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (that is, the maximum mass a neutron star can have before collapsing) then the object cannot be a neutron star and is generally expected to be a black hole.[83]

    The first strong candidate for a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in this way by Charles Thomas Bolton[85] and Webster and Murdin[86] in 1972.[87][88] Some doubt, however, remained due to the uncertainties resultant from the companion star being much heavier than the candidate black hole.[83] Currently, better candidates for black holes are found in a class of X-ray binaries called soft X-ray transients.[83] In this class of system the companion star is relatively low mass allowing for more accurate estimates in the black hole mass. Moreover, these systems are only active in X-ray for several months once every 10–50 years. During the period of low X-ray emission (called quiescence), the accretion disc is extremely faint allowing for detailed observation of the companion star during this period. One of the best such candidates is V404 Cyg.
    Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow

    The faintness of the accretion disc during quiescence is thought to be caused by the flow entering a mode called an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). In this mode, almost all the energy generated by friction in the disc is swept along with the flow instead of radiated away. If this model is correct, then it forms strong qualitative evidence for the presence of an event horizon.[89] Because, if the object at the center of the disc had a solid surface, it would emit large amounts of radiation as the highly energetic gas hits the surface, an effect that is observed for neutron stars in a similar state.[82]
    Quasi-periodic oscillations
    See also: Quasi-periodic oscillations

    The X-ray emissions from accretion disks sometimes exhibit a flickering around certain frequencies. These signals are called quasi-periodic oscillations and are thought to be caused by material moving along the inner edge of the accretion disk (the innermost stable circular orbit). As such their frequency is linked to the mass of the compact object. They can thus be used as an alternative way to determine the mass of potential black holes.[90]
    Gamma ray bursts

    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[91] or by collisions between neutron stars,[92] and both types of event involve sufficient mass and pressure to produce black holes. It appears that a collision between a neutron star and a black hole can also cause a GRB,[93] 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[94] so the black holes associated with them are billions of years old.
    Galactic nuclei
    See also: Active galactic nucleus
    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.

    It is now widely accepted that the center of every or at least nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.[95] The close observational correlation between the mass of this hole and the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy's bulge, known as the M-sigma relation, strongly suggests a connection between the formation of the black hole and the galaxy itself. [96]

    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.[97][98] However, theoretical and observational studies have shown that the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in these galaxies may contain supermassive black holes.[97][98] 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.[98]

    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.[99]

    Currently, the best evidence for a supermassive black hole comes from studying the proper motion of stars near the center of our own Milky Way.[100] Since 1995 astronomers have tracked the motion of 90 stars in a region called Sagittarius A*. By fitting their motion to Keplerian orbits they were able to infer in 1998 that 2.6 million solar masses must be contained in a volume with a radius of 0.02 lightyears.[101] Since then one of the stars—called S2—has completed a full orbit. From the orbital data they were able to place better constraints on the mass and size of the object causing the orbital motion of stars in the Sagittarius A* region, finding that there is a spherical mass of 4.3 million solar masses contained within a radius of less than 0.002 lightyears.[100] While this is more than 3000 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to that mass, it is at least consistent with the central object being a supermassive black hole, and no "realistic cluster [of stars] is physically tenable."[101]
    Gravitational lensing
    Further information: Gravitational lens

    The deformation of spacetime around a massive object causes light rays to be deflected much like light passing through an optic lens. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing. Observations have been made of weak gravitational lensing, in which photons are deflected by only a few arcseconds. However, it has never been directly observed for a black hole.[102] One possibility for observing gravitational lensing by a black hole would be to observe stars in orbit around the black hole. There are several candidates for such an observation in orbit around Sagittarius A*.[102]
    Alternatives

    The evidence for stellar black holes strongly relies on the existence of an upper limit for the mass of a neutron star. The size of this limit heavily depends on the assumptions made about the properties of dense matter. New exotic phases of matter could push up this bound.[83] A phase of free quarks at high density might allow the existence of dense quark stars,[103] and some supersymmetric models predict the existence of Q stars.[104] Some extensions of the standard model posit the existence of preons as fundamental building blocks of quarks and leptons which could hypothetically form preon stars.[105] These hypothetical models could potentially explain a number of observations of stellar black hole candidates. However, it can be shown from general arguments in general relativity that any such object will have a maximum mass.[83]

    Since the average density of a black hole inside its Schwarzschild radius is inversely proportional to the square of its mass, supermassive black holes are much less dense than stellar black holes (the average density of a large supermassive black hole is comparable to that of water).[83] Consequently, the physics of matter forming a supermassive black hole is much better understood and the possible alternative explanations for supermassive black hole observations are much more mundane. For example, a supermassive black hole could be modelled by a large cluster of very dark objects. However, typically such alternatives are not stable enough to explain the supermassive black hole candidates.[83]

    The evidence for stellar and supermassive black holes implies that in order for black holes not to form, general relativity must fail as a theory of gravity, perhaps due to the onset of quantum mechanical corrections. A much anticipated feature of a theory of quantum gravity is that it will not feature singularities or event horizons (and thus no black holes).[106] In recent years, much attention has been drawn by the fuzzball model in string theory. Based on calculations in specific situations in string theory, the proposal suggest that generically the individual states of a black hole solution do not have an event horizon or singularity (and can thus not really be considered to be a black hole), but that for a distant observer the statistical average of such states does appear just like an ordinary black hole in general relativity.[107]
    Open questions
    Entropy and thermodynamics
    Further information: Black hole thermodynamics
    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.

    In 1971, Stephen Hawking showed under general conditions[Note 1] that the total area of the event horizons of any collection of classical black holes can never decrease, even if they collide and merge.[108] This result, now known as the second law of black hole mechanics, is remarkably similar to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of a system can never decrease. As with classical objects at absolute zero temperature, it was assumed that black holes had zero entropy. If this were the case, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated by entropy-laden matter 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.[109]

    The link with the laws of thermodynamics was further strengthened by Hawking's discovery that quantum field theory predicts that a black hole radiates blackbody radiation at a constant temperature. This seemingly causes a violation of the second law of black hole mechanics, since the radiation will carry away energy from the black hole causing it to shrink. The radiation, however also carries away entropy, and it can be proven under general assumptions that the sum of the entropy of the matter surrounding the black hole and one quarter of the area of the horizon as measured in Planck units is in fact always increasing. This allows the formulation of the first law of black hole mechanics as an analogue of the first law of thermodynamics, with the mass acting as energy, the surface gravity as temperature and the area as entropy.[109]

    One puzzling feature is that the entropy of a black hole scales with its area rather than with its volume, since entropy is normally an extensive quan y that scales linearly with the volume of the system. This odd property led 't Hooft and Susskind to propose the holographic principle, which suggests that anything that happens in volume of spacetime can be described by data on the boundary of that volume.[110]

    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.). Without a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, one cannot perform such a computation for black holes. Some progress has been made in various approaches to quantum gravity. In 1995, Strominger and Vafa showed that counting the microstates of a specific supersymmetric black hole in string theory reproduced the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy.[111] Since then, similar results have been reported for different black holes both in string theory and in other approaches to quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity.[112]
    Black hole unitarity
    Main article: Black hole information paradox
    Unsolved problems in physics Is physical information lost in black holes? Question mark2.svg

    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 (T-symmetry). Liouville's theorem dictates conservation of phase space volume, which can be thought of as "conservation of information", so there is some problem even in classical physics. In quantum mechanics, this corresponds to a vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the conservation of probability (it can also be thought of as a conservation of quantum phase space volume as expressed by the density matrix).[113]
    See also

    * Black holes in fiction
    * Black string
    * Kugelblitz (astrophysics)
    * List of black holes
    * Susskind-Hawking battle


    He1523a.jpg Star portal

    * Timeline of black hole physics
    * White hole
    * Wormhole

    Notes

    1. ^ In particular, he assumed that all matter satisfies the weak energy condition.

    References

    1. ^ Davies, P. C. W. (1978). "Thermodynamics of Black Holes". Rep. Prog. Phys. 41: 1313–1355. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/41/8/004. http://cosmos.asu.edu/publications/p...Holes%2034.pdf.
    2. ^ Mic , J. (1784). "On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude, &c. of the Fixed Stars, in Consequence of the Diminution of the Velocity of Their Light, in Case Such a Diminution Should be Found to Take Place in any of Them, and Such Other Data Should be Procured from Observations, as Would be Farther Necessary for That Purpose". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (London) (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 74) 74: 35–57. http://www.jstor.org/pss/106576.
    3. ^ "Dark Stars (1783)". Thinkquest. 1999. http://library.thinkquest.org/25715/....htm#darkstars. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
    4. ^ Laplace; see Israel, Werner (1987), "Dark stars: the evolution of an idea", in Hawking, Stephen W. & Israel, Werner, 300 Years of Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, Sec. 7.4
    5. ^ Thorne (1994:123–124).
    6. ^ a b Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 189–196. and Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Kugel aus inkompressibler Flüssigkeit nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 424–434.
    7. ^ Droste, J. (1915). "On the field of a single centre in Einstein's theory of gravitation". Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen Proceedings 17 (3): 998–1011.
    8. ^ 't Hooft, G. (2009). Introduction to the Theory of Black Holes. pp. 47–48. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectur...cturenotes.pdf.
    9. ^ Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    10. ^ Harpaz, Amos (1994). Stellar evolution. A K Peters, Ltd. p. 105. ISBN 1-568-81012-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4VEZv8oo0C. , Extract of page 105
    11. ^ Oppenheimer, J. R. and Volkoff, G. M. (1939-01-03). "On Massive Neutron Cores". Physical Review 55 (4): 374–381. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.55.374. http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v55/i4/p374_1.
    12. ^ Ruffini, Remo and Wheeler, John A. (January 1971). "Introducing the black hole". Physics Today: 30–41. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/1...Phys_Today.pdf.
    13. ^ Finkelstein, David (1958). "Past-Future Asymmetry of the Gravitational Field of a Point Particle". Phys. Rev. 110: 965–967. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.110.965.
    14. ^ Kruskal, M. (1960). "Maximal Extension of Schwarzschild Metric". Physical Review 119: 1743. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.119.1743. edit
    15. ^ Hewish, Antony; Bell, S. J.; Pilkington, J. D. H.; Scott, P. F.; Collins, R. A. (1968). "Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source". Nature 217: 709–713. doi:10.1038/217709a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../235037a0.html. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    16. ^ Pilkington, J D H; Hewish, A.; Bell, S. J.; Cole, T. W. (1968). "Observations of some further Pulsed Radio Sources". Nature 218: 126–129. doi:10.1038/218126a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...f/218126a0.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    17. ^ Newman, E. T.; Couch, E.; Chinnapared, K.; Exton, A.; Prakash, A.; Torrence, R. (1965). "Metric of a Rotating, Charged Mass". Journal of Mathematical Physics 6: 918. doi:10.1063/1.1704351. edit
    18. ^ Israel, W. (1967). "Event Horizons in Static Vacuum Space-Times". Physical Review 164: 1776. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.164.1776. edit
    19. ^ Carter, B. (1971). "Axisymmetric Black Hole Has Only Two Degrees of Freedom". Physical Review Letters 26: 331. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.26.331. edit
    20. ^ Carter, B. (1977). "The vacuum black hole uniqueness theorem and its conceivable generalisations.". Proceedings of the 1st Marcel Grossmann meeting on general relativity. pp. 243–254.
    21. ^ Robinson, D. (1975). "Uniqueness of the Kerr Black Hole". Physical Review Letters 34: 905. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.34.905. edit
    22. ^ a b Heusler, M. (1998). "Stationary Black Holes: Uniqueness and Beyond". Living Rev. Relativity 1 (6). http://www.livingreviews.org/Article...1998-6heusler/. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    23. ^ a b Penrose, R. (1965). "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities". Physical Review Letters 14: 57. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.57. edit
    24. ^ Ford, L. H. (2003). International Journal of Theoretical Physics 42: 1219–1227. doi:10.1023/A:1025754515197. edit
    25. ^ Bardeen, J.M.; Carter, B.; Hawking, S.W. (1973). "The four laws of black hole mechanics". Comm. Math. Phys. 31 (2): 161–170.. doi:10.1007/BF01645742. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.cmp/1103858973.
    26. ^ a b c Hawking, S.W. (1974). "Black hole explosions?". Nature 248: 30–31. doi:10.1038/248030a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../248030a0.html.
    27. ^ Michael Quinion. "Black Hole". World Wide Words. http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-bla1.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-17.
    28. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 253
    29. ^ Black Holes, The Membrane Paradigm. ISBN 9780300037708.
    30. ^ Anderson, Warren G. (1996). "The Black Hole Information Loss Problem". http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...info_loss.html. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
    31. ^ John Preskill(1994)"Black holes and information: A crisis in quantum physics"
    32. ^ Daniel Carmody(2008)"The Fate of Quantum Information in a Black Hole"
    33. ^ "Garrett Birkhoff’s Theorem". http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~whittyr/Mat...tDBirkhoff.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    34. ^ "Black Holes do not suck!". 2006-02-17. http://astro.airynothing.com/2006/02..._not_suck.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    35. ^ For a review see Wald, Robert. M. (1997). "Gravitational Collapse and Cosmic Censorship". http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9710068.
    36. ^ For a discussion of these numerical simulations see Berger, Beverly K. (2002). "Numerical Approaches to Spacetime Singularities". Living Rev. Relativity 5. http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2002-1. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
    37. ^ McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Shafee, Rebecca; Narayan, Ramesh; Remillard, Ronald A.; Davis, Shane W.; Li, Li-Xin (2006). "The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105". Astrophys.J. 652: 518–539. doi:10.1086/508457. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606076.
    38. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 179
    39. ^ "Anatomy of a Black Hole". http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia...kHoleAnat.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    40. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 217
    41. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 218
    42. ^ "Inside a black hole". http://nrumiano.free.fr/Estars/int_bh.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    43. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 222
    44. ^ "Black Holes". Archived from the original on September 13, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/200609131...der/l16_BH.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    45. ^ "Physical nature of the event horizon". http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/pramana/51/693-698.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    46. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 205
    47. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 264–265
    48. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 252
    49. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 237 Exercise 3.
    50. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 182
    51. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 257–259 and 265–266
    52. ^ Droz, S.; Israel, W.; Morsink, S.M. (1996). "Black holes: the inside story". Physics World 9: 34–37.
    53. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 266
    54. ^ Poisson, E.; Israel, W. (1990). "Internal structure of black holes". Physical Review D 41: 1796. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.41.1796. edit
    55. ^ Giamb�o, Roberto. "The geometry of gravitational collapse". http://www.mat.unb.br/~matcont/28_8.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    56. ^ "Black Holes and Quantum Gravity". http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_hawk.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    57. ^ "Ask an Astrophysicist : Quantum Gravity and Black Holes". http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...s/980420b.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    58. ^ Nemiroff, Robert J. (1993). "Visual distortions near a neutron star and black hole". American Journal of Physics 61: 619. doi:10.1119/1.17224.
    59. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.6
    60. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.7
    61. ^ Einstein, A. (1939). "On A Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses". Annals of Mathematics (The Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 40, No. 4) 40 (4): 922–936. doi:10.2307/1968902. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1968902.
    62. ^ "Discovering the Kerr and Kerr-Schild metrics". To appear in "The Kerr Spacetime", Eds D.L. Wiltshire, M. Visser and S.M. Scott, Cambridge Univ. Press. Roy P. Kerr. http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0706.1109. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
    63. ^ Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, R. (January 1970). "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 314 (1519): 529–548. doi:10.1098/rspa.1970.0021. http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.o...9/529.abstract.
    64. ^ a b c Carroll 2004, Section 5.8
    65. ^ a b c Rees, M.J.; Volonteri, M. (2007). "Massive black holes: formation and evolution". In Karas, V.; Matt, G.. Black Holes from Stars to Galaxies – Across the Range of Masses. Cambridge University Press. pp. 51–58. arXiv:astro-ph/0701512.
    66. ^ Penrose, R. (2002). General Relativity and Gravitation 34: 1141–1165. doi:10.1023/A:1016578408204. edit
    67. ^ Carr, B. J. (2005). "Primordial Black Holes: Do They Exist and Are They Useful?". arΧiv:astro-ph/0511743v1 [astro-ph].
    68. ^ Giddings, Steven B.; Thomas, Scott (2002). "High energy colliders as black hole factories: The end of short distance physics". Physical Review D 65: 056010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.65.056010. arXiv:hep-ph/0106219v4.
    69. ^ Harada, T. (2006). "Is there a black hole minimum mass?". Physical Review D 74: 084004. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.74.084004. edit
    70. ^ Arkani–Hamed, N (1998). "The hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter". Physics Letters B 429: 263. doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(98)00466-3. arXiv:9803315v1.
    71. ^ LHC Safety Assessment Group. "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions". CERN. http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf.
    72. ^ Cavaglià, Marco (29 January 2007). "Particle accelerators as black hole factories?". Einstein-Online. Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Ins ute).
    73. ^ Vesperini, E.; McMillan, S.L.W.; D'Ercole, A.; D'Antona, F. (2010). "Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Early Globular Clusters". arΧiv:1003.3470 [astro-ph.GA].
    74. ^ Zwart, S.; Baumgardt, H.; Hut, P.; Makino, J.; McMillan, S. (2004). "Formation of massive black holes through runaway collisions in dense young star clusters". Nature 428 (6984): 724–726. doi:10.1038/nature02448. PMID 15085124. edit
    75. ^ O’leary, R. M.; Rasio, F. A.; Fregeau, J. M.; Ivanova, N.; O’shaughnessy, R. (2006). "Binary Mergers and Growth of Black Holes in Dense Star Clusters". The Astrophysical Journal 637: 937. doi:10.1086/498446. edit
    76. ^ Page, Don N (2005). "Hawking radiation and black hole thermodynamics". New Journal of Physics 7: 203. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/203. arXiv:hep-th/0409024v3.
    77. ^ "Einstein online". Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics. 2010. http://www.einstein-online.info/elem...et_language=en. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    78. ^ Giddings, S. B.; Mangano, M. L. (2008). "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes". Physical Review D 78: 035009. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.78.035009. edit
    79. ^ Peskin, M. (2008). "The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider?". Physics 1: 14–20. doi:10.1103/Physics.1.14. edit
    80. ^ Fichtel, C.E.; Bertsch, D.L.; Dingus, B.L.; Esposito, J.A.; Hartman, R.C.; Hunter, S.D.; Kanbach, G.;; Kniffen, D.A. et al. (1994). "Search of the energetic gamma-ray experiment telescope (EGRET) data for high-energy gamma-ray microsecond bursts". Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 434 (2): 557–559. doi:10.1086/174758. ISSN 0004-637X.
    81. ^ Naeye, Robert. Testing Fundamental Physics. NASA.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...l_physics.html. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
    82. ^ a b c McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Remillard, Ronald A. (2006). "Black Hole Binaries". In Lewin, Walter; van der Klis, Michiel. Compact Stellar X-ray Sources. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521826594. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306213. section 4.1.5.
    83. ^ a b c d e f g h i Celotti, A.; Miller, J.C.; Sciama, D.W. (1999). "Astrophysical evidence for the existence of black holes". Class. Quant. Grav. 16. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9912186
    84. ^ Winter, Lisa M.; Mushotzky, Richard F.; Reynolds, Christopher S. (2006). "XMM‐Newton Archival Study of the Ultraluminous X‐Ray Population in Nearby Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 649: 730. doi:10.1086/506579. arXiv:astro-ph/0512480v2.
    85. ^ Bolton, C. T. (1972). "Identification of Cygnus X-1 with HDE 226868". Nature 235: 271–273. doi:10.1038/235271b0.
    86. ^ Webster, B.L; Murdin, P. (1972). "Cygnus X-1—a Spectroscopic Binary with a Heavy Companion ?". Nature 235: 37–38. doi:10.1038/235037a0.
    87. ^ Rolston, Bruce (10 November 1997). The First Black Hole. University of Toronto. http://news.utoronto.ca/bin/bulletin/nov10_97/art4.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    88. ^ Shipman, H. L. (1 January 1975). "The implausible history of triple star models for Cygnus X-1 Evidence for a black hole". Astrophysical Letters 16 (1): 9–12. doi:10.1016/S0304-8853(99)00384-4. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975ApL....16....9S. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    89. ^ Narayan, R.; McClintock, J. (2008). "Advection-dominated accretion and the black hole event horizon". New Astronomy Reviews 51: 733. doi:10.1016/j.newar.2008.03.002. edit
    90. ^ Goddard Space Flight Center (2008-04-01). "NASA scientists identify smallest known black hole". Press release. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-nsi040108.php. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
    91. ^ Bloom, J. S.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Djorgovski, S. G. (2002). "The Observed Offset Distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Their Host Galaxies: A Robust Clue to the Nature of the Progenitors". The Astronomical Journal 123: 1111. doi:10.1086/338893. arXiv:0010176.
    92. ^ Blinnikov, S (1984). "Exploding Neutron Stars in Close Binaries". Soviet Astronomy Letters 10: 177. Bibcode: 1984SvAL...10..177B.
    93. ^ Lattimer, J. M.; Schramm, D. N. (1976). "The tidal disruption of neutron stars by black holes in close binaries". The Astrophysical Journal 210: 549. doi:10.1086/154860.
    94. ^ Paczynski, Bohdan (1995). "How Far Away Are Gamma-Ray Bursters?". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107: 1167. doi:10.1086/133674. arXiv:astro-ph/9505096.
    95. ^ King, Andrew (2003-09-15). "Black Holes, Galaxy Formation, and the MBH-σ Relation". The Astrophysical Journal (The American Astronomical Society.): 596:L27–L29. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4...7559.text.html.
    96. ^ Ferrarese, Laura; Merritt, David (August 2000). "A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and their Host Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) 539 (1): L9–L12. doi:10.1086/312838. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000ApJ...539L...9F
    97. ^ a b J. H. Krolik (1999). Active Galactic Nuclei. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01151-6. [page needed]
    98. ^ a b c L. S. Sparke, J. S. Gallagher III (2000). Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59704-4. [page needed]
    99. ^ J. Kormendy, D. Richstone (1995). "Inward Bound---The Search For Supermassive Black Holes In Galactic Nuclei". Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics 33: 581–624. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.33.090195.003053. Bibcode: 1995ARA&A..33..581K.
    100. ^ a b Gillessen, S.; Eisenhauer, F.; Trippe, S.; Alexander, T.; Genzel, R.; Martins, F.; Ott, T. (2009). "Monitoring Stellar Orbits Around the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center". Astrophysical Journal 692: 1075–1109. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/692/2/1075. arXiv:0810.4674. edit
    101. ^ a b Ghez, A. M.; Klein, B. L.; Morris, M.; Becklin, E. E. (1998). "High Proper‐Motion Stars in the Vicinity of Sagittarius A*: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy". The Astrophysical Journal 509: 678. doi:10.1086/306528. edit
    102. ^ a b Bozza, Valerio (2009). "Gravitational Lensing by Black Holes". arΧiv:0911.2187 [gr-qc].
    103. ^ Kovacs; Cheng; Harko (2009). "Can stellar mass black holes be quark stars?". arΧiv:0908.2672 [astro-ph.HE].
    104. ^ Alexander Kusenko (2006). "Properties and signatures of supersymmetric Q-balls". arΧiv:hep-ph/0612159 [hep-ph].
    105. ^ Hansson, J.; Sandin, F. (2005). "Preon stars: a new class of cosmic compact objects". Physics Letters B 616: 1. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2005.04.034. edit
    106. ^ Kiefer, C. (2006). "Quantum gravity: general introduction and recent developments". Annalen der Physik 15: 129–148. doi:10.1002/andp.200510175. edit
    107. ^ Skenderis, K.; Taylor, M. (2008). "The fuzzball proposal for black holes". Physics Reports 467: 117. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2008.08.001. edit
    108. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1998). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. [page needed]
    109. ^ a b Wald (1999). "The Thermodynamics of Black Holes". arΧiv:gr-qc/9912119v2 [gr-qc].
    110. ^ Gerard 't Hooft (2000). "The Holographic Principle". arΧiv:hep-th/0003004 [hep-th].
    111. ^ Strominger, A.; Vafa, C. (1996). "Microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy". Physics Letters B 379: 99. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(96)00345-0. edit
    112. ^ Carlip, S. (2009). "Black Hole Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics". Lect.Notes Phys. 769: 89–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88460-6_3. edit
    113. ^ Hawking, Stephen. "Does God Play Dice?". http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/...liclectures/64. Retrieved 2009-03-14.

    Further reading

    Popular reading

    * Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Black Holes in Space-Time. Watts Franklin. ISBN 0-531-12524-6. .
    * Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, Inc. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. .
    * Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, Roger (1996). The Nature of Space and Time. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03791-2. http://books.google.com/?id=LstaQTXP65cC. .
    * 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. .
    * Stern, B. (2008). "Blackhole". http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Blackhole_%28Stern%29. , poem.
    * Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-31276-3. .
    * Wheeler, J. Craig (2007). Cosmic Catastrophes (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85714-7.

    University textbooks and monographs

    * Carroll, Sean M. (2004). Spacetime and Geometry. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-8732-3. , the lecture notes on which the book was based are available for free from Sean Carroll's website.
    * Carter, B. (1973). "Black hole equilibrium states". In DeWitt, B.S.; DeWitt, C.. Black Holes. .
    * Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1999). Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850370-9. .
    * Frolov, V.P.; Novikov, I.D. (1998). Black hole physics. .
    * Hawking, S.W.; Ellis, G.F.R. (1973). Large Scale Structure of space time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521099064. http://books.google.com/?id=QagG_KI7Ll8C. .
    * 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. .

    Review papers

    * Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    * Gallo, E.; Marolf, D. (2009). "Resource Letter BH-2: Black Holes". American Journal of Physics 77: 294. doi:10.1119/1.3056569. arXiv:0806.2316. edit
    * Hughes, Scott A. (2005). "Trust but verify: The case for astrophysical black holes". arΧiv:hep-ph/0511217v2 [hep-ph]. Lecture notes from 2005 SLAC Summer Ins ute.

    External links
    Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Black holes

    * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Singularities and Black Holes" by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich.
    * "Black hole" on Scholarpedia.
    * Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull - Interactive multimedia Web site about the physics and astronomy of black holes from the Space Telescope Science Ins ute
    * FAQ on black holes
    * "Schwarzschild Geometry" on Andrew Hamilton’s website
    * UT Brownsville Group Simulates Spinning Black-Hole Binaries
    * Advanced Mathematics of Black Hole Evaporation

    Videos

    * 16-year long study tracks stars orbiting Milky Way black hole
    * Yale University Video Lecture: Introduction to Black Holes at Google Video.
    * Movie of Black Hole Candidate from Max Planck Ins ute

    News

    * "Black Hole confirmed in Milky Way." Retrieved December 10, 2008
    * Black Hole Research News
    fify

  8. #8
    Who wants a mustache ride oligarchy's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Post Count
    1,728
    been in 2 fights... sorta. they didnt last long.

    once when i was like 14 cuz some annoying little mexican 7th grader was talking for no reason (i think he was talking simply for the sake of starting a fight with someone) and wouldnt leave me the alone. so i shoved him and told him to off. he swung at me, but he was so short he couldnt reach me, and i grabbed him and threw him in the locker pretty hard and told him to off again, and he didnt do anything after that.

    then a couple years ago at a house party, i was pretty buzzed, and a guy was drunk and for some reason was just being obnoxious. i told him to calm down cuz he was getting on peoples nerves. then he started threatening to kick my ass. i started to step up to him, but then i just walked away, because i didnt feel like dealing with it anymore and it wasnt worth it. but that got him acting all "crunk" so he kept talking to me. i just kinda stood there and didnt do anything, and normally i wouldnt care, but i think the alcohol got to me, and i walked up to him and knocked him senseless for a good 15 seconds or so. then when he came to, he was trying to come at me again, but i wasnt going to deal with it and i just went back inside. then later he broke down crying. i guess he is one of those guys who get all emotional when drunk or something.

    i havent been in a fight that lasted very long though. like strike, i don't like fighting. i think its a pretty lame way to settle , especially since 98% of the people get into fights over, are gay reasons in the first place. the only reason i would ever fight someone is if im forced to physically defend myself, my family, or my friends. i never will be the aggressor in a fight though. my fighting teacher told me that i learn to fight so that i dont have to fight. wax on wax off es.

  9. #9
    Who wants a mustache ride oligarchy's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Post Count
    1,728
    I almost forgot about 8 or 9 months ago I almost did get into a fight at a gym though. Some dumbass that had like a 14 year old kid guarding him kept abusing him. So after a couple scores, I came and doubled him from his blind side, and ended up blocking him. He tried doing the same thing the next trip down, and I blocked him again. The third time he got wise and dribbled out, which at that point I told the kid to switch with me. The guy tried to drive past me but couldnt, and like a moron, he killed his dribble, so I crowded him. He was considerably shorter than me, although a lot more muscular, but he wasnt able to get a pass or shot off with me on him, so like a , he elbowed me in the face, then shot the ball and it hit front iron and he got the offensive rebound. he tried to pass it but i tipped it, and as i went to grab the ball, he elbowed me again. I told him to cut that mess out, and he got in my face and pointed at me, and told me to watch myself. I told him to cool off and stop throwing elbows, and then he lost it and slapped me (who the slaps people these days? for s sake if you are going to start a physical altercation with me, ing punch me like a man). As I went at him, he ran backwards and had two of his friends grab me to hold me back. Those were the only guys that did, because everyone else wanted me to go after the guy, even his own teammates, cuz they all knew what a move it was for him to hit me, then run backwards like Carmello, and tell his friends to grab me. I was extremely pissed, but cooled off and just played basketball. He didn't score a single point after that, as I swatted his a few more times, and I hit the game winner in his face, and told him to suck my . He didn't do anything cuz he looked like a total at that point, and he knew it too.

    funnier than that, a friend of mine was talking to him about it later, saying he was a for what he did. a couple days later, the guy saw my friend at the gym again, and asked if they were cool. my friend said "whats done is done, but you're still a -made ho". the guy said "good im glad your cool now. wanna play on my team?"

    lol what a puss

  10. #10
    Believe. Cessation's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Post Count
    2,896
    cool story bro

  11. #11
    LMAO koriwhat's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Post Count
    41,642
    the OP, this thread, and him being able to troll the spurs forum at will.

    i'm against banning people and whatnot but is ridiculous these days on ST. always the same stupid in' "lol" and "lmao" threads in here, keep that in the club, troll forum, or nba forum.

    btw, did i mention, you phillip!

  12. #12
    Soak In Your Own Blood BanditHiro's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Post Count
    5,307
    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
    Vol. 95, pp. 2355–2360, March 1998
    Evolution
    Modification of expression and cis-regulation of Hoxc8 in the
    evolution of diverged axial morphology
    HEINZ-GEORG BELTING*†, COODUVALLI S. SHASHIKANT*, AND FRANK H. RUDDLE*‡§
    Departments of *Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and ‡Genetics, Yale University, POB 208103, New Haven, CT 06520
    Contributed by Frank H. Ruddle, December 30, 1997
    ABSTRACT Differential Hox gene expression between
    vertebrate species has been implicated in the divergence of
    axial morphology. To examine this relationship, we have
    compared expression and transcriptional regulation of Hoxc8
    in chicken and mouse. In both species, expression of Hoxc8 in
    the paraxial mesoderm and neural tube is associated with
    midthoracic and brachial iden ies, respectively. During embryogenesis,
    there is a temporal delay in the activation of
    Hoxc8 in chicken compared with mouse. As a result, chicken
    Hoxc8 expression in the paraxial mesoderm is at a posterior
    axial level, extending over a smaller domain compared with
    mouse Hoxc8 expression. This finding is consistent with a
    shorter thoracic region in chicken compared with mouse. In
    addition, the chicken Hoxc8 early enhancer, differing from its
    mouse counterpart in only a few specific nucleotides, directs
    a reporter gene expression to a more posterior domain in
    transgenic mouse embryos. These findings are consistent with
    the concept that the diversification of axial morphology has
    been achieved through changes in cis-regulation of developmental
    control genes.
    Genes that control axial patterning, such as Hox genes, are
    highly conserved across the animal kingdom (1). However,
    animals exhibit a high degree of diversity in the organization
    of the primary body axis. This phenomenon may be caused by
    conserved genetic programs having become variously modified
    in different organisms (2–4). Differences in Hox gene
    expression may contribute to an understanding of how modifications
    of developmental programs generate axial diversity
    between species (5–7).
    Amniotes differ greatly in the number of segments contributing
    to individual anatomic regions along the vertebral column
    such as the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar regions. For
    example, the vertebral column of the mouse consists of seven
    cervical and 13 thoracic vertebrae, whereas the vertebral
    column of chicken displays 14 cervical and seven thoracic
    vertebrae. Comparisons between mouse and chicken show that
    differences in axial morphology are associated with differences
    in spatial domains of Hox gene expression (5, 6). For example,
    Hoxc6 is expressed at the cervicalythoracic transition in both
    mouse and chick, but at different relative levels along the
    anteroposterior axis; likewise, Hoxc8 is expressed in the thoracic
    region of both mouse and chicken (6).
    Differences in expression patterns of Hox genes between
    different species may be brought about by changes in components
    of their transcriptional regulation, including changes in
    cis-regulatory elements and trans-acting factors whose interactions
    determine embryonic expression patterns of Hox
    genes. However, experimental exchanges of Hox genes and
    their cis-regulatory regions between different organisms have
    demonstrated a high degree of functional conservation (8–24).
    The expression of trans-acting factors of Hox genes probably
    are largely retained in amniotes, setting up a pre-pattern that
    provides positional coordinates along the body axis. We postulate
    that subtle changes in cis-regulatory elements leading to
    altered interactions with conserved trans-acting factors may
    contribute to diverged expression patterns of Hox genes among
    different species.
    In previous studies, we identified cis-regulatory regions that
    control different phases of mouse Hoxc8 expression (25–29).
    The Hoxc8 early enhancer is involved in the establishment of
    the anteroposterior expression domain of Hoxc8, consistent
    with its role in the regionalization of the body axis (26, 29). The
    early enhancer has been delimited to a 200-bp DNA fragment
    by extensive deletion analyses in transgenic mice (26, 28). Five
    partially redundant elements within this region act in combination
    in determining early Hoxc8 expression (26, 28). A
    survey among mammalian species reveals a remarkable conservation
    of the nucleotide sequence of the early enhancer
    (C.S.S., unpublished observations). Any difference in the
    nucleotide sequence and activity of this highly conserved and
    well-characterized enhancer may have strong implications on
    the divergence of Hoxc8 expression between different species.
    To test this hypothesis, we have studied Hoxc8 expression
    during chicken and mouse embryogenesis and compared their
    early enhancer regions for nucleotide sequence similarities,
    and enhancer activities in transgenic mice. In this report we
    provide evidence suggesting that transposition of Hoxc8 expression
    between the two species is achieved by differential
    activities of the Hoxc8 early enhancer.
    MATERIALS AND METHODS
    FVB mice (Taconics) were used for obtaining staged embryos
    and for transgenic analysis. For mating, pairs were caged
    together at noon, and the females were examined for the
    presence of a vaginal plug the next morning, which was defined
    as day 0.5. Fertilized eggs from white leghorn hens (SPAFAS)
    were incubated at 37°C in an egg incubator. The chicken
    embryos were staged as described (30).
    Immunohistochemistry was performed with a mAb, C592y
    7E, against the mouse Hoxc8 protein (29) as described (31)
    with minor modifications.
    For retrograde labeling experiments, mouse (10.5 day postcoital)

    2-week incubation in PBS, 10 mM EDTA. Specimens were cut
    on a vibratome at 80–100mm, and the image was captured with
    a black-and-white charge-coupled device camera. The same
    sections then were processed with Hoxc8 mAbs, and the
    expression of Hoxc8 was compared with the DiI label, side by
    side or by superimposing the captured images in pseudocolor.
    Production of transgenic embryos, preparation of DNA for
    microinjection, and staining for b-galactosidase have been
    described (26). The reporter gene construct (construct A)
    carrying 399-bp Hoxc8 early enhancer was described earlier
    (28). A 151-bp chicken enhancer was isolated by PCR using
    chicken genomic DNA as a template and synthetic oligonucleotide
    primers designed from the mouse enhancer sequence
    flanking the fragment. A 399-bp enhancer fragment in which
    151 bp of the mouse sequence was replaced with the corresponding
    chicken DNA fragment was generated by overlapping
    PCR. The resulting fragment was cloned by ligation at
    appropriate restriction sites in the polylinker sequence of
    pHSF (26) to create a mouseychicken hybrid construct (construct
    B).
    RESULTS
    Heterochronic Activation of Hoxc8. Previous studies by
    Burke et al. (6), using RNA in situ procedures, showed that
    axial levels of Hoxc8 expression differed between mouse and
    chicken midgestation embryos. To determine the temporal
    sequence of Hoxc8 expression during mouse and chicken
    embryogenesis, we performed a comparative immunohistochemistry,
    using a mAb raised against mouse Hoxc8 (29). The
    mouse embryonic expression pattern is described in detail
    elsewhere (29). Briefly, in the mouse, Hoxc8 first is detected
    at the base of allantois in day 8 embryos having 6–7 somites
    (Fig. 1A). At this stage, the neural tube is still open, and the
    heart primordia have just formed (32). The earliest chicken
    embryos examined, stages 10 and 11, are similar in their
    developmental progression to day 8.0–8.5 mouse embryos. At
    these stages, the major events of gastrulation have occurred,
    and organogenesis is proceeding in the anterior portion of the
    embryos. Embryos of both species possess a similar number
    (8–12) of somites, and the degrees of the development of the
    heart and nervous system are comparable at these stages.
    However, in the chick, Hoxc8 protein was not detected in stages
    10 or 12 (data not shown), but first was detected in the
    posterior regions in stage 13 embryos having 18–19 somites
    (Fig. 1E). At this stage, the neural tube, with the exception of
    the caudal neuropore, is entirely closed, and the rostral
    portions, including fore-, mid- and hindbrain, the optic cups,
    and otic vesicles are formed. As in the mouse, chicken Hoxc8
    expression at this stage was diffuse in all embryonic tissues
    posterior to somite condensation. Thus, the onset of Hoxc8
    expression in the chicken is developmentally delayed compared
    with mouse.
    Axial Levels of Hoxc8 Expression. A clear and differential
    anterior boundary of Hoxc8 expression in the neural tube and
    paraxial mesoderm is established at subsequent stages in the
    mouse (day 8.5, Fig. 1B) and in the chicken embryos (stage 14,
    Fig. 1F). In the mouse, at days 9.5 and 10.5, anterior bound-
    FIG. 1. Expression of Hoxc8 during early mouse (A–D) and chicken (E and F) embryogenesis. The anterior boundary of expression in the neural
    tube is indicated by arrowheads. (A) Embryo with 7–8 somites. (B) Embryo with 10–12 somites. The staining of the foregut in A and B is caused
    by antibody trapping. (C) Embryo with 28–30 somites (9.5 day postcoital). (D) Embryo at 10.5 day p.c. Somite 17 is indicated in C and D. (E)
    Chicken embryo at H&H stage 13 (18–19 somites). (F) Embryo at H&H stage 14 (20 somites). (G) Embryo at H&H stage 21. (H) At H&H stage
    23, somite 22 is indicated in G and H. The staining of the brain and the allantois is caused by antibody trapping. a, allantois; e, eye; f, forelimb
    bud, m, mesoderm; ov, otic vesicle; s, somite.
    2356 Evolution: Belting et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95 (1998)

    aries of expression of Hoxc8 were observed in the neural tube
    at the level of 10th somite and in the paraxial mesoderm at the
    level of 14th somite (Fig. 1 C and D). In the chick, however, at
    stages 21 and 23, anterior boundaries of expression of Hoxc8
    were observed in the neural tube at the level of the 18th somite
    and in the paraxial mesoderm at the level of 20th somite. Thus,
    the axial level of expression of Hoxc8 in chicken embryos is 6–8
    somites more posterior than that observed in the mouse
    embryos.
    At these stages, in both mouse and chicken embryos, Hoxc8
    expression declines in the tailbud region, thus defining posterior
    boundaries of expression. However, these boundaries are
    unlike the anterior boundaries of expression, having indistinct
    margins. In the mouse, Hoxc8 expression in the neural tube
    spans about six somite levels (from somites 10–15) and in the
    paraxial mesoderm about 7–8 somite levels (somites 13–21,
    with weaker levels of expression at somites 13 and 21). In the
    chick, Hoxc8 expression in the neural tube spans about six
    somite levels (somites 18–23; strong expression in somites
    19–20) and in paraxial mesoderm about five somite levels
    (somites 21–25). Thus Hoxc8 expression in paraxial mesoderm
    is 2–3 somite levels shorter in the chicken compared with
    mouse. Although the expression domain of Hoxc8 in the
    paraxial mesoderm is smaller and more posterior compared
    with mouse, the expression pattern is coincident with the
    smaller thoracic region in chick. Thus, Hoxc8 expression in the
    paraxial mesoderm is different not only with respect to absolute
    axial levels but also in the number of expressing somites.
    Early and Late Phases of Neural Tube Expression of Hoxc8.
    In the mouse, two phases of Hoxc8 expression can be distinguished
    in the neural tube, an early and a late phase (29). In
    the early phase (day 8–9.5), Hoxc8 expression is found in most,
    if not all, cells along the dorsoventral extent of the neural tube
    (data not shown). In the late phase (after day 10.5), Hoxc8
    expression is restricted to differentiating neurons, predominantly
    in motor neurons in the ventrolateral region of the
    neural tube (Fig. 1D). In the chick, similar phases of Hoxc8
    expression in the neural tube are observed. In the early phase
    (stage 13–15) Hoxc8 is distributed uniformly in the neural tube,
    whereas in the late phase Hoxc8 is distributed predominantly
    in the motor neurons in the ventrolateral region (Fig. 1H). The
    distribution of Hoxc8 within the subregions of the spinal cord
    at subsequent stages is very similar in both species.
    Association of Hoxc8 Expression with Motor Neurons. To
    determine whether the axial shift of Hoxc8 expression in the
    neural tube of mouse and chicken corresponds to a transposition
    of regional iden y of spinal nerves, brachial motor
    neurons were identified and tested for colocalization with
    Hoxc8 protein. Brachial motor neurons of day 10.5 mouse and
    stage 24 chicken embryos were retrograde-labeled with DiI as
    described in Materials and Methods. The embryos were sectioned
    serially, and the DiI signal was compared with the
    distribution of Hoxc8 protein on the same sections. In both
    mouse and chick, sections through the anterior brachial neural
    tube at somite levels 9 and 17, respectively, showed no Hoxc8
    expression (Fig. 2 A and D). At more posterior levels, (at
    somite levels 11 in mouse and 19 in chick), however, DiI label
    coincided with the domain of Hoxc8 expression (Fig. 2 B and
    D). These findings were confirmed on horizontal sections
    (data not shown). Thus, Hoxc8 expression in the central
    nervous system is transposed according to the functional
    iden y of expressing motor neurons.
    Hoxc8 Early Enhancer of Mouse and Chick. The mouse
    Hoxc8 early enhancer is involved in the establishment of spatial
    domains of Hoxc8 expression (25, 26, 29). We isolated the
    chicken Hoxc8 early enhancer to test whether the difference in
    the spatiotemporal pattern of chicken Hoxc8 expression compared
    with mouse is caused by differences in the chicken
    enhancer. Primers were designed, based on most conserved
    regions of Hoxc8 early enhancer, to amplify a 151-bp fragment
    of the chicken enhancer by PCR. This enhancer is highly
    conserved between the mouse and chicken with respect to
    structure and overall sequence similarity (Fig. 3A). The sequence
    similarity over 151 bp is 80%. The critical elements
    (Fig. 3A, A–E) required for the mouse enhancer activity in
    FIG. 2. (A–D) Expression of Hoxc8 in the brachial region of the
    neural tube. Cross-section through the neural tube of a mouse embryo
    at the level of the ninth (A) and 11th (B) somite. (C and D)
    Cross-sections through the neural tube of a chicken embryo at the level
    of the 17th and 19th somites. Hoxc8 expression is shown in green, DiI
    label in red and resulting overlap in yellow. (E and F) Expression of
    mouse and chicken reporter genes in transgenic mouse embryos. (E)
    Construct A (399-bp mouse sequence); B, construct B (399-bp mousechicken
    hybrid construct). The arrowheads indicates somite 14. The
    arrow indicates the anterior limit of reporter gene expression mediated
    by construct B (F). f, forelimb bud; nc, notochord; r, ventral root; v,
    ventral horn.
    Evolution: Belting et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95 (1998) 2357


    and chicken [Hamburger and Hamilton (H&H) 24]
    embryos were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde in PBS. Brachial
    motor neurons were retrograde-labeled by placing finely
    ground 1,19-dioctadecyl-3,3,39,39-tetramethylindocarbocyanine
    (DiI) crystals into one severed forelimb bud and a 1- to
    The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by page charge
    payment. This article must therefore be hereby marked ‘‘advertisement’’ in
    accordance with 18 U.S.C. §1734 solely to indicate this fact.
    © 1998 by The National Academy of Sciences 0027-8424y98y952355-6$2.00y0
    PNAS is available online at http:yywww.pnas.org.
    Abbreviations: DiI, 1,19-dioctadecyl-3,3,39,39-tetramethylindocarbocyanine;
    H&H, Hamburger and Hamilton.
    Data deposition: The sequence reported in this paper has been
    deposited in the GenBank database (accession no. AJ223359).
    †Present address: Ins ute for Biology I, University of Freiburg,
    Hauptstr. 1, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany.
    §To whom reprint requests should be addressed. e-mail: frank.ruddle@
    yale.edu.
    2355

    transgenic mice are arranged identically in the chicken enhancer.
    In addition to clusters of subs utions between the
    known sites, there are several differences within and in proximity
    to these elements.
    The chicken enhancer was tested for its ability to direct the
    expression of a reporter gene (hsp68-lacZ) in transgenic mice to
    determine whether differences in its nucleotide sequence from
    that of mouse affects enhancer activity. A 399-bp DNA fragment
    containing the mouse early enhancer region (construct A, Fig.
    3B) directs the reporter gene expression in day 9.5 embryos to the
    neural tube and paraxial mesoderm at the level of somite 14 and
    19, respectively (ref. 28 and Fig. 2E). From this construct, the
    151-bp fragment of the mouse enhancer containing the critical
    elements of the enhancer was replaced with the corresponding
    sequences from the chick. The resulting construct (construct B,
    Fig. 3B) directed the expression of the reporter gene in day 9.5
    embryos to more posterior regions of the embryo in both neural
    tube and mesoderm (Fig. 2F). Five founder embryos that were
    generated displayed identical patterns. Expression in the neural
    tube was consistently found posterior to the 18th somite, whereas
    expression in the mesoderm was several somites posterior to that
    in the neural tube. Thus, chicken Hoxc8 enhancer differing from
    the mouse counterpart in a few nucleotides directs the reporter
    gene expression to a different anterior boundary in the neural
    tube and mesoderm. This posteriorization of the reporter gene
    activity in the neural tube and mesoderm is consistent with the
    more posterior localized expression of Hoxc8 in the chick.
    DISCUSSION
    The investigation of the genetic basis of morphological diversity
    among animals now has become feasible because of the
    identification of highly conserved regulatory genes that control
    embryonic patterning and morphogenesis. To examine the
    correlation of Hox gene expression and axial variation, we have
    compared the spatiotemporal distribution of Hoxc8 in mouse
    and chick. Our findings can be summarized as follows: Hoxc8
    expression is modified in concert with variation in axial
    morphology within the paraxial mesoderm and the neural tube
    (Fig. 4). Posteriorization of Hoxc8 expression in chicken is
    achieved through a temporal delay of activation compared
    FIG. 3. The Hoxc8 early enhancer in mouse and chick. (A) Nucleotide sequence comparison of the critical region of chicken and mouse Hoxc8
    early enhancers. One hundred fifty-one bp of the critical region of the early enhancer are shown. Five elements essential for the activity of the early
    enhancer are indicated (A–E). (B) Design of mouse and mouse-chicken hybrid reporter constructs. Construct A consists of a 399-bp early Hoxc8
    enhancer ligated to a mouse hsp68ylacZ reporter gene. Construct B was generated by replacing 151 bp of the critical enhancer region of the mouse
    with that of chick.
    FIG. 4. Schematic comparison of Hoxc8 expression in chicken and
    mouse in relationship to morphological landmarks. Cervical, thoracic,
    and lumbar regions of the vertebral column and the brachial region of
    the neural tube are indicated. Brachial spinal nerves C6, C7, C8, and
    T1 in mouse and C13, C14, C15, and T1 in chicken are shown. Shaded
    region in somites and neural tube represent Hoxc8 expression. Regions
    of highest expression are indicated in dark shades. The double-headed
    arrow indicates the anteroposterior orientation of the body axis. a,
    anterior; p, posterior; nt, neural tube; t, thoracic vertebrae; s, somites;
    sn, spinal nerves; v, vertebrae.
    2358 Evolution: Belting et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95 (1998)

    with mouse. The comparison of chicken and mouse enhancer
    elements shows that only a few nucleotide changes within the
    critical region of the early Hoxc8 enhancer suffice to transpose
    reporter gene expression to more posterior body regions.
    The role of Hox genes in the regionalization of the nervous
    system has been examined most closely in the hindbrain (33).
    Within the hindbrain Hox genes are expressed in the same
    segments in mouse and chick, reflecting that the organization,
    in respect to the number of rhombomeres, has been conserved
    between these two species (34–36). In contrast, the brachial
    region of the spinal cord is transposed in these species and our
    results show that the shift of Hoxc8 expression along the body
    axis corresponds to this anatomical modification.
    The different axial position and extent of Hoxc8 expression
    in the segmental mesoderm reflects two major differences in
    the axial organization of the vertebral column of chicken and
    mouse. First, the relative expansion of the cervical region in
    the chicken is reflected by a posteriorization of Hoxc8 expression.
    Second, the overall reduction of thoracic segments is
    reflected by a reduced number of somites expressing Hoxc8
    compared with the mouse. This association of Hoxc8 expression
    with regional morphology of vertebrae suggests a role in
    the specification of midthoracic iden y within the paraxial
    mesoderm. The axial fate of somites already is established in
    the presomitic mesoderm (37). Thus, the observation that
    Hoxc8 is found at the correct place and at the right time in the
    segmental plate and before somite condensation is consistent
    with a role in the establishment of thoracic iden y in the
    paraxial mesoderm. Further support for a causal relationship
    between Hoxc8 expression and midthoracic iden y stems
    from genetic analyses in mice. Ectopic expression of Hoxc8 in
    somites of the lower thoracic and upper lumbar region leads to
    anterior transformations within this region, including the
    formation of lumbar ribs (38). Similarly, disruption of Hoxc9
    causes a posterior expansion of Hoxc8 expression and the
    appearance of supernumerary ribs as well (39). These results
    also demonstrate that anatomical regions can be expanded by
    an extension of Hox gene expression along the primary body
    axis and agrees well with the finding that a larger expression
    domain of Hoxc8 in the mouse, compared with the chick, is
    linked to a higher number of thoracic vertebrae. This finding
    suggests that axial variation among amniotes is not only
    generated by axial shifts in the anterior expression boundaries
    of Hox genes, but also by expansion or reduction of their
    overall expression domains.
    The axial variation in Hoxc8 expression may be caused by
    changes in the transcriptional regulation of Hoxc8. Differences
    in Hox gene expression could be caused by genetic changes in
    cis elements andyor trans-acting factors. Changes in transregulation
    are more difficult to study because of the multiplicity
    of potential (and lack of bona fide) regulatory proteins.
    Changes in cis-elements in this report were studied by comparing
    a minimal sequence of the Hoxc8 early enhancer. The
    nucleotide sequence of the early enhancer region is highly
    conserved among mammals and the sequence of cis-acting
    elements (A–E) are invariant. Compared with mammalian
    Hoxc8 early enhancer sequence, the chicken enhancer sequence
    showed more nucleotide sequence changes. Many of
    the nucleotide differences were observed in the vicinity of the
    genetically defined sites, A, D, and E. It is conceivable that
    these and other specific nucleotide differences contribute
    toward overall posteriorization of the reporter gene expression
    mediated through the chicken enhancer. In the case of the
    mouse enhancer, mutations at individual sites A, C, D, and E,
    lead to posteriorization of the reporter gene expression (28).
    The anterior extent of the reporter gene expression is determined
    by combinatorial interactions at these elements. In
    addition, nucleotide changes outside of the defined elements
    in the chicken enhancer may be affecting hitherto undefined
    cis-acting elements. A systematic exchange of nucleotide sequences
    between mouse and chicken enhancers will pinpoint
    critical nucleotides involved in the posteriorization of the
    reporter gene expression directed by the chicken enhancer.
    Comparative analysis of vertebrate cis-regulatory regions,
    using reporter gene assays in transgenic mouse embryos, have
    shown remarkable conservation of transcriptional regulation
    of Hox genes (13–15, 17–19, 22). Many of these elements direct
    reporter gene expression to similar spatial domains in transgenic
    mouse embryos. On the other hand, a chicken Hoxb4
    enhancer, although capable of directing expression of the
    reporter gene to the correct anterior boundary in the neural
    tube, directed expression to a more posterior boundary in the
    mesoderm, suggesting a species-specific differences in the
    enhancer activity (18). Transcriptional heterochrony also has
    been suggested to be an important mechanism by which subtle
    changes in temporal colinearity of Hox genes may result in the
    evolution of body plans (40). A replacement of a conserved
    mouse Hoxd11 regulatory region with its zebrafish counterpart
    lead to a slightly premature activation of Hoxd11, leading to
    rostral shift of its expression boundary and anterior transposition
    of the sacrum (22).
    In conclusion, we have shown that the Hoxc8 expression in
    mouse and chicken is similar with respect to anatomical
    features such as the brachial spinal nerves and the midthoracic
    region of the vertebral column. However, significant differences
    also exist in relational features of the body plan such as
    the ratio of cervical and thoracic domains. We also show in
    mouse transgenic experiments where we compare the early
    enhancers of mouse and chick that chicken enhancer constructs
    simulate a chicken relational pattern of expression.
    Additional experiments will be required to determine the
    specificity of nucleotide changes in the regulation of Hoxc8
    expression pattern and correlated modifications of the body
    plan.
    We thank Charles Bieberich and Gunter Wagner for discussion of
    earlier versions of this manuscript. This work has been supported by
    National Ins utes of Health Grant GM09966 to F.H.R.
    1. Ruddle, F. H., Bartels, J. L., Bentley, K. L., Kappen, C., Murtha,
    M. T. & Pendleton, J. W. (1994) Annu. Rev. Genet. 28, 423–442.
    2. Lewis, E. B. (1978) Nature (London) 276, 567–570.
    3. Carrol, S. B. (1995) Nature (London) 376, 479–485.
    4. Palopoli, M. F. & Patel, N. H. (1996) Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 6,
    502–508.
    5. Gaunt, S. J. (1994) Int. J. Dev. Biol. 38, 549–552.
    6. Burke, A. C., Nelson, C. E., Morgan, B. A. & Tabin, C. (1995)
    Development (Cambridge, U.K.) 121, 333–346.
    7. Averof, M. & Patel, N. H. Nature (London) 388, 682–686.
    8. Malicki, J., Schughart, K. & McGinnis, W. (1990) Cell 63,
    961–967.
    9. McGinnis, N., Kuziora, M. A. & McGinnis, W. (1990) Cell 63,
    969–976.
    10. Awgulewitsch, A. & Jacobs, D. (1992) Nature (London) 358,
    341–344.
    11. Malicki, J., Cianetti, L. C., Peschle, C. & McGinnis, W. (1992)
    Nature (London) 358, 345–347.
    12. Zhao, J. J., Lazzarini, R. A. & Pick, L. (1993) Genes Dev. 7,
    343–354.
    13. Marshall, H., Studer, M., Popperl, H., Aparicio, S., Kuroiwa, A.,
    Brenner, S. & Krumlauf, R. (1994) Nature (London) 370, 567–
    571.
    14. Studer, M., Popperl, H., Marshall, H., Kuroiwa, A. & Krumlauf,
    R. (1994) Science 265, 1728–1732.
    15. Aparicio, S., Morrison, A., Gould, A., Gilthorpe, J., Chaudhuri,
    C., Rigby, P., Krumlauf, R.&Brenner, S. (1995) Proc. Natl. Acad.
    Sci. USA 92, 1684–1688.
    16. Frasch, M., Chen, X. & Lufkin, T. (1995) Development (Cambridge,
    U.K.) 121, 957–974.
    17. Knittel, T., Kessel, M., Kim, M. H. & Gruss, P. (1995) Development
    (Cambridge, U.K.) 121, 1077–1088.
    Evolution: Belting et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95 (1998) 2359

  13. #13
    Believe. Cessation's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Post Count
    2,896
    lol calftats mad

  14. #14
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Post Count
    885
    A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.[1] Quantum mechanics predicts that black holes also emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature decreases with the mass of the black hole, making it unlikely to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass.

    Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can be observed through its interaction with other matter. A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space. Alternatively, when gas falls into a stellar black hole from a companion star, the gas spirals inward, heating to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and Earth-orbiting telescopes.

    Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates, and have also found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. In 1998, astronomers found compelling evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than 2 million solar masses is located near the Sagittarius A* region in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and more recent results using additional data find evidence that the supermassive black hole is more than 4 million solar masses.
    Contents
    [hide]

    * 1 History
    o 1.1 General relativity
    o 1.2 Golden age
    * 2 Properties and structure
    o 2.1 Physical properties
    o 2.2 Event horizon
    o 2.3 Singularity
    o 2.4 Photon sphere
    o 2.5 Ergosphere
    * 3 Formation and evolution
    o 3.1 Gravitational collapse
    + 3.1.1 Primordial black holes in the Big Bang
    o 3.2 High-energy collisions
    o 3.3 Growth
    o 3.4 Evaporation
    * 4 Observational evidence
    o 4.1 Accretion of matter
    o 4.2 X-ray binaries
    + 4.2.1 Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow
    + 4.2.2 Quasi-periodic oscillations
    o 4.3 Gamma ray bursts
    o 4.4 Galactic nuclei
    o 4.5 Gravitational lensing
    o 4.6 Alternatives
    * 5 Open questions
    o 5.1 Entropy and thermodynamics
    o 5.2 Black hole unitarity
    * 6 See also
    * 7 Notes
    * 8 References
    * 9 Further reading
    * 10 External links

    History
    Schwarzschild black hole
    Simulation of gravitational lensing by a black hole which distorts the image of a galaxy in the background (click here for larger animation)

    The idea of a body so massive that even light could not escape was first put forward by geologist John Mic in a letter written to Henry Cavendish in 1783 to the Royal Society:

    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.
    —John Mic [2]

    In 1796, 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).[3][4] Such "dark stars" were largely ignored in the nineteenth century, since it was not understood how a massless wave such as light could be influenced by gravity.[5]
    General relativity

    In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, having earlier shown that gravity does influence light's motion. A few months later, Karl Schwarzschild gave the solution for the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass.[6] A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass and wrote more extensively about its properties.[7] This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, where it became singular, meaning that some of the terms in the Einstein equations became infinite. The nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time. In 1924, Arthur Eddington showed that the singularity disappeared after a change of coordinates (see Eddington coordinates), although it took until 1933 for Georges Lemaître to realize that this meant the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was an unphysical coordinate singularity.[8]

    In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using general relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit) would collapse.[citation needed] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[9] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[10] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately three solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[11]

    Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this property, the collapsed stars were called "frozen stars,"[12] because 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. This is a known property of modern black holes, but it must be emphasized that the light from the surface of the frozen star becomes redshifted very fast, turning the black hole black very quickly. Many physicists could not accept the idea of time standing still at the Schwarzschild radius, and there was little interest in the subject for over 20 years.
    Golden age
    See also: Golden age of general relativity

    In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface r = 2m [in geometrized units, i.e. 2Gm/c2, where r is the radius of the surface and m is the mass of the black hole] as an event horizon, "a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction".[13] This did not strictly contradict Oppenheimer's results, but extended them to include the point of view of infalling observers. Finkelstein's solution extended the Schwarzschild solution for the future of observers falling into the black hole. A complete extension had already been found by Martin Kruskal, who was urged to publish it.[14]

    These results came at the beginning of the golden age of general relativity, which is marked by general relativity and black holes becoming mainstream subjects of research. This process was helped by the discovery of pulsars in 1967,[15][16] which were within a few years shown to be rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars, like black holes, were regarded as just theoretical curiosities; but the discovery of pulsars showed their physical relevance and spurred a further interest in all types of compact objects that might be formed by gravitational collapse.

    In this period more general black hole solutions where found. In 1963, Roy Kerr found the exact solution for a rotating black hole. Two years later Ezra T. Newman found the axisymmetric solution for a black hole which is both rotating and electrically charged.[17] Through the work of Werner Israel,[18] Brandon Carter,[19][20] and D. C. Robinson[21] the no-hair theorem emerged, stating that a stationary black hole solution is completely described by the three parameters of the Kerr–Newman metric; mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.[22]

    For a long time, it was suspected that the strange features of the black hole solutions were pathological artefacts from the symmetry conditions imposed, and that the singularities would not appear in generic situations. This view was held in particular by Belinsky, Khalatnikov, and Lif z, who tried to prove that no singularities appear in generic solutions. However, in the late sixties Roger Penrose[23] and Stephen Hawking used global techniques to prove that singularities are generic.[24]

    Work by James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, and Hawking in the early 1970s led to the formulation of the laws of black hole mechanics.[25] These laws describe the behaviour of a black hole in close analogy to the laws of thermodynamics by relating mass to energy, area to entropy, and surface gravity to temperature. The analogy was completed when Hawking, in 1974, showed that quantum field theory predicts that black holes should radiate like a black body with a temperature proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole.[26]

    The term "black hole" was first publicly used by John Wheeler during a lecture in 1967. Although he is usually credited with coining the phrase, he always insisted that it was suggested to him by somebody else. The first recorded use of the term is in a 1964 letter by Anne Ewing to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[27] After Wheeler's use of the term, it was quickly adopted in general use.
    Properties and structure

    The no-hair theorem states that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, charge, and angular momentum.[22] Any two black holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable according to classical (i.e. non-quantum) mechanics.

    These properties are special because they are visible from outside the black hole. For example, a charged black hole repels other like charges just like any other charged object. Similarly, the total mass inside a sphere containing a black hole can be found by using the gravitational analog of Gauss's law, the ADM mass, far away from the black hole.[28] Likewise, the angular momentum can be measured from far away using frame dragging by the gravitomagnetic field.

    When an object falls into a black hole, any information about the shape of the object or distribution of charge on it is evenly distributed along the horizon of the black hole, and is lost to outside observers. The behavior of the horizon in this situation is closely analogous to that of a conductive stretchy membrane with friction and electrical resistance, a dissipative system (see membrane paradigm).[29] This is different from other field theories like electromagnetism, which does not have any friction or resistivity at the microscopic level, because they are time-reversible. Because the black hole eventually achieves a stable state with only three parameters, there is no way to avoid losing information about the initial conditions: the gravitational and electric fields of the black hole give very little information about what went in. The information that is lost includes every quan y that cannot be measured far away from the black hole horizon, including the total baryon number, lepton number, and all the other nearly conserved pseudo-charges of particle physics. This behavior is so puzzling that it has been called the black hole information loss paradox.[30][31][32]
    Physical properties

    The simplest black hole has mass but neither electric charge nor angular momentum. These black holes are often referred to as Schwarzschild black holes after the physicist Karl Schwarzschild who discovered this solution in 1915.[6] According to Birkhoff's theorem, it is the only vacuum solution that is spherically symmetric.[33] This means that there is no observable difference between the gravitational field of such a black hole and that of any other spherical object of the same mass. The popular notion of a black hole "sucking in everything" in its surroundings is therefore only correct near the black hole horizon; far away, the external gravitational field is identical to that of any other body of the same mass.[34]

    Solutions describing more general black holes also exist. Charged black holes are described by the Reissner-Nordström metric, while the Kerr metric describes a rotating black hole. The most general stationary black hole solution known is the Kerr-Newman metric, which describes a black hole with both charge and angular momentum.

    While the mass of a black hole can take any positive value, the charge and angular momentum are constrained by the mass. In Planck units, the total electric charge Q and the total angular momentum J are expected to satisfy

    Q^2+\left ( \tfrac{J}{M} \right )^2\le M^2\,

    for a black hole of mass M. Black holes saturating this inequality are called extremal. Solutions of Einstein's equations violating the inequality exist, but do not have a horizon. These solutions have naked singularities and are deemed unphysical. The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter.[35] This is supported by numerical simulations.[36]

    Due to the relatively large strength of the electromagnetic force, black holes forming from the collapse of stars are expected to retain the nearly neutral charge of the star. Rotation, however, is expected to be a common feature of compact objects, and the black-hole candidate binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105[37] appears to have an angular momentum near the maximum allowed value.
    Class Mass Size
    Supermassive black hole ~105–109 MSun ~0.001–10 AU
    Intermediate-mass black hole ~103 MSun ~103 km = REarth
    Stellar black hole ~10 MSun ~30 km
    Micro black hole up to ~MMoon up to ~0.1 mm

    Black holes are commonly classified according to their mass, independent of angular momentum J or electric charge Q. The size of a black hole, as determined by the radius of the event horizon, or Schwarzschild radius, is roughly proportional to the mass M through

    r_\mathrm{sh} =\frac{2GM}{c^2} \approx 2.95\, \frac{M}{M_\mathrm{Sun}}~\mathrm{km,}

    where rsh is the Schwarzschild radius and MSun is the mass of the Sun. This relation is exact only for black holes with zero charge and angular momentum, for more general black holes it can differ up to a factor of 2. The table on the right lists the various classes of black hole that are distinguished.
    Event horizon
    Main article: Event horizon
    Image:BH-no-escape-1.svg
    Far away from the black hole a particle can move in any direction. It is only restricted by the speed of light.
    Image:BH-no-escape-2.svg
    Closer to the black hole spacetime starts to deform. There are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away.
    Image:BH-no-escape-3.svg
    Inside of the event horizon all paths bring the particle closer to the center of the black hole. It is no longer possible for the particle to escape.

    The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon—a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.[38]

    As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a large mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole.[39]

    To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole.[40] Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it.[41] At the same time, all processes on this object slow down causing emitted light to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift.[42] Eventually, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen.

    On the other hand, an observer falling into a black hole does not notice any of these effects as he crosses the event horizon. According to his own clock, he crosses the event horizon after a finite time, although he is unable to determine exactly when he crosses it, as it is impossible to determine the location of the event horizon from local observations.[43]

    For a non rotating (static) black hole, the Schwarzschild radius delimits a spherical event horizon. The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to the mass.[44] Rotating black holes have distorted, nonspherical event horizons. Since the event horizon is not a material surface but rather merely a mathematically defined demarcation boundary, nothing prevents matter or radiation from entering a black hole, only from exiting one. The description of black holes given by general relativity is known to be an approximation, and some scientists expect that quantum gravity effects will become significant near the vicinity of the event horizon.[45] This would allow observations of matter near a black hole's event horizon to be used to indirectly study general relativity and proposed extensions to it.
    Singularity
    Main article: Gravitational singularity

    At the center of a black hole as described by general relativity lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite.[46] For a non-rotating black hole this region takes the shape of a single point and for a rotating black hole it is smeared out to form a ring singularity lying in the plane of rotation.[47] In both cases the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution.[48] The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density.

    An observer falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e. non-rotating and no charges) cannot avoid the singularity. Any attempt to do so will only shorten the time taken to get there.[49] When they reach the singularity, they are crushed to infinite density and their mass is added to the total of the black hole. Before that happens, they will have been torn apart by the growing tidal forces in a process sometimes referred to as spaghettification or the noodle effect.[50]

    In the case of a charged (Reissner–Nordström) or rotating (Kerr) black hole it is possible to avoid the singularity. Extending these solutions as far as possible reveals the hypothetical possibility of exiting the black hole into a different spacetime with the black hole acting as a wormhole.[51] The possibility of traveling to another universe is however only theoretical, since any perturbation will destroy this possibility.[52] It also appears to be possible to follow closed timelike curves (going back to one's own past) around the Kerr singularity, which lead to problems with causality like the grandfather paradox.[53] It is expected that none of these peculiar effects would survive in a proper quantum mechanical treatment of rotating and charged black holes.[54]

    The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory.[55] This breakdown, however, is expected; it occurs in a situation where quantum mechanical effects should describe these actions due to the extremely high density and therefore particle interactions. To date it has not been possible to combine quantum and gravitational effects into a single theory. It is generally expected that a theory of quantum gravity will feature black holes without singularities.[56][57]
    Photon sphere
    Main article: Photon sphere

    The 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 the Schwarzschild radius. The orbits are dynamically unstable, hence any small perturbation (such as a particle of infalling matter) will grow over time, either setting it on an outward trajectory escaping the black hole or on an inward spiral eventually crossing the event horizon.

    While light can still escape from inside the photon sphere, any light that crosses the photon sphere on an inbound trajectory will be captured by the black hole. Hence any light reaching an outside observer from inside the photon sphere must have been emitted by objects inside the photon sphere but still outside of the event horizon.

    Other compact objects, such as neutron stars, can also have photon spheres.[58] This follows from the fact that the gravitational field of an object does not depend on its actual size, hence any object that is smaller than 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to its mass will indeed have a photon sphere.
    Ergosphere
    Main article: Ergosphere
    The ergosphere is an oblate spheroid region outside of the event horizon, where objects cannot remain stationary.

    Rotating black holes are surrounded by a region of spacetime in which it is impossible to stand still, called the ergosphere. This is the result of a process known as frame-dragging; general relativity predicts that any rotating mass will tend to slightly "drag" along the spacetime immediately surrounding it. Any object near the rotating mass will tend to start moving in the direction of rotation. For a rotating black hole this effect becomes so strong near the event horizon that an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in the opposite direction to just stand still.[59]

    The ergosphere of a black hole is bounded by the (outer) event horizon on the inside and an oblate spheroid, which coincides with the event horizon at the poles and is noticeably wider around the equator. The outer boundary is sometimes called the ergosurface.

    Objects and radiation can escape normally from the ergosphere. Through the Penrose process, objects can emerge from the ergosphere with more energy than they entered. This energy is taken from the rotational energy of the black hole causing it to slow down.[60]
    Formation and evolution

    Considering the exotic nature of black holes, it may be natural to question if such bizarre objects could exist in nature or to suggest that they are merely pathological solutions to Einstein's equations. Einstein himself wrongly thought that black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius.[61] This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years. However, a minority of relativists continued to contend that black holes were physical objects,[62] and by the end of the 1960s, they had persuaded the majority of researchers in the field that there is no obstacle to forming an event horizon.

    Once an event horizon forms, Roger Penrose proved that a singularity will form somewhere inside it.[23] Shortly afterwards, Stephen Hawking showed that many cosmological solutions describing the Big Bang have singularities without scalar fields or other exotic matter (see Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems). The Kerr solution, the no-hair theorem and the laws of black hole thermodynamics showed that the physical properties of black holes were simple and comprehensible, making them respectable subjects for research.[63] The primary formation process for black holes is expected to be the gravitational collapse of heavy objects such as stars, but there are also more exotic processes that can lead to the production of black holes.
    Gravitational collapse
    Main article: Gravitational collapse

    Gravitational collapse occurs when an object's internal pressure is insufficient to resist the object's own gravity. For stars this usually occurs either because a star has too little "fuel" left to maintain its temperature through stellar nucleosynthesis, or because a star which would have been stable receives 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).[64]

    The collapse may be stopped by the degeneracy pressure of the star's cons uents, condensing the matter in an exotic denser state. The result is one of the various 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.[64]

    If the mass of the remnant exceeds about 3–4 solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit)—either because the original star was very heavy or because the remnant collected additional mass through accretion of matter—even the degeneracy pressure of neutrons is insufficient to stop the collapse. After this, no known mechanism (except possibly quark degeneracy pressure, see quark star) is powerful enough to stop the collapse and the object will inevitably collapse to a black hole.[64]

    This gravitational collapse of heavy stars is assumed to be responsible for the formation of stellar mass black holes. Star formation in the young universe may have resulted in very heavy stars, which upon their collapse would have produced black holes of up to 103 solar masses. These heavy black holes could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of most galaxies.[65]

    While most of the energy released during gravitational collapse is emitted very quickly, an outside observer does not actually see the end of this process. Even though the collapse takes a finite amount of time from the reference frame of infalling matter, a distant observer sees the infalling material slow and halt just above the event horizon, due to gravitational time dilation. Light from the collapsing material takes longer and longer to reach the observer, with the light emitted just before the event horizon forms delayed an infinite amount of time. Thus the external observer never sees the formation of the event horizon; instead, the collapsing material seems to become dimmer and increasingly red-shifted, eventually fading away.[66]
    Primordial black holes in the Big Bang

    Gravitational collapse requires great densities. In the current epoch of the universe these high densities are only found in stars, but in the early universe shortly after the big bang densities were much greater, possibly allowing for the creation of black holes. The high density alone is not enough to allow the formation of black holes since a uniform mass distribution will not allow the mass to bunch up. In order for primordial black holes to form in such a dense medium, there must be initial density perturbations which can then grow under their own gravity. Different models for the early universe vary widely in their predictions of the size of these perturbations. Various models predict the creation of black holes, ranging from a Planck mass to hundreds of thousands of solar masses.[67] Primordial black holes could thus account for the creation of any type of black hole.
    High-energy collisions
    A simulated event in the CMS detector, a collision in which a micro black hole may be created.

    Gravitational collapse is not the only process that could create black holes. In principle, black holes could also be created in high-energy collisions that create sufficient density. However, to date, no such events have ever been detected either directly or indirectly as a deficiency of the mass balance in particle accelerator experiments.[68] This suggests that there must be a lower limit for the mass of black holes. Theoretically, this boundary is expected to lie around the Planck mass (mP = √ħc/G ≈ 1.2×1019 GeV/c2 ≈ 2.2×10−8 kg), where quantum effects are expected to make the theory of general relativity break down completely.[69] This would put the creation of black holes firmly out of reach of any high energy process occurring on or near the Earth. Certain developments in quantum gravity however suggest that the Planck mass could be much lower: some braneworld scenarios for example put it much lower, maybe even as low as 1 TeV/c2[70] This would make it possible for micro black holes to be created in the high energy collisions occurring when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, or possibly in the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These theories are however very speculative, and the creation of black holes in these processes is deemed unlikely by many specialists.[71] Even if such micro black holes should be formed in these collisions, it is expected that they would evaporate in about 10−25 seconds, posing no threat to Earth[72]
    Growth

    Once a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing additional matter. Any black hole will continually absorb gas and interstellar dust from its direct surroundings and omnipresent cosmic background radiation. This is the primary process through which supermassive black holes seem to have grown.[65] A similar process has been suggested for the formation of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters.[73]

    Another possibility is for a black hole to merge with other objects such as stars or even other black holes. This is thought to have been important especially for the early development of supermassive black holes, which are thought to have formed from the coagulation of many smaller objects.[65] The process has also been proposed as the origin of some intermediate-mass black holes.[74][75]
    Evaporation
    Main article: Hawking radiation

    In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes are not entirely black but emit small amounts of thermal radiation.[26] He got this result by applying quantum field theory in a static black hole background. The result of his calculations is that a black hole should emit particles in a perfect black body spectrum. This effect has become known as Hawking radiation. Since Hawking's result, many others have verified the effect through various methods.[76] If his theory of black hole radiation is correct, then black holes are expected to emit a thermal spectrum of radiation, and thereby lose mass, because according to the theory of relativity mass is just highly condensed energy (E = mc2).[26] Black holes will shrink and evaporate over time. The temperature of this spectrum (Hawking temperature) is proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole, which for a Schwarzschild black hole is inversely proportional to the mass. Large black holes, therefore, emit less radiation than small black holes.

    A stellar black hole of one solar mass has a Hawking temperature of about 100 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background. Stellar mass (and larger) black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and will thus grow instead of shrink. To have a Hawking temperature larger than 2.7 K (and be able to evaporate), a black hole needs to be lighter than the Moon (and therefore a diameter of less than a tenth of a millimeter).[77]

    On the other hand, if a black hole is very small the radiation effects are expected to become very strong. Even a black hole that is heavy compared to a human would evaporate in an instant. A black hole the weight of a car (~10−24 m) would only take a nanosecond to evaporate, during which time it would briefly have a luminosity more than 200 times that of the sun. Lighter black holes are expected to evaporate even faster, for example a black hole of mass 1 TeV/c2 would take less than 10−88 seconds to evaporate completely. Of course, for such a small black hole quantum gravitation effects are expected to play an important role and could even – although current developments in quantum gravity do not indicate so[78] – hypothetically make such a small black hole stable.[79]
    Observational evidence

    By their very nature, black holes do not directly emit any signals other than the hypothetical Hawking radiation; since the Hawking radiation for an astrophysical black hole is predicted to be very weak, this makes it impossible to directly detect astrophysical black holes from the Earth. A possible exception to the Hawking radiation being weak is the last stage of the evaporation of light (primordial) black holes; searches for such flashes in the past has proven unsuccessful and provides stringent limits on the possibility of existence of light primordial black holes.[80] NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 will continue the search for these flashes.[81]

    Astrophysicists searching for black holes thus have to rely on indirect observations. A black hole's existence can sometimes be inferred by observing its gravitational interactions with its surroundings.
    Accretion of matter
    See also: Accretion disc
    Formation of extragalactic jets from a black hole's accretion disk

    Due to conservation of angular momentum, gas falling into the gravitational well created by a massive object will typically form a disc-like structure around the object. Friction within the disc causes angular momentum to be transported outward allowing matter to fall further inward releasing potential energy and increasing the temperature of the gas.[82] In the case of compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, the gas in the inner regions becomes so hot that it will emit vast amounts of radiation (mainly X-rays), which may be detected by telescopes. This process of accretion is one of the most efficient energy producing process known; up to 40% of the rest mass of the accreted material can be emitted in radiation.[82] (In nuclear fusion only about 0.7% of the rest mass will be emitted as energy.) In many cases, accretion discs are accompanied by relativistic jets emitted along the poles, which carry away much of the energy. The mechanism for the creation of these jets is currently not well understood.

    As such many of the universe's more energetic phenomena have been attributed to the accretion of matter on black holes. In particular, active galactic nuclei and quasars are thought to be the accretion discs of supermassive black holes.[83] Similarly, X-ray binaries are thought to be binary star systems in which one of the two stars is a compact object accreting matter from its companion.[83] It has also been suggested that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the accretion disks of intermediate-mass black holes.[84]
    X-ray binaries
    See also: X-ray binary

    X-ray binaries are binary star systems that are luminous in the X-ray part of the spectrum. These X-ray emissions are generally thought to be caused by one of the component stars being a compact object accreting matter from the other (regular) star. The presence of an ordinary star in such a system provides a unique opportunity for studying the central object and determining if it might be a black hole.
    Artist impression of a binary system with an accretion disk around a compact object being fed by material from the companion star.

    If such a system emits signals that can be directly traced back to the compact object, it cannot be a black hole. The absence of such a signal does, however, not exclude the possibility that the compact object is a neutron star. By studying the companion star it is often possible to obtain the orbital parameters of the system and obtain an estimate for the mass of the compact object. If this is much larger than the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (that is, the maximum mass a neutron star can have before collapsing) then the object cannot be a neutron star and is generally expected to be a black hole.[83]

    The first strong candidate for a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in this way by Charles Thomas Bolton[85] and Webster and Murdin[86] in 1972.[87][88] Some doubt, however, remained due to the uncertainties resultant from the companion star being much heavier than the candidate black hole.[83] Currently, better candidates for black holes are found in a class of X-ray binaries called soft X-ray transients.[83] In this class of system the companion star is relatively low mass allowing for more accurate estimates in the black hole mass. Moreover, these systems are only active in X-ray for several months once every 10–50 years. During the period of low X-ray emission (called quiescence), the accretion disc is extremely faint allowing for detailed observation of the companion star during this period. One of the best such candidates is V404 Cyg.
    Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow

    The faintness of the accretion disc during quiescence is thought to be caused by the flow entering a mode called an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). In this mode, almost all the energy generated by friction in the disc is swept along with the flow instead of radiated away. If this model is correct, then it forms strong qualitative evidence for the presence of an event horizon.[89] Because, if the object at the center of the disc had a solid surface, it would emit large amounts of radiation as the highly energetic gas hits the surface, an effect that is observed for neutron stars in a similar state.[82]
    Quasi-periodic oscillations
    See also: Quasi-periodic oscillations

    The X-ray emissions from accretion disks sometimes exhibit a flickering around certain frequencies. These signals are called quasi-periodic oscillations and are thought to be caused by material moving along the inner edge of the accretion disk (the innermost stable circular orbit). As such their frequency is linked to the mass of the compact object. They can thus be used as an alternative way to determine the mass of potential black holes.[90]
    Gamma ray bursts

    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[91] or by collisions between neutron stars,[92] and both types of event involve sufficient mass and pressure to produce black holes. It appears that a collision between a neutron star and a black hole can also cause a GRB,[93] 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[94] so the black holes associated with them are billions of years old.
    Galactic nuclei
    See also: Active galactic nucleus
    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.

    It is now widely accepted that the center of every or at least nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.[95] The close observational correlation between the mass of this hole and the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy's bulge, known as the M-sigma relation, strongly suggests a connection between the formation of the black hole and the galaxy itself. [96]

    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.[97][98] However, theoretical and observational studies have shown that the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in these galaxies may contain supermassive black holes.[97][98] 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.[98]

    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.[99]

    Currently, the best evidence for a supermassive black hole comes from studying the proper motion of stars near the center of our own Milky Way.[100] Since 1995 astronomers have tracked the motion of 90 stars in a region called Sagittarius A*. By fitting their motion to Keplerian orbits they were able to infer in 1998 that 2.6 million solar masses must be contained in a volume with a radius of 0.02 lightyears.[101] Since then one of the stars—called S2—has completed a full orbit. From the orbital data they were able to place better constraints on the mass and size of the object causing the orbital motion of stars in the Sagittarius A* region, finding that there is a spherical mass of 4.3 million solar masses contained within a radius of less than 0.002 lightyears.[100] While this is more than 3000 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to that mass, it is at least consistent with the central object being a supermassive black hole, and no "realistic cluster [of stars] is physically tenable."[101]
    Gravitational lensing
    Further information: Gravitational lens

    The deformation of spacetime around a massive object causes light rays to be deflected much like light passing through an optic lens. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing. Observations have been made of weak gravitational lensing, in which photons are deflected by only a few arcseconds. However, it has never been directly observed for a black hole.[102] One possibility for observing gravitational lensing by a black hole would be to observe stars in orbit around the black hole. There are several candidates for such an observation in orbit around Sagittarius A*.[102]
    Alternatives

    The evidence for stellar black holes strongly relies on the existence of an upper limit for the mass of a neutron star. The size of this limit heavily depends on the assumptions made about the properties of dense matter. New exotic phases of matter could push up this bound.[83] A phase of free quarks at high density might allow the existence of dense quark stars,[103] and some supersymmetric models predict the existence of Q stars.[104] Some extensions of the standard model posit the existence of preons as fundamental building blocks of quarks and leptons which could hypothetically form preon stars.[105] These hypothetical models could potentially explain a number of observations of stellar black hole candidates. However, it can be shown from general arguments in general relativity that any such object will have a maximum mass.[83]

    Since the average density of a black hole inside its Schwarzschild radius is inversely proportional to the square of its mass, supermassive black holes are much less dense than stellar black holes (the average density of a large supermassive black hole is comparable to that of water).[83] Consequently, the physics of matter forming a supermassive black hole is much better understood and the possible alternative explanations for supermassive black hole observations are much more mundane. For example, a supermassive black hole could be modelled by a large cluster of very dark objects. However, typically such alternatives are not stable enough to explain the supermassive black hole candidates.[83]

    The evidence for stellar and supermassive black holes implies that in order for black holes not to form, general relativity must fail as a theory of gravity, perhaps due to the onset of quantum mechanical corrections. A much anticipated feature of a theory of quantum gravity is that it will not feature singularities or event horizons (and thus no black holes).[106] In recent years, much attention has been drawn by the fuzzball model in string theory. Based on calculations in specific situations in string theory, the proposal suggest that generically the individual states of a black hole solution do not have an event horizon or singularity (and can thus not really be considered to be a black hole), but that for a distant observer the statistical average of such states does appear just like an ordinary black hole in general relativity.[107]
    Open questions
    Entropy and thermodynamics
    Further information: Black hole thermodynamics
    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.

    In 1971, Stephen Hawking showed under general conditions[Note 1] that the total area of the event horizons of any collection of classical black holes can never decrease, even if they collide and merge.[108] This result, now known as the second law of black hole mechanics, is remarkably similar to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of a system can never decrease. As with classical objects at absolute zero temperature, it was assumed that black holes had zero entropy. If this were the case, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated by entropy-laden matter 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.[109]

    The link with the laws of thermodynamics was further strengthened by Hawking's discovery that quantum field theory predicts that a black hole radiates blackbody radiation at a constant temperature. This seemingly causes a violation of the second law of black hole mechanics, since the radiation will carry away energy from the black hole causing it to shrink. The radiation, however also carries away entropy, and it can be proven under general assumptions that the sum of the entropy of the matter surrounding the black hole and one quarter of the area of the horizon as measured in Planck units is in fact always increasing. This allows the formulation of the first law of black hole mechanics as an analogue of the first law of thermodynamics, with the mass acting as energy, the surface gravity as temperature and the area as entropy.[109]

    One puzzling feature is that the entropy of a black hole scales with its area rather than with its volume, since entropy is normally an extensive quan y that scales linearly with the volume of the system. This odd property led 't Hooft and Susskind to propose the holographic principle, which suggests that anything that happens in volume of spacetime can be described by data on the boundary of that volume.[110]

    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.). Without a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, one cannot perform such a computation for black holes. Some progress has been made in various approaches to quantum gravity. In 1995, Strominger and Vafa showed that counting the microstates of a specific supersymmetric black hole in string theory reproduced the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy.[111] Since then, similar results have been reported for different black holes both in string theory and in other approaches to quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity.[112]
    Black hole unitarity
    Main article: Black hole information paradox
    Unsolved problems in physics Is physical information lost in black holes? Question mark2.svg

    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 (T-symmetry). Liouville's theorem dictates conservation of phase space volume, which can be thought of as "conservation of information", so there is some problem even in classical physics. In quantum mechanics, this corresponds to a vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the conservation of probability (it can also be thought of as a conservation of quantum phase space volume as expressed by the density matrix).[113]
    See also

    * Black holes in fiction
    * Black string
    * Kugelblitz (astrophysics)
    * List of black holes
    * Susskind-Hawking battle


    He1523a.jpg Star portal

    * Timeline of black hole physics
    * White hole
    * Wormhole

    Notes

    1. ^ In particular, he assumed that all matter satisfies the weak energy condition.

    References

    1. ^ Davies, P. C. W. (1978). "Thermodynamics of Black Holes". Rep. Prog. Phys. 41: 1313–1355. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/41/8/004. http://cosmos.asu.edu/publications/p...Holes%2034.pdf.
    2. ^ Mic , J. (1784). "On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude, &c. of the Fixed Stars, in Consequence of the Diminution of the Velocity of Their Light, in Case Such a Diminution Should be Found to Take Place in any of Them, and Such Other Data Should be Procured from Observations, as Would be Farther Necessary for That Purpose". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (London) (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 74) 74: 35–57. http://www.jstor.org/pss/106576.
    3. ^ "Dark Stars (1783)". Thinkquest. 1999. http://library.thinkquest.org/25715/....htm#darkstars. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
    4. ^ Laplace; see Israel, Werner (1987), "Dark stars: the evolution of an idea", in Hawking, Stephen W. & Israel, Werner, 300 Years of Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, Sec. 7.4
    5. ^ Thorne (1994:123–124).
    6. ^ a b Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 189–196. and Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Kugel aus inkompressibler Flüssigkeit nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 424–434.
    7. ^ Droste, J. (1915). "On the field of a single centre in Einstein's theory of gravitation". Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen Proceedings 17 (3): 998–1011.
    8. ^ 't Hooft, G. (2009). Introduction to the Theory of Black Holes. pp. 47–48. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectur...cturenotes.pdf.
    9. ^ Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    10. ^ Harpaz, Amos (1994). Stellar evolution. A K Peters, Ltd. p. 105. ISBN 1-568-81012-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4VEZv8oo0C. , Extract of page 105
    11. ^ Oppenheimer, J. R. and Volkoff, G. M. (1939-01-03). "On Massive Neutron Cores". Physical Review 55 (4): 374–381. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.55.374. http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v55/i4/p374_1.
    12. ^ Ruffini, Remo and Wheeler, John A. (January 1971). "Introducing the black hole". Physics Today: 30–41. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/1...Phys_Today.pdf.
    13. ^ Finkelstein, David (1958). "Past-Future Asymmetry of the Gravitational Field of a Point Particle". Phys. Rev. 110: 965–967. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.110.965.
    14. ^ Kruskal, M. (1960). "Maximal Extension of Schwarzschild Metric". Physical Review 119: 1743. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.119.1743. edit
    15. ^ Hewish, Antony; Bell, S. J.; Pilkington, J. D. H.; Scott, P. F.; Collins, R. A. (1968). "Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source". Nature 217: 709–713. doi:10.1038/217709a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../235037a0.html. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    16. ^ Pilkington, J D H; Hewish, A.; Bell, S. J.; Cole, T. W. (1968). "Observations of some further Pulsed Radio Sources". Nature 218: 126–129. doi:10.1038/218126a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...f/218126a0.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    17. ^ Newman, E. T.; Couch, E.; Chinnapared, K.; Exton, A.; Prakash, A.; Torrence, R. (1965). "Metric of a Rotating, Charged Mass". Journal of Mathematical Physics 6: 918. doi:10.1063/1.1704351. edit
    18. ^ Israel, W. (1967). "Event Horizons in Static Vacuum Space-Times". Physical Review 164: 1776. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.164.1776. edit
    19. ^ Carter, B. (1971). "Axisymmetric Black Hole Has Only Two Degrees of Freedom". Physical Review Letters 26: 331. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.26.331. edit
    20. ^ Carter, B. (1977). "The vacuum black hole uniqueness theorem and its conceivable generalisations.". Proceedings of the 1st Marcel Grossmann meeting on general relativity. pp. 243–254.
    21. ^ Robinson, D. (1975). "Uniqueness of the Kerr Black Hole". Physical Review Letters 34: 905. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.34.905. edit
    22. ^ a b Heusler, M. (1998). "Stationary Black Holes: Uniqueness and Beyond". Living Rev. Relativity 1 (6). http://www.livingreviews.org/Article...1998-6heusler/. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    23. ^ a b Penrose, R. (1965). "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities". Physical Review Letters 14: 57. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.57. edit
    24. ^ Ford, L. H. (2003). International Journal of Theoretical Physics 42: 1219–1227. doi:10.1023/A:1025754515197. edit
    25. ^ Bardeen, J.M.; Carter, B.; Hawking, S.W. (1973). "The four laws of black hole mechanics". Comm. Math. Phys. 31 (2): 161–170.. doi:10.1007/BF01645742. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.cmp/1103858973.
    26. ^ a b c Hawking, S.W. (1974). "Black hole explosions?". Nature 248: 30–31. doi:10.1038/248030a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../248030a0.html.
    27. ^ Michael Quinion. "Black Hole". World Wide Words. http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-bla1.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-17.
    28. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 253
    29. ^ Black Holes, The Membrane Paradigm. ISBN 9780300037708.
    30. ^ Anderson, Warren G. (1996). "The Black Hole Information Loss Problem". http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...info_loss.html. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
    31. ^ John Preskill(1994)"Black holes and information: A crisis in quantum physics"
    32. ^ Daniel Carmody(2008)"The Fate of Quantum Information in a Black Hole"
    33. ^ "Garrett Birkhoff’s Theorem". http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~whittyr/Mat...tDBirkhoff.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    34. ^ "Black Holes do not suck!". 2006-02-17. http://astro.airynothing.com/2006/02..._not_suck.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    35. ^ For a review see Wald, Robert. M. (1997). "Gravitational Collapse and Cosmic Censorship". http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9710068.
    36. ^ For a discussion of these numerical simulations see Berger, Beverly K. (2002). "Numerical Approaches to Spacetime Singularities". Living Rev. Relativity 5. http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2002-1. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
    37. ^ McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Shafee, Rebecca; Narayan, Ramesh; Remillard, Ronald A.; Davis, Shane W.; Li, Li-Xin (2006). "The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105". Astrophys.J. 652: 518–539. doi:10.1086/508457. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606076.
    38. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 179
    39. ^ "Anatomy of a Black Hole". http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia...kHoleAnat.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    40. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 217
    41. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 218
    42. ^ "Inside a black hole". http://nrumiano.free.fr/Estars/int_bh.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    43. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 222
    44. ^ "Black Holes". Archived from the original on September 13, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/200609131...der/l16_BH.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    45. ^ "Physical nature of the event horizon". http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/pramana/51/693-698.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    46. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 205
    47. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 264–265
    48. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 252
    49. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 237 Exercise 3.
    50. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 182
    51. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 257–259 and 265–266
    52. ^ Droz, S.; Israel, W.; Morsink, S.M. (1996). "Black holes: the inside story". Physics World 9: 34–37.
    53. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 266
    54. ^ Poisson, E.; Israel, W. (1990). "Internal structure of black holes". Physical Review D 41: 1796. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.41.1796. edit
    55. ^ Giamb�o, Roberto. "The geometry of gravitational collapse". http://www.mat.unb.br/~matcont/28_8.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    56. ^ "Black Holes and Quantum Gravity". http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_hawk.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    57. ^ "Ask an Astrophysicist : Quantum Gravity and Black Holes". http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...s/980420b.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    58. ^ Nemiroff, Robert J. (1993). "Visual distortions near a neutron star and black hole". American Journal of Physics 61: 619. doi:10.1119/1.17224.
    59. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.6
    60. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.7
    61. ^ Einstein, A. (1939). "On A Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses". Annals of Mathematics (The Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 40, No. 4) 40 (4): 922–936. doi:10.2307/1968902. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1968902.
    62. ^ "Discovering the Kerr and Kerr-Schild metrics". To appear in "The Kerr Spacetime", Eds D.L. Wiltshire, M. Visser and S.M. Scott, Cambridge Univ. Press. Roy P. Kerr. http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0706.1109. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
    63. ^ Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, R. (January 1970). "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 314 (1519): 529–548. doi:10.1098/rspa.1970.0021. http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.o...9/529.abstract.
    64. ^ a b c Carroll 2004, Section 5.8
    65. ^ a b c Rees, M.J.; Volonteri, M. (2007). "Massive black holes: formation and evolution". In Karas, V.; Matt, G.. Black Holes from Stars to Galaxies – Across the Range of Masses. Cambridge University Press. pp. 51–58. arXiv:astro-ph/0701512.
    66. ^ Penrose, R. (2002). General Relativity and Gravitation 34: 1141–1165. doi:10.1023/A:1016578408204. edit
    67. ^ Carr, B. J. (2005). "Primordial Black Holes: Do They Exist and Are They Useful?". arΧiv:astro-ph/0511743v1 [astro-ph].
    68. ^ Giddings, Steven B.; Thomas, Scott (2002). "High energy colliders as black hole factories: The end of short distance physics". Physical Review D 65: 056010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.65.056010. arXiv:hep-ph/0106219v4.
    69. ^ Harada, T. (2006). "Is there a black hole minimum mass?". Physical Review D 74: 084004. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.74.084004. edit
    70. ^ Arkani–Hamed, N (1998). "The hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter". Physics Letters B 429: 263. doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(98)00466-3. arXiv:9803315v1.
    71. ^ LHC Safety Assessment Group. "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions". CERN. http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf.
    72. ^ Cavaglià, Marco (29 January 2007). "Particle accelerators as black hole factories?". Einstein-Online. Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Ins ute).
    73. ^ Vesperini, E.; McMillan, S.L.W.; D'Ercole, A.; D'Antona, F. (2010). "Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Early Globular Clusters". arΧiv:1003.3470 [astro-ph.GA].
    74. ^ Zwart, S.; Baumgardt, H.; Hut, P.; Makino, J.; McMillan, S. (2004). "Formation of massive black holes through runaway collisions in dense young star clusters". Nature 428 (6984): 724–726. doi:10.1038/nature02448. PMID 15085124. edit
    75. ^ O’leary, R. M.; Rasio, F. A.; Fregeau, J. M.; Ivanova, N.; O’shaughnessy, R. (2006). "Binary Mergers and Growth of Black Holes in Dense Star Clusters". The Astrophysical Journal 637: 937. doi:10.1086/498446. edit
    76. ^ Page, Don N (2005). "Hawking radiation and black hole thermodynamics". New Journal of Physics 7: 203. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/203. arXiv:hep-th/0409024v3.
    77. ^ "Einstein online". Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics. 2010. http://www.einstein-online.info/elem...et_language=en. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    78. ^ Giddings, S. B.; Mangano, M. L. (2008). "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes". Physical Review D 78: 035009. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.78.035009. edit
    79. ^ Peskin, M. (2008). "The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider?". Physics 1: 14–20. doi:10.1103/Physics.1.14. edit
    80. ^ Fichtel, C.E.; Bertsch, D.L.; Dingus, B.L.; Esposito, J.A.; Hartman, R.C.; Hunter, S.D.; Kanbach, G.;; Kniffen, D.A. et al. (1994). "Search of the energetic gamma-ray experiment telescope (EGRET) data for high-energy gamma-ray microsecond bursts". Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 434 (2): 557–559. doi:10.1086/174758. ISSN 0004-637X.
    81. ^ Naeye, Robert. Testing Fundamental Physics. NASA.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...l_physics.html. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
    82. ^ a b c McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Remillard, Ronald A. (2006). "Black Hole Binaries". In Lewin, Walter; van der Klis, Michiel. Compact Stellar X-ray Sources. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521826594. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306213. section 4.1.5.
    83. ^ a b c d e f g h i Celotti, A.; Miller, J.C.; Sciama, D.W. (1999). "Astrophysical evidence for the existence of black holes". Class. Quant. Grav. 16. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9912186
    84. ^ Winter, Lisa M.; Mushotzky, Richard F.; Reynolds, Christopher S. (2006). "XMM‐Newton Archival Study of the Ultraluminous X‐Ray Population in Nearby Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 649: 730. doi:10.1086/506579. arXiv:astro-ph/0512480v2.
    85. ^ Bolton, C. T. (1972). "Identification of Cygnus X-1 with HDE 226868". Nature 235: 271–273. doi:10.1038/235271b0.
    86. ^ Webster, B.L; Murdin, P. (1972). "Cygnus X-1—a Spectroscopic Binary with a Heavy Companion ?". Nature 235: 37–38. doi:10.1038/235037a0.
    87. ^ Rolston, Bruce (10 November 1997). The First Black Hole. University of Toronto. http://news.utoronto.ca/bin/bulletin/nov10_97/art4.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    88. ^ Shipman, H. L. (1 January 1975). "The implausible history of triple star models for Cygnus X-1 Evidence for a black hole". Astrophysical Letters 16 (1): 9–12. doi:10.1016/S0304-8853(99)00384-4. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975ApL....16....9S. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    89. ^ Narayan, R.; McClintock, J. (2008). "Advection-dominated accretion and the black hole event horizon". New Astronomy Reviews 51: 733. doi:10.1016/j.newar.2008.03.002. edit
    90. ^ Goddard Space Flight Center (2008-04-01). "NASA scientists identify smallest known black hole". Press release. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-nsi040108.php. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
    91. ^ Bloom, J. S.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Djorgovski, S. G. (2002). "The Observed Offset Distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Their Host Galaxies: A Robust Clue to the Nature of the Progenitors". The Astronomical Journal 123: 1111. doi:10.1086/338893. arXiv:0010176.
    92. ^ Blinnikov, S (1984). "Exploding Neutron Stars in Close Binaries". Soviet Astronomy Letters 10: 177. Bibcode: 1984SvAL...10..177B.
    93. ^ Lattimer, J. M.; Schramm, D. N. (1976). "The tidal disruption of neutron stars by black holes in close binaries". The Astrophysical Journal 210: 549. doi:10.1086/154860.
    94. ^ Paczynski, Bohdan (1995). "How Far Away Are Gamma-Ray Bursters?". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107: 1167. doi:10.1086/133674. arXiv:astro-ph/9505096.
    95. ^ King, Andrew (2003-09-15). "Black Holes, Galaxy Formation, and the MBH-σ Relation". The Astrophysical Journal (The American Astronomical Society.): 596:L27–L29. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4...7559.text.html.
    96. ^ Ferrarese, Laura; Merritt, David (August 2000). "A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and their Host Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) 539 (1): L9–L12. doi:10.1086/312838. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000ApJ...539L...9F
    97. ^ a b J. H. Krolik (1999). Active Galactic Nuclei. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01151-6. [page needed]
    98. ^ a b c L. S. Sparke, J. S. Gallagher III (2000). Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59704-4. [page needed]
    99. ^ J. Kormendy, D. Richstone (1995). "Inward Bound---The Search For Supermassive Black Holes In Galactic Nuclei". Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics 33: 581–624. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.33.090195.003053. Bibcode: 1995ARA&A..33..581K.
    100. ^ a b Gillessen, S.; Eisenhauer, F.; Trippe, S.; Alexander, T.; Genzel, R.; Martins, F.; Ott, T. (2009). "Monitoring Stellar Orbits Around the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center". Astrophysical Journal 692: 1075–1109. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/692/2/1075. arXiv:0810.4674. edit
    101. ^ a b Ghez, A. M.; Klein, B. L.; Morris, M.; Becklin, E. E. (1998). "High Proper‐Motion Stars in the Vicinity of Sagittarius A*: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy". The Astrophysical Journal 509: 678. doi:10.1086/306528. edit
    102. ^ a b Bozza, Valerio (2009). "Gravitational Lensing by Black Holes". arΧiv:0911.2187 [gr-qc].
    103. ^ Kovacs; Cheng; Harko (2009). "Can stellar mass black holes be quark stars?". arΧiv:0908.2672 [astro-ph.HE].
    104. ^ Alexander Kusenko (2006). "Properties and signatures of supersymmetric Q-balls". arΧiv:hep-ph/0612159 [hep-ph].
    105. ^ Hansson, J.; Sandin, F. (2005). "Preon stars: a new class of cosmic compact objects". Physics Letters B 616: 1. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2005.04.034. edit
    106. ^ Kiefer, C. (2006). "Quantum gravity: general introduction and recent developments". Annalen der Physik 15: 129–148. doi:10.1002/andp.200510175. edit
    107. ^ Skenderis, K.; Taylor, M. (2008). "The fuzzball proposal for black holes". Physics Reports 467: 117. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2008.08.001. edit
    108. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1998). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. [page needed]
    109. ^ a b Wald (1999). "The Thermodynamics of Black Holes". arΧiv:gr-qc/9912119v2 [gr-qc].
    110. ^ Gerard 't Hooft (2000). "The Holographic Principle". arΧiv:hep-th/0003004 [hep-th].
    111. ^ Strominger, A.; Vafa, C. (1996). "Microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy". Physics Letters B 379: 99. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(96)00345-0. edit
    112. ^ Carlip, S. (2009). "Black Hole Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics". Lect.Notes Phys. 769: 89–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88460-6_3. edit
    113. ^ Hawking, Stephen. "Does God Play Dice?". http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/...liclectures/64. Retrieved 2009-03-14.

    Further reading

    Popular reading

    * Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Black Holes in Space-Time. Watts Franklin. ISBN 0-531-12524-6. .
    * Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, Inc. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. .
    * Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, Roger (1996). The Nature of Space and Time. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03791-2. http://books.google.com/?id=LstaQTXP65cC. .
    * 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. .
    * Stern, B. (2008). "Blackhole". http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Blackhole_%28Stern%29. , poem.
    * Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-31276-3. .
    * Wheeler, J. Craig (2007). Cosmic Catastrophes (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85714-7.

    University textbooks and monographs

    * Carroll, Sean M. (2004). Spacetime and Geometry. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-8732-3. , the lecture notes on which the book was based are available for free from Sean Carroll's website.
    * Carter, B. (1973). "Black hole equilibrium states". In DeWitt, B.S.; DeWitt, C.. Black Holes. .
    * Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1999). Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850370-9. .
    * Frolov, V.P.; Novikov, I.D. (1998). Black hole physics. .
    * Hawking, S.W.; Ellis, G.F.R. (1973). Large Scale Structure of space time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521099064. http://books.google.com/?id=QagG_KI7Ll8C. .
    * 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. .

    Review papers

    * Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    * Gallo, E.; Marolf, D. (2009). "Resource Letter BH-2: Black Holes". American Journal of Physics 77: 294. doi:10.1119/1.3056569. arXiv:0806.2316. edit
    * Hughes, Scott A. (2005). "Trust but verify: The case for astrophysical black holes". arΧiv:hep-ph/0511217v2 [hep-ph]. Lecture notes from 2005 SLAC Summer Ins ute.

    External links
    Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Black holes

    * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Singularities and Black Holes" by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich.
    * "Black hole" on Scholarpedia.
    * Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull - Interactive multimedia Web site about the physics and astronomy of black holes from the Space Telescope Science Ins ute
    * FAQ on black holes
    * "Schwarzschild Geometry" on Andrew Hamilton’s website
    * UT Brownsville Group Simulates Spinning Black-Hole Binaries
    * Advanced Mathematics of Black Hole Evaporation

    Videos

    * 16-year long study tracks stars orbiting Milky Way black hole
    * Yale University Video Lecture: Introduction to Black Holes at Google Video.
    * Movie of Black Hole Candidate from Max Planck Ins ute

    News

    * "Black Hole confirmed in Milky Way." Retrieved December 10, 2008
    * Black Hole Research News
    I took the liberty of putting this into Portugese.
    Somtimes I get the tenses mixed up so my aplogies in advance.
    Um buraco negro é uma região de espaço de que nada, não mesmo luz, pode escapar. É o resultado da deformação do spacetime causada por uma massa muito compacta. Em torno de um buraco negro há uma superfície undetectable que marque o ponto de nenhum retorno, chamada um horizonte de evento. É chamado " black" porque absorve toda a luz que batidas ele, não refletindo nada, apenas como um corpo preto perfeito no thermodynamics. [1] Os mecânicos do quantum prevêem que os buracos negros igualmente se emitem a radiação como um corpo preto com uma temperatura finita. Esta temperatura diminui com a massa do buraco negro, fazendo a pouco susceptível de observar esta radiação para buracos negros da massa estelar. Apesar de seu interior invisível, um buraco negro pode ser observado com sua interação com a outra matéria. Um buraco negro pode ser pressupor seguindo o movimento de um grupo de estrelas que orbitam uma região no espaço. Alternativamente, quando o gás cai em um buraco negro estelar de uma estrela de companheiro, o gás espirala para dentro, aquecendo-se muito às altas temperaturas e emitindo-se as grandes quantidades de radiação que podem ser detectadas dos telescópios earthbound e Terra-orbitando. Os astrónomos identificaram candidatos estelares numerosos do buraco negro, e igualmente encontraram a evidência de buracos negros supermassive no centro das galáxias. Em 1998, os astrónomos encontraram a evidência de obrigação que um buraco negro supermassive de mais de 2 milhão massas solares está encontrado perto da região de A* do Sagittarius no centro da galáxia da maneira leitosa, e uns resultados mais recentes que usam dados adicionais encontram a evidência que o buraco negro supermassive é mais de 4 milhão massas solares. Índices [couro cru] * 1 história relatividade geral do 1.1 época dourada do 1.2 * 2 propriedades e estruturas propriedades físicas do 2.1 horizonte de evento do 2.2 Singularity do 2.3 esfera do fotão do 2.4 o 2.5 Ergosphere * formação 3 e evolução colapso gravitacional do 3.1 + 3.1.1 buracos negros Primordial em Big Bang colisões alta-tensão do 3.2 crescimento do 3.3 evaporação do 3.4 * evidência 4 Observational aumento do 4.1 da matéria binários do raio X do 4.2 + Quiescence 4.2.1 e fluxo advecção-dominado do aumento + 4.2.2 oscilações Quase-periódicas estouros do raio de gama do 4.3 núcleos galácticos do 4.4 lensing gravitacional do 4.5 alternativas do 4.6 * 5 questões abertas entropia e thermodynamics do 5.1 unitarity do buraco negro do 5.2 * 6 vêem igualmente * 7 notas * 8 referências * leitura 9 mais adicional * 10 ligações externas História Buraco negro de Schwarzschild A simulação de lensing gravitacional por um buraco negro que distorça a imagem de uma galáxia no fundo (estala aqui para a animação maior) A idéia de um corpo tão maciço que mesmo a luz não poderia escapar foi propor primeiramente pelo geólogo John Mic em uma letra escrita a Henry Cavendish em 1783 à sociedade real: Se o semi-diameter de uma esfera da mesma densidade que o Sun era exceder isso do Sun na proporção de 500 a 1, um corpo que cai de uma altura infinita para ele adquiriria em sua maior velocidade de superfície do que aquele da luz, e conseqüentemente supor a luz para ser atraído pela mesma força em proporção a seus inertiae do vis, com outros corpos, toda a luz emissora de tal corpo seria feita para retornar para ela por sua própria gravidade apropriada. - John Mic [2] Em 1796, o matemático Pierre-Simon Laplace promoveu a mesma idéia nas primeiras e segundas edições de sua exposição du système du Monde do livro (foi removida de umas edições mais atrasadas). [3] [4] tal " stars" escuro; foram ignorados pela maior parte no 19o século, desde que não se compreendeu como uma onda massless tal como a luz poderia ser influenciada pela gravidade. [5] Relatividade geral Em 1915, Albert Einstein desenvolveu sua teoria da relatividade geral, mostrando mais cedo que a gravidade influencia light' movimento de s. Alguns meses mais e, Karl Schwarzschild deu a solução para o campo gravitacional de uma massa do ponto e de uma massa esférica. [6] Alguns meses após Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, um estudante de Hendrik Lorentz, deu independente a mesma solução para a massa do ponto e escreveu-a mais extensivamente sobre suas propriedades. [7] Esta solução teve um comportamento peculiar em o que é chamado agora o raio de Schwarzschild, onde se tornou singular, significando que alguns dos termos nas equações de Einstein se tornaram infinitos. A natureza desta superfície não foi compreendida completamente naquele tempo. Em 1924, Arthur Eddington mostrou que o singularity desapareceu depois que uma mudança das coordenadas (veja coordenadas de Eddington), embora tomasse até 1933 para Georges Lemaître para realizar que esta significou o singularity no raio de Schwarzschild era um singularity coordenado unphysical. [8] Em 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculou, usando a relatividade geral, que um corpo degiro da matéria elétron-degenerate acima de 1.44 massas solares (o limite de Chandrasekhar) desmoronaria. [citação necessário] seus argumentos foram opor por muitos de seus comtemporâneos como Eddington e Landau do lev, que discutiu que algum contudo o mecanismo desconhecido pararia o colapso. [9] Estavam em parte corretos: um anão branco ligeiramente mais maciço do que o limite de Chandrasekhar desmoronará em uma estrela de nêutron, [10] que sejam próprias estáveis por causa do princípio de exclusão de Pauli. Mas em 1939, Robert Oppenheimer e outro previram que as estrelas de nêutron acima de aproximadamente três massas solares (o limite de Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff) desmoronariam em buracos negros para as razões apresentadas por Chandrasekhar, e concluíram que nenhuma lei de física era provável intervir pelo menos e parar algumas estrelas do desmoronamento aos buracos negros. [11] Oppenheimer e seus co-autores interpretaram o singularity no limite do raio de Schwarzschild porque indicando que este era o limite de uma bolha em que o tempo parou. Este é um ponto de vista válido para observadores externos, mas não para observadores infalling. Por causa desta propriedade, as estrelas desmoronadas foram chamadas " estrelas congeladas, " [12] porque um observador exterior veria a superfície da estrela congelada a tempo no o instante onde seu colapso a toma dentro do raio de Schwarzschild. Esta é uma propriedade conhecida de buracos negros modernos, mas deve-se emfatizar que a luz da superfície da estrela congelada se transforma muito rápida redshifted, girando o preto do buraco negro muito rapidamente. Muitos físicos não poderiam aceitar a idéia do tempo que está ainda no raio de Schwarzschild, e havia pouco interesse no assunto por mais de 20 anos. Época dourada Veja igualmente: Época dourada da relatividade geral Em 1958, David Finkelstein identificou o Schwarzschild de superfície r = 2m [em unidades geometrized, isto é 2Gm/c2, onde r é o raio da superfície e do m é a massa do buraco negro] como um horizonte de evento, " uma membrana unidireccional perfeita: as influências causais podem cruzá-la em somente um direction". [13] Isto não contradisse estritamente Oppenheimer' s resulta, mas estendido lhes para incluir o ponto de vista de observadores infalling. Finkelstein' a solução de s estendeu a solução de Schwarzschild para o futuro dos observadores que caem no buraco negro. Uma extensão completa tinha sido encontrada já por Martin Kruskal, que foi incitado a publicar. [14] Estes resultados vieram no início da época dourada da relatividade geral, que é marcada por assuntos se tornando da relatividade geral e do grosso da população dos buracos negros da pesquisa. Este processo foi ajudado pela descoberta dos pulsar em 1967, [15] [16] que se realizava dentro de alguns anos mostrados girar ràpida estrelas de nêutron. Até esse tempo, as estrelas de nêutron, como buracos negros, foram consideradas como apenas curiosidades teóricas; mas a descoberta dos pulsar mostrou sua relevância física e spurred um interesse mais adicional em todos os tipos de objetos compactos que puderam ser dados forma pelo colapso gravitacional. Em soluções mais gerais deste buraco negro do período onde encontrado. Em 1963, Roy Kerr encontrou a solução exata para um buraco negro de giro. Dois anos mais e de Ezra T. Newman encontraram a solução axisymmetric para um buraco negro que fosse ambos que giram e carregaram-na eletricamente. [17] Através do trabalho de Werner Israel, [18] de Brandon Carter, [19] [20] e de C.C. Robinson [21] o theorem do nenhum-cabelo emergeu, indic que uma solução estacionária do buraco negro está descrita completamente pelos três parâmetros do Kerr-Newman métrico; massa, impulso angular, e carga elétrica. [22] Por muito tempo, suspeitou-se que as características estranhas das soluções do buraco negro eram produtos manufacturados patológicos das condições da simetria impor, e que os singularities não apareceriam em situações genéricas. Esta vista foi prendida em particular por Belinsky, por Khalatnikov, e por Lif z, que tentou mostrar que nenhum singularities aparece em soluções genéricas. Entretanto, nos anos sessenta atrasados Roger Penrose [23] e em Hawking de Stephen usou técnicas globais para mostrar que os singularities são genéricos. [24] Trabalhe James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, e Hawking no princípio dos anos 70 conduzido à formulação das leis de mecânicos do buraco negro. [25] Estas leis descrevem o comportamento de um buraco negro na analogia próxima às leis de thermodynamics relacionando a massa à energia, a área à entropia, e a gravidade de superfície à temperatura. A analogia foi terminada ao Hawking, em 1974, mostrado que a teoria de campo do quantum prevê que os buracos negros devem irradiar como um corpo preto com uma temperatura proporcional à gravidade de superfície do buraco negro. [26] O " do termo; hole" preto; era o primeiro usado publicamente por John Veículo com rodas durante uma leitura em 1967. Embora fosse creditado geralmente com a cunhagem da frase, insistiu sempre que lhe estêve sugerida por alguém mais. O uso primeiramente gravado do termo está em uma letra 1964 por Anne Ewing à associação americana para o avanço da ciência. [27] Após Wheeler' uso do termo, de s foi adotado rapidamente no uso geral. Propriedades e estrutura O theorem do nenhum-cabelo indic que, uma vez que consegue uma condição estável após a formação, um buraco negro tem somente três propriedades físicas independentes: massa, carga, e momentu angular

  15. #15
    selbstverständlich Agloco's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Post Count
    9,019
    the OP, this thread, and him being able to troll the spurs forum at will.

    i'm against banning people and whatnot but is ridiculous these days on ST. always the same stupid in' "lol" and "lmao" threads in here, keep that in the club, troll forum, or nba forum.

    btw, did i mention, you phillip!



    Relax, and go get some more calf-ink.......

  16. #16
    I needs six for my fix. UnWantedTheory's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Post Count
    2,101
    I took the liberty of putting this into Portugese.
    Somtimes I get the tenses mixed up so my aplogies in advance.
    Um buraco negro é uma região de espaço de que nada, não mesmo luz, pode escapar. É o resultado da deformação do spacetime causada por uma massa muito compacta. Em torno de um buraco negro há uma superfície undetectable que marque o ponto de nenhum retorno, chamada um horizonte de evento. É chamado " black" porque absorve toda a luz que batidas ele, não refletindo nada, apenas como um corpo preto perfeito no thermodynamics. [1] Os mecânicos do quantum prevêem que os buracos negros igualmente se emitem a radiação como um corpo preto com uma temperatura finita. Esta temperatura diminui com a massa do buraco negro, fazendo a pouco susceptível de observar esta radiação para buracos negros da massa estelar. Apesar de seu interior invisível, um buraco negro pode ser observado com sua interação com a outra matéria. Um buraco negro pode ser pressupor seguindo o movimento de um grupo de estrelas que orbitam uma região no espaço. Alternativamente, quando o gás cai em um buraco negro estelar de uma estrela de companheiro, o gás espirala para dentro, aquecendo-se muito às altas temperaturas e emitindo-se as grandes quantidades de radiação que podem ser detectadas dos telescópios earthbound e Terra-orbitando. Os astrónomos identificaram candidatos estelares numerosos do buraco negro, e igualmente encontraram a evidência de buracos negros supermassive no centro das galáxias. Em 1998, os astrónomos encontraram a evidência de obrigação que um buraco negro supermassive de mais de 2 milhão massas solares está encontrado perto da região de A* do Sagittarius no centro da galáxia da maneira leitosa, e uns resultados mais recentes que usam dados adicionais encontram a evidência que o buraco negro supermassive é mais de 4 milhão massas solares. Índices [couro cru] * 1 história relatividade geral do 1.1 época dourada do 1.2 * 2 propriedades e estruturas propriedades físicas do 2.1 horizonte de evento do 2.2 Singularity do 2.3 esfera do fotão do 2.4 o 2.5 Ergosphere * formação 3 e evolução colapso gravitacional do 3.1 + 3.1.1 buracos negros Primordial em Big Bang colisões alta-tensão do 3.2 crescimento do 3.3 evaporação do 3.4 * evidência 4 Observational aumento do 4.1 da matéria binários do raio X do 4.2 + Quiescence 4.2.1 e fluxo advecção-dominado do aumento + 4.2.2 oscilações Quase-periódicas estouros do raio de gama do 4.3 núcleos galácticos do 4.4 lensing gravitacional do 4.5 alternativas do 4.6 * 5 questões abertas entropia e thermodynamics do 5.1 unitarity do buraco negro do 5.2 * 6 vêem igualmente * 7 notas * 8 referências * leitura 9 mais adicional * 10 ligações externas História Buraco negro de Schwarzschild A simulação de lensing gravitacional por um buraco negro que distorça a imagem de uma galáxia no fundo (estala aqui para a animação maior) A idéia de um corpo tão maciço que mesmo a luz não poderia escapar foi propor primeiramente pelo geólogo John Mic em uma letra escrita a Henry Cavendish em 1783 à sociedade real: Se o semi-diameter de uma esfera da mesma densidade que o Sun era exceder isso do Sun na proporção de 500 a 1, um corpo que cai de uma altura infinita para ele adquiriria em sua maior velocidade de superfície do que aquele da luz, e conseqüentemente supor a luz para ser atraído pela mesma força em proporção a seus inertiae do vis, com outros corpos, toda a luz emissora de tal corpo seria feita para retornar para ela por sua própria gravidade apropriada. - John Mic [2] Em 1796, o matemático Pierre-Simon Laplace promoveu a mesma idéia nas primeiras e segundas edições de sua exposição du système du Monde do livro (foi removida de umas edições mais atrasadas). [3] [4] tal " stars" escuro; foram ignorados pela maior parte no 19o século, desde que não se compreendeu como uma onda massless tal como a luz poderia ser influenciada pela gravidade. [5] Relatividade geral Em 1915, Albert Einstein desenvolveu sua teoria da relatividade geral, mostrando mais cedo que a gravidade influencia light' movimento de s. Alguns meses mais e, Karl Schwarzschild deu a solução para o campo gravitacional de uma massa do ponto e de uma massa esférica. [6] Alguns meses após Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, um estudante de Hendrik Lorentz, deu independente a mesma solução para a massa do ponto e escreveu-a mais extensivamente sobre suas propriedades. [7] Esta solução teve um comportamento peculiar em o que é chamado agora o raio de Schwarzschild, onde se tornou singular, significando que alguns dos termos nas equações de Einstein se tornaram infinitos. A natureza desta superfície não foi compreendida completamente naquele tempo. Em 1924, Arthur Eddington mostrou que o singularity desapareceu depois que uma mudança das coordenadas (veja coordenadas de Eddington), embora tomasse até 1933 para Georges Lemaître para realizar que esta significou o singularity no raio de Schwarzschild era um singularity coordenado unphysical. [8] Em 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculou, usando a relatividade geral, que um corpo degiro da matéria elétron-degenerate acima de 1.44 massas solares (o limite de Chandrasekhar) desmoronaria. [citação necessário] seus argumentos foram opor por muitos de seus comtemporâneos como Eddington e Landau do lev, que discutiu que algum contudo o mecanismo desconhecido pararia o colapso. [9] Estavam em parte corretos: um anão branco ligeiramente mais maciço do que o limite de Chandrasekhar desmoronará em uma estrela de nêutron, [10] que sejam próprias estáveis por causa do princípio de exclusão de Pauli. Mas em 1939, Robert Oppenheimer e outro previram que as estrelas de nêutron acima de aproximadamente três massas solares (o limite de Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff) desmoronariam em buracos negros para as razões apresentadas por Chandrasekhar, e concluíram que nenhuma lei de física era provável intervir pelo menos e parar algumas estrelas do desmoronamento aos buracos negros. [11] Oppenheimer e seus co-autores interpretaram o singularity no limite do raio de Schwarzschild porque indicando que este era o limite de uma bolha em que o tempo parou. Este é um ponto de vista válido para observadores externos, mas não para observadores infalling. Por causa desta propriedade, as estrelas desmoronadas foram chamadas " estrelas congeladas, " [12] porque um observador exterior veria a superfície da estrela congelada a tempo no o instante onde seu colapso a toma dentro do raio de Schwarzschild. Esta é uma propriedade conhecida de buracos negros modernos, mas deve-se emfatizar que a luz da superfície da estrela congelada se transforma muito rápida redshifted, girando o preto do buraco negro muito rapidamente. Muitos físicos não poderiam aceitar a idéia do tempo que está ainda no raio de Schwarzschild, e havia pouco interesse no assunto por mais de 20 anos. Época dourada Veja igualmente: Época dourada da relatividade geral Em 1958, David Finkelstein identificou o Schwarzschild de superfície r = 2m [em unidades geometrized, isto é 2Gm/c2, onde r é o raio da superfície e do m é a massa do buraco negro] como um horizonte de evento, " uma membrana unidireccional perfeita: as influências causais podem cruzá-la em somente um direction". [13] Isto não contradisse estritamente Oppenheimer' s resulta, mas estendido lhes para incluir o ponto de vista de observadores infalling. Finkelstein' a solução de s estendeu a solução de Schwarzschild para o futuro dos observadores que caem no buraco negro. Uma extensão completa tinha sido encontrada já por Martin Kruskal, que foi incitado a publicar. [14] Estes resultados vieram no início da época dourada da relatividade geral, que é marcada por assuntos se tornando da relatividade geral e do grosso da população dos buracos negros da pesquisa. Este processo foi ajudado pela descoberta dos pulsar em 1967, [15] [16] que se realizava dentro de alguns anos mostrados girar ràpida estrelas de nêutron. Até esse tempo, as estrelas de nêutron, como buracos negros, foram consideradas como apenas curiosidades teóricas; mas a descoberta dos pulsar mostrou sua relevância física e spurred um interesse mais adicional em todos os tipos de objetos compactos que puderam ser dados forma pelo colapso gravitacional. Em soluções mais gerais deste buraco negro do período onde encontrado. Em 1963, Roy Kerr encontrou a solução exata para um buraco negro de giro. Dois anos mais e de Ezra T. Newman encontraram a solução axisymmetric para um buraco negro que fosse ambos que giram e carregaram-na eletricamente. [17] Através do trabalho de Werner Israel, [18] de Brandon Carter, [19] [20] e de C.C. Robinson [21] o theorem do nenhum-cabelo emergeu, indic que uma solução estacionária do buraco negro está descrita completamente pelos três parâmetros do Kerr-Newman métrico; massa, impulso angular, e carga elétrica. [22] Por muito tempo, suspeitou-se que as características estranhas das soluções do buraco negro eram produtos manufacturados patológicos das condições da simetria impor, e que os singularities não apareceriam em situações genéricas. Esta vista foi prendida em particular por Belinsky, por Khalatnikov, e por Lif z, que tentou mostrar que nenhum singularities aparece em soluções genéricas. Entretanto, nos anos sessenta atrasados Roger Penrose [23] e em Hawking de Stephen usou técnicas globais para mostrar que os singularities são genéricos. [24] Trabalhe James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, e Hawking no princípio dos anos 70 conduzido à formulação das leis de mecânicos do buraco negro. [25] Estas leis descrevem o comportamento de um buraco negro na analogia próxima às leis de thermodynamics relacionando a massa à energia, a área à entropia, e a gravidade de superfície à temperatura. A analogia foi terminada ao Hawking, em 1974, mostrado que a teoria de campo do quantum prevê que os buracos negros devem irradiar como um corpo preto com uma temperatura proporcional à gravidade de superfície do buraco negro. [26] O " do termo; hole" preto; era o primeiro usado publicamente por John Veículo com rodas durante uma leitura em 1967. Embora fosse creditado geralmente com a cunhagem da frase, insistiu sempre que lhe estêve sugerida por alguém mais. O uso primeiramente gravado do termo está em uma letra 1964 por Anne Ewing à associação americana para o avanço da ciência. [27] Após Wheeler' uso do termo, de s foi adotado rapidamente no uso geral. Propriedades e estrutura O theorem do nenhum-cabelo indic que, uma vez que consegue uma condição estável após a formação, um buraco negro tem somente três propriedades físicas independentes: massa, carga, e momentu angular

  17. #17
    I needs six for my fix. UnWantedTheory's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Post Count
    2,101
    That was just beautiful.

  18. #18
    Mr. Dignity Solid D's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Post Count
    23,462

  19. #19
    I am not redwood DJ Mbenga's Avatar
    My Team
    Los Angeles Lakers
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Post Count
    4,579
    A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.[1] Quantum mechanics predicts that black holes also emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature decreases with the mass of the black hole, making it unlikely to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass.

    Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can be observed through its interaction with other matter. A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space. Alternatively, when gas falls into a stellar black hole from a companion star, the gas spirals inward, heating to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and Earth-orbiting telescopes.

    Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates, and have also found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. In 1998, astronomers found compelling evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than 2 million solar masses is located near the Sagittarius A* region in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and more recent results using additional data find evidence that the supermassive black hole is more than 4 million solar masses.
    Contents
    [hide]

    * 1 History
    o 1.1 General relativity
    o 1.2 Golden age
    * 2 Properties and structure
    o 2.1 Physical properties
    o 2.2 Event horizon
    o 2.3 Singularity
    o 2.4 Photon sphere
    o 2.5 Ergosphere
    * 3 Formation and evolution
    o 3.1 Gravitational collapse
    + 3.1.1 Primordial black holes in the Big Bang
    o 3.2 High-energy collisions
    o 3.3 Growth
    o 3.4 Evaporation
    * 4 Observational evidence
    o 4.1 Accretion of matter
    o 4.2 X-ray binaries
    + 4.2.1 Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow
    + 4.2.2 Quasi-periodic oscillations
    o 4.3 Gamma ray bursts
    o 4.4 Galactic nuclei
    o 4.5 Gravitational lensing
    o 4.6 Alternatives
    * 5 Open questions
    o 5.1 Entropy and thermodynamics
    o 5.2 Black hole unitarity
    * 6 See also
    * 7 Notes
    * 8 References
    * 9 Further reading
    * 10 External links

    History
    Schwarzschild black hole
    Simulation of gravitational lensing by a black hole which distorts the image of a galaxy in the background (click here for larger animation)

    The idea of a body so massive that even light could not escape was first put forward by geologist John Mic in a letter written to Henry Cavendish in 1783 to the Royal Society:

    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.
    —John Mic [2]

    In 1796, 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).[3][4] Such "dark stars" were largely ignored in the nineteenth century, since it was not understood how a massless wave such as light could be influenced by gravity.[5]
    General relativity

    In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, having earlier shown that gravity does influence light's motion. A few months later, Karl Schwarzschild gave the solution for the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass.[6] A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass and wrote more extensively about its properties.[7] This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, where it became singular, meaning that some of the terms in the Einstein equations became infinite. The nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time. In 1924, Arthur Eddington showed that the singularity disappeared after a change of coordinates (see Eddington coordinates), although it took until 1933 for Georges Lemaître to realize that this meant the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was an unphysical coordinate singularity.[8]

    In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using general relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit) would collapse.[citation needed] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[9] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[10] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately three solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[11]

    Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this property, the collapsed stars were called "frozen stars,"[12] because 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. This is a known property of modern black holes, but it must be emphasized that the light from the surface of the frozen star becomes redshifted very fast, turning the black hole black very quickly. Many physicists could not accept the idea of time standing still at the Schwarzschild radius, and there was little interest in the subject for over 20 years.
    Golden age
    See also: Golden age of general relativity

    In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface r = 2m [in geometrized units, i.e. 2Gm/c2, where r is the radius of the surface and m is the mass of the black hole] as an event horizon, "a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction".[13] This did not strictly contradict Oppenheimer's results, but extended them to include the point of view of infalling observers. Finkelstein's solution extended the Schwarzschild solution for the future of observers falling into the black hole. A complete extension had already been found by Martin Kruskal, who was urged to publish it.[14]

    These results came at the beginning of the golden age of general relativity, which is marked by general relativity and black holes becoming mainstream subjects of research. This process was helped by the discovery of pulsars in 1967,[15][16] which were within a few years shown to be rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars, like black holes, were regarded as just theoretical curiosities; but the discovery of pulsars showed their physical relevance and spurred a further interest in all types of compact objects that might be formed by gravitational collapse.

    In this period more general black hole solutions where found. In 1963, Roy Kerr found the exact solution for a rotating black hole. Two years later Ezra T. Newman found the axisymmetric solution for a black hole which is both rotating and electrically charged.[17] Through the work of Werner Israel,[18] Brandon Carter,[19][20] and D. C. Robinson[21] the no-hair theorem emerged, stating that a stationary black hole solution is completely described by the three parameters of the Kerr–Newman metric; mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.[22]

    For a long time, it was suspected that the strange features of the black hole solutions were pathological artefacts from the symmetry conditions imposed, and that the singularities would not appear in generic situations. This view was held in particular by Belinsky, Khalatnikov, and Lif z, who tried to prove that no singularities appear in generic solutions. However, in the late sixties Roger Penrose[23] and Stephen Hawking used global techniques to prove that singularities are generic.[24]

    Work by James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, and Hawking in the early 1970s led to the formulation of the laws of black hole mechanics.[25] These laws describe the behaviour of a black hole in close analogy to the laws of thermodynamics by relating mass to energy, area to entropy, and surface gravity to temperature. The analogy was completed when Hawking, in 1974, showed that quantum field theory predicts that black holes should radiate like a black body with a temperature proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole.[26]

    The term "black hole" was first publicly used by John Wheeler during a lecture in 1967. Although he is usually credited with coining the phrase, he always insisted that it was suggested to him by somebody else. The first recorded use of the term is in a 1964 letter by Anne Ewing to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[27] After Wheeler's use of the term, it was quickly adopted in general use.
    Properties and structure

    The no-hair theorem states that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, charge, and angular momentum.[22] Any two black holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable according to classical (i.e. non-quantum) mechanics.

    These properties are special because they are visible from outside the black hole. For example, a charged black hole repels other like charges just like any other charged object. Similarly, the total mass inside a sphere containing a black hole can be found by using the gravitational analog of Gauss's law, the ADM mass, far away from the black hole.[28] Likewise, the angular momentum can be measured from far away using frame dragging by the gravitomagnetic field.

    When an object falls into a black hole, any information about the shape of the object or distribution of charge on it is evenly distributed along the horizon of the black hole, and is lost to outside observers. The behavior of the horizon in this situation is closely analogous to that of a conductive stretchy membrane with friction and electrical resistance, a dissipative system (see membrane paradigm).[29] This is different from other field theories like electromagnetism, which does not have any friction or resistivity at the microscopic level, because they are time-reversible. Because the black hole eventually achieves a stable state with only three parameters, there is no way to avoid losing information about the initial conditions: the gravitational and electric fields of the black hole give very little information about what went in. The information that is lost includes every quan y that cannot be measured far away from the black hole horizon, including the total baryon number, lepton number, and all the other nearly conserved pseudo-charges of particle physics. This behavior is so puzzling that it has been called the black hole information loss paradox.[30][31][32]
    Physical properties

    The simplest black hole has mass but neither electric charge nor angular momentum. These black holes are often referred to as Schwarzschild black holes after the physicist Karl Schwarzschild who discovered this solution in 1915.[6] According to Birkhoff's theorem, it is the only vacuum solution that is spherically symmetric.[33] This means that there is no observable difference between the gravitational field of such a black hole and that of any other spherical object of the same mass. The popular notion of a black hole "sucking in everything" in its surroundings is therefore only correct near the black hole horizon; far away, the external gravitational field is identical to that of any other body of the same mass.[34]

    Solutions describing more general black holes also exist. Charged black holes are described by the Reissner-Nordström metric, while the Kerr metric describes a rotating black hole. The most general stationary black hole solution known is the Kerr-Newman metric, which describes a black hole with both charge and angular momentum.

    While the mass of a black hole can take any positive value, the charge and angular momentum are constrained by the mass. In Planck units, the total electric charge Q and the total angular momentum J are expected to satisfy

    Q^2+\left ( \tfrac{J}{M} \right )^2\le M^2\,

    for a black hole of mass M. Black holes saturating this inequality are called extremal. Solutions of Einstein's equations violating the inequality exist, but do not have a horizon. These solutions have naked singularities and are deemed unphysical. The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter.[35] This is supported by numerical simulations.[36]

    Due to the relatively large strength of the electromagnetic force, black holes forming from the collapse of stars are expected to retain the nearly neutral charge of the star. Rotation, however, is expected to be a common feature of compact objects, and the black-hole candidate binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105[37] appears to have an angular momentum near the maximum allowed value.
    Class Mass Size
    Supermassive black hole ~105–109 MSun ~0.001–10 AU
    Intermediate-mass black hole ~103 MSun ~103 km = REarth
    Stellar black hole ~10 MSun ~30 km
    Micro black hole up to ~MMoon up to ~0.1 mm

    Black holes are commonly classified according to their mass, independent of angular momentum J or electric charge Q. The size of a black hole, as determined by the radius of the event horizon, or Schwarzschild radius, is roughly proportional to the mass M through

    r_\mathrm{sh} =\frac{2GM}{c^2} \approx 2.95\, \frac{M}{M_\mathrm{Sun}}~\mathrm{km,}

    where rsh is the Schwarzschild radius and MSun is the mass of the Sun. This relation is exact only for black holes with zero charge and angular momentum, for more general black holes it can differ up to a factor of 2. The table on the right lists the various classes of black hole that are distinguished.
    Event horizon
    Main article: Event horizon
    Image:BH-no-escape-1.svg
    Far away from the black hole a particle can move in any direction. It is only restricted by the speed of light.
    Image:BH-no-escape-2.svg
    Closer to the black hole spacetime starts to deform. There are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away.
    Image:BH-no-escape-3.svg
    Inside of the event horizon all paths bring the particle closer to the center of the black hole. It is no longer possible for the particle to escape.

    The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon—a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.[38]

    As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a large mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole.[39]

    To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole.[40] Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it.[41] At the same time, all processes on this object slow down causing emitted light to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift.[42] Eventually, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen.

    On the other hand, an observer falling into a black hole does not notice any of these effects as he crosses the event horizon. According to his own clock, he crosses the event horizon after a finite time, although he is unable to determine exactly when he crosses it, as it is impossible to determine the location of the event horizon from local observations.[43]

    For a non rotating (static) black hole, the Schwarzschild radius delimits a spherical event horizon. The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to the mass.[44] Rotating black holes have distorted, nonspherical event horizons. Since the event horizon is not a material surface but rather merely a mathematically defined demarcation boundary, nothing prevents matter or radiation from entering a black hole, only from exiting one. The description of black holes given by general relativity is known to be an approximation, and some scientists expect that quantum gravity effects will become significant near the vicinity of the event horizon.[45] This would allow observations of matter near a black hole's event horizon to be used to indirectly study general relativity and proposed extensions to it.
    Singularity
    Main article: Gravitational singularity

    At the center of a black hole as described by general relativity lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite.[46] For a non-rotating black hole this region takes the shape of a single point and for a rotating black hole it is smeared out to form a ring singularity lying in the plane of rotation.[47] In both cases the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution.[48] The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density.

    An observer falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e. non-rotating and no charges) cannot avoid the singularity. Any attempt to do so will only shorten the time taken to get there.[49] When they reach the singularity, they are crushed to infinite density and their mass is added to the total of the black hole. Before that happens, they will have been torn apart by the growing tidal forces in a process sometimes referred to as spaghettification or the noodle effect.[50]

    In the case of a charged (Reissner–Nordström) or rotating (Kerr) black hole it is possible to avoid the singularity. Extending these solutions as far as possible reveals the hypothetical possibility of exiting the black hole into a different spacetime with the black hole acting as a wormhole.[51] The possibility of traveling to another universe is however only theoretical, since any perturbation will destroy this possibility.[52] It also appears to be possible to follow closed timelike curves (going back to one's own past) around the Kerr singularity, which lead to problems with causality like the grandfather paradox.[53] It is expected that none of these peculiar effects would survive in a proper quantum mechanical treatment of rotating and charged black holes.[54]

    The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory.[55] This breakdown, however, is expected; it occurs in a situation where quantum mechanical effects should describe these actions due to the extremely high density and therefore particle interactions. To date it has not been possible to combine quantum and gravitational effects into a single theory. It is generally expected that a theory of quantum gravity will feature black holes without singularities.[56][57]
    Photon sphere
    Main article: Photon sphere

    The 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 the Schwarzschild radius. The orbits are dynamically unstable, hence any small perturbation (such as a particle of infalling matter) will grow over time, either setting it on an outward trajectory escaping the black hole or on an inward spiral eventually crossing the event horizon.

    While light can still escape from inside the photon sphere, any light that crosses the photon sphere on an inbound trajectory will be captured by the black hole. Hence any light reaching an outside observer from inside the photon sphere must have been emitted by objects inside the photon sphere but still outside of the event horizon.

    Other compact objects, such as neutron stars, can also have photon spheres.[58] This follows from the fact that the gravitational field of an object does not depend on its actual size, hence any object that is smaller than 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to its mass will indeed have a photon sphere.
    Ergosphere
    Main article: Ergosphere
    The ergosphere is an oblate spheroid region outside of the event horizon, where objects cannot remain stationary.

    Rotating black holes are surrounded by a region of spacetime in which it is impossible to stand still, called the ergosphere. This is the result of a process known as frame-dragging; general relativity predicts that any rotating mass will tend to slightly "drag" along the spacetime immediately surrounding it. Any object near the rotating mass will tend to start moving in the direction of rotation. For a rotating black hole this effect becomes so strong near the event horizon that an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in the opposite direction to just stand still.[59]

    The ergosphere of a black hole is bounded by the (outer) event horizon on the inside and an oblate spheroid, which coincides with the event horizon at the poles and is noticeably wider around the equator. The outer boundary is sometimes called the ergosurface.

    Objects and radiation can escape normally from the ergosphere. Through the Penrose process, objects can emerge from the ergosphere with more energy than they entered. This energy is taken from the rotational energy of the black hole causing it to slow down.[60]
    Formation and evolution

    Considering the exotic nature of black holes, it may be natural to question if such bizarre objects could exist in nature or to suggest that they are merely pathological solutions to Einstein's equations. Einstein himself wrongly thought that black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius.[61] This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years. However, a minority of relativists continued to contend that black holes were physical objects,[62] and by the end of the 1960s, they had persuaded the majority of researchers in the field that there is no obstacle to forming an event horizon.

    Once an event horizon forms, Roger Penrose proved that a singularity will form somewhere inside it.[23] Shortly afterwards, Stephen Hawking showed that many cosmological solutions describing the Big Bang have singularities without scalar fields or other exotic matter (see Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems). The Kerr solution, the no-hair theorem and the laws of black hole thermodynamics showed that the physical properties of black holes were simple and comprehensible, making them respectable subjects for research.[63] The primary formation process for black holes is expected to be the gravitational collapse of heavy objects such as stars, but there are also more exotic processes that can lead to the production of black holes.
    Gravitational collapse
    Main article: Gravitational collapse

    Gravitational collapse occurs when an object's internal pressure is insufficient to resist the object's own gravity. For stars this usually occurs either because a star has too little "fuel" left to maintain its temperature through stellar nucleosynthesis, or because a star which would have been stable receives 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).[64]

    The collapse may be stopped by the degeneracy pressure of the star's cons uents, condensing the matter in an exotic denser state. The result is one of the various 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.[64]

    If the mass of the remnant exceeds about 3–4 solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit)—either because the original star was very heavy or because the remnant collected additional mass through accretion of matter—even the degeneracy pressure of neutrons is insufficient to stop the collapse. After this, no known mechanism (except possibly quark degeneracy pressure, see quark star) is powerful enough to stop the collapse and the object will inevitably collapse to a black hole.[64]

    This gravitational collapse of heavy stars is assumed to be responsible for the formation of stellar mass black holes. Star formation in the young universe may have resulted in very heavy stars, which upon their collapse would have produced black holes of up to 103 solar masses. These heavy black holes could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of most galaxies.[65]

    While most of the energy released during gravitational collapse is emitted very quickly, an outside observer does not actually see the end of this process. Even though the collapse takes a finite amount of time from the reference frame of infalling matter, a distant observer sees the infalling material slow and halt just above the event horizon, due to gravitational time dilation. Light from the collapsing material takes longer and longer to reach the observer, with the light emitted just before the event horizon forms delayed an infinite amount of time. Thus the external observer never sees the formation of the event horizon; instead, the collapsing material seems to become dimmer and increasingly red-shifted, eventually fading away.[66]
    Primordial black holes in the Big Bang

    Gravitational collapse requires great densities. In the current epoch of the universe these high densities are only found in stars, but in the early universe shortly after the big bang densities were much greater, possibly allowing for the creation of black holes. The high density alone is not enough to allow the formation of black holes since a uniform mass distribution will not allow the mass to bunch up. In order for primordial black holes to form in such a dense medium, there must be initial density perturbations which can then grow under their own gravity. Different models for the early universe vary widely in their predictions of the size of these perturbations. Various models predict the creation of black holes, ranging from a Planck mass to hundreds of thousands of solar masses.[67] Primordial black holes could thus account for the creation of any type of black hole.
    High-energy collisions
    A simulated event in the CMS detector, a collision in which a micro black hole may be created.

    Gravitational collapse is not the only process that could create black holes. In principle, black holes could also be created in high-energy collisions that create sufficient density. However, to date, no such events have ever been detected either directly or indirectly as a deficiency of the mass balance in particle accelerator experiments.[68] This suggests that there must be a lower limit for the mass of black holes. Theoretically, this boundary is expected to lie around the Planck mass (mP = √ħc/G ≈ 1.2×1019 GeV/c2 ≈ 2.2×10−8 kg), where quantum effects are expected to make the theory of general relativity break down completely.[69] This would put the creation of black holes firmly out of reach of any high energy process occurring on or near the Earth. Certain developments in quantum gravity however suggest that the Planck mass could be much lower: some braneworld scenarios for example put it much lower, maybe even as low as 1 TeV/c2[70] This would make it possible for micro black holes to be created in the high energy collisions occurring when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, or possibly in the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These theories are however very speculative, and the creation of black holes in these processes is deemed unlikely by many specialists.[71] Even if such micro black holes should be formed in these collisions, it is expected that they would evaporate in about 10−25 seconds, posing no threat to Earth[72]
    Growth

    Once a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing additional matter. Any black hole will continually absorb gas and interstellar dust from its direct surroundings and omnipresent cosmic background radiation. This is the primary process through which supermassive black holes seem to have grown.[65] A similar process has been suggested for the formation of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters.[73]

    Another possibility is for a black hole to merge with other objects such as stars or even other black holes. This is thought to have been important especially for the early development of supermassive black holes, which are thought to have formed from the coagulation of many smaller objects.[65] The process has also been proposed as the origin of some intermediate-mass black holes.[74][75]
    Evaporation
    Main article: Hawking radiation

    In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes are not entirely black but emit small amounts of thermal radiation.[26] He got this result by applying quantum field theory in a static black hole background. The result of his calculations is that a black hole should emit particles in a perfect black body spectrum. This effect has become known as Hawking radiation. Since Hawking's result, many others have verified the effect through various methods.[76] If his theory of black hole radiation is correct, then black holes are expected to emit a thermal spectrum of radiation, and thereby lose mass, because according to the theory of relativity mass is just highly condensed energy (E = mc2).[26] Black holes will shrink and evaporate over time. The temperature of this spectrum (Hawking temperature) is proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole, which for a Schwarzschild black hole is inversely proportional to the mass. Large black holes, therefore, emit less radiation than small black holes.

    A stellar black hole of one solar mass has a Hawking temperature of about 100 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background. Stellar mass (and larger) black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and will thus grow instead of shrink. To have a Hawking temperature larger than 2.7 K (and be able to evaporate), a black hole needs to be lighter than the Moon (and therefore a diameter of less than a tenth of a millimeter).[77]

    On the other hand, if a black hole is very small the radiation effects are expected to become very strong. Even a black hole that is heavy compared to a human would evaporate in an instant. A black hole the weight of a car (~10−24 m) would only take a nanosecond to evaporate, during which time it would briefly have a luminosity more than 200 times that of the sun. Lighter black holes are expected to evaporate even faster, for example a black hole of mass 1 TeV/c2 would take less than 10−88 seconds to evaporate completely. Of course, for such a small black hole quantum gravitation effects are expected to play an important role and could even – although current developments in quantum gravity do not indicate so[78] – hypothetically make such a small black hole stable.[79]
    Observational evidence

    By their very nature, black holes do not directly emit any signals other than the hypothetical Hawking radiation; since the Hawking radiation for an astrophysical black hole is predicted to be very weak, this makes it impossible to directly detect astrophysical black holes from the Earth. A possible exception to the Hawking radiation being weak is the last stage of the evaporation of light (primordial) black holes; searches for such flashes in the past has proven unsuccessful and provides stringent limits on the possibility of existence of light primordial black holes.[80] NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 will continue the search for these flashes.[81]

    Astrophysicists searching for black holes thus have to rely on indirect observations. A black hole's existence can sometimes be inferred by observing its gravitational interactions with its surroundings.
    Accretion of matter
    See also: Accretion disc
    Formation of extragalactic jets from a black hole's accretion disk

    Due to conservation of angular momentum, gas falling into the gravitational well created by a massive object will typically form a disc-like structure around the object. Friction within the disc causes angular momentum to be transported outward allowing matter to fall further inward releasing potential energy and increasing the temperature of the gas.[82] In the case of compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, the gas in the inner regions becomes so hot that it will emit vast amounts of radiation (mainly X-rays), which may be detected by telescopes. This process of accretion is one of the most efficient energy producing process known; up to 40% of the rest mass of the accreted material can be emitted in radiation.[82] (In nuclear fusion only about 0.7% of the rest mass will be emitted as energy.) In many cases, accretion discs are accompanied by relativistic jets emitted along the poles, which carry away much of the energy. The mechanism for the creation of these jets is currently not well understood.

    As such many of the universe's more energetic phenomena have been attributed to the accretion of matter on black holes. In particular, active galactic nuclei and quasars are thought to be the accretion discs of supermassive black holes.[83] Similarly, X-ray binaries are thought to be binary star systems in which one of the two stars is a compact object accreting matter from its companion.[83] It has also been suggested that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the accretion disks of intermediate-mass black holes.[84]
    X-ray binaries
    See also: X-ray binary

    X-ray binaries are binary star systems that are luminous in the X-ray part of the spectrum. These X-ray emissions are generally thought to be caused by one of the component stars being a compact object accreting matter from the other (regular) star. The presence of an ordinary star in such a system provides a unique opportunity for studying the central object and determining if it might be a black hole.
    Artist impression of a binary system with an accretion disk around a compact object being fed by material from the companion star.

    If such a system emits signals that can be directly traced back to the compact object, it cannot be a black hole. The absence of such a signal does, however, not exclude the possibility that the compact object is a neutron star. By studying the companion star it is often possible to obtain the orbital parameters of the system and obtain an estimate for the mass of the compact object. If this is much larger than the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (that is, the maximum mass a neutron star can have before collapsing) then the object cannot be a neutron star and is generally expected to be a black hole.[83]

    The first strong candidate for a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in this way by Charles Thomas Bolton[85] and Webster and Murdin[86] in 1972.[87][88] Some doubt, however, remained due to the uncertainties resultant from the companion star being much heavier than the candidate black hole.[83] Currently, better candidates for black holes are found in a class of X-ray binaries called soft X-ray transients.[83] In this class of system the companion star is relatively low mass allowing for more accurate estimates in the black hole mass. Moreover, these systems are only active in X-ray for several months once every 10–50 years. During the period of low X-ray emission (called quiescence), the accretion disc is extremely faint allowing for detailed observation of the companion star during this period. One of the best such candidates is V404 Cyg.
    Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow

    The faintness of the accretion disc during quiescence is thought to be caused by the flow entering a mode called an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). In this mode, almost all the energy generated by friction in the disc is swept along with the flow instead of radiated away. If this model is correct, then it forms strong qualitative evidence for the presence of an event horizon.[89] Because, if the object at the center of the disc had a solid surface, it would emit large amounts of radiation as the highly energetic gas hits the surface, an effect that is observed for neutron stars in a similar state.[82]
    Quasi-periodic oscillations
    See also: Quasi-periodic oscillations

    The X-ray emissions from accretion disks sometimes exhibit a flickering around certain frequencies. These signals are called quasi-periodic oscillations and are thought to be caused by material moving along the inner edge of the accretion disk (the innermost stable circular orbit). As such their frequency is linked to the mass of the compact object. They can thus be used as an alternative way to determine the mass of potential black holes.[90]
    Gamma ray bursts

    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[91] or by collisions between neutron stars,[92] and both types of event involve sufficient mass and pressure to produce black holes. It appears that a collision between a neutron star and a black hole can also cause a GRB,[93] 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[94] so the black holes associated with them are billions of years old.
    Galactic nuclei
    See also: Active galactic nucleus
    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.

    It is now widely accepted that the center of every or at least nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.[95] The close observational correlation between the mass of this hole and the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy's bulge, known as the M-sigma relation, strongly suggests a connection between the formation of the black hole and the galaxy itself. [96]

    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.[97][98] However, theoretical and observational studies have shown that the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in these galaxies may contain supermassive black holes.[97][98] 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.[98]

    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.[99]

    Currently, the best evidence for a supermassive black hole comes from studying the proper motion of stars near the center of our own Milky Way.[100] Since 1995 astronomers have tracked the motion of 90 stars in a region called Sagittarius A*. By fitting their motion to Keplerian orbits they were able to infer in 1998 that 2.6 million solar masses must be contained in a volume with a radius of 0.02 lightyears.[101] Since then one of the stars—called S2—has completed a full orbit. From the orbital data they were able to place better constraints on the mass and size of the object causing the orbital motion of stars in the Sagittarius A* region, finding that there is a spherical mass of 4.3 million solar masses contained within a radius of less than 0.002 lightyears.[100] While this is more than 3000 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to that mass, it is at least consistent with the central object being a supermassive black hole, and no "realistic cluster [of stars] is physically tenable."[101]
    Gravitational lensing
    Further information: Gravitational lens

    The deformation of spacetime around a massive object causes light rays to be deflected much like light passing through an optic lens. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing. Observations have been made of weak gravitational lensing, in which photons are deflected by only a few arcseconds. However, it has never been directly observed for a black hole.[102] One possibility for observing gravitational lensing by a black hole would be to observe stars in orbit around the black hole. There are several candidates for such an observation in orbit around Sagittarius A*.[102]
    Alternatives

    The evidence for stellar black holes strongly relies on the existence of an upper limit for the mass of a neutron star. The size of this limit heavily depends on the assumptions made about the properties of dense matter. New exotic phases of matter could push up this bound.[83] A phase of free quarks at high density might allow the existence of dense quark stars,[103] and some supersymmetric models predict the existence of Q stars.[104] Some extensions of the standard model posit the existence of preons as fundamental building blocks of quarks and leptons which could hypothetically form preon stars.[105] These hypothetical models could potentially explain a number of observations of stellar black hole candidates. However, it can be shown from general arguments in general relativity that any such object will have a maximum mass.[83]

    Since the average density of a black hole inside its Schwarzschild radius is inversely proportional to the square of its mass, supermassive black holes are much less dense than stellar black holes (the average density of a large supermassive black hole is comparable to that of water).[83] Consequently, the physics of matter forming a supermassive black hole is much better understood and the possible alternative explanations for supermassive black hole observations are much more mundane. For example, a supermassive black hole could be modelled by a large cluster of very dark objects. However, typically such alternatives are not stable enough to explain the supermassive black hole candidates.[83]

    The evidence for stellar and supermassive black holes implies that in order for black holes not to form, general relativity must fail as a theory of gravity, perhaps due to the onset of quantum mechanical corrections. A much anticipated feature of a theory of quantum gravity is that it will not feature singularities or event horizons (and thus no black holes).[106] In recent years, much attention has been drawn by the fuzzball model in string theory. Based on calculations in specific situations in string theory, the proposal suggest that generically the individual states of a black hole solution do not have an event horizon or singularity (and can thus not really be considered to be a black hole), but that for a distant observer the statistical average of such states does appear just like an ordinary black hole in general relativity.[107]
    Open questions
    Entropy and thermodynamics
    Further information: Black hole thermodynamics
    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.

    In 1971, Stephen Hawking showed under general conditions[Note 1] that the total area of the event horizons of any collection of classical black holes can never decrease, even if they collide and merge.[108] This result, now known as the second law of black hole mechanics, is remarkably similar to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of a system can never decrease. As with classical objects at absolute zero temperature, it was assumed that black holes had zero entropy. If this were the case, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated by entropy-laden matter 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.[109]

    The link with the laws of thermodynamics was further strengthened by Hawking's discovery that quantum field theory predicts that a black hole radiates blackbody radiation at a constant temperature. This seemingly causes a violation of the second law of black hole mechanics, since the radiation will carry away energy from the black hole causing it to shrink. The radiation, however also carries away entropy, and it can be proven under general assumptions that the sum of the entropy of the matter surrounding the black hole and one quarter of the area of the horizon as measured in Planck units is in fact always increasing. This allows the formulation of the first law of black hole mechanics as an analogue of the first law of thermodynamics, with the mass acting as energy, the surface gravity as temperature and the area as entropy.[109]

    One puzzling feature is that the entropy of a black hole scales with its area rather than with its volume, since entropy is normally an extensive quan y that scales linearly with the volume of the system. This odd property led 't Hooft and Susskind to propose the holographic principle, which suggests that anything that happens in volume of spacetime can be described by data on the boundary of that volume.[110]

    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.). Without a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, one cannot perform such a computation for black holes. Some progress has been made in various approaches to quantum gravity. In 1995, Strominger and Vafa showed that counting the microstates of a specific supersymmetric black hole in string theory reproduced the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy.[111] Since then, similar results have been reported for different black holes both in string theory and in other approaches to quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity.[112]
    Black hole unitarity
    Main article: Black hole information paradox
    Unsolved problems in physics Is physical information lost in black holes? Question mark2.svg

    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 (T-symmetry). Liouville's theorem dictates conservation of phase space volume, which can be thought of as "conservation of information", so there is some problem even in classical physics. In quantum mechanics, this corresponds to a vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the conservation of probability (it can also be thought of as a conservation of quantum phase space volume as expressed by the density matrix).[113]
    See also

    * Black holes in fiction
    * Black string
    * Kugelblitz (astrophysics)
    * List of black holes
    * Susskind-Hawking battle


    He1523a.jpg Star portal

    * Timeline of black hole physics
    * White hole
    * Wormhole

    Notes

    1. ^ In particular, he assumed that all matter satisfies the weak energy condition.

    References

    1. ^ Davies, P. C. W. (1978). "Thermodynamics of Black Holes". Rep. Prog. Phys. 41: 1313–1355. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/41/8/004. http://cosmos.asu.edu/publications/p...Holes%2034.pdf.
    2. ^ Mic , J. (1784). "On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude, &c. of the Fixed Stars, in Consequence of the Diminution of the Velocity of Their Light, in Case Such a Diminution Should be Found to Take Place in any of Them, and Such Other Data Should be Procured from Observations, as Would be Farther Necessary for That Purpose". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (London) (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 74) 74: 35–57. http://www.jstor.org/pss/106576.
    3. ^ "Dark Stars (1783)". Thinkquest. 1999. http://library.thinkquest.org/25715/....htm#darkstars. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
    4. ^ Laplace; see Israel, Werner (1987), "Dark stars: the evolution of an idea", in Hawking, Stephen W. & Israel, Werner, 300 Years of Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, Sec. 7.4
    5. ^ Thorne (1994:123–124).
    6. ^ a b Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 189–196. and Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Kugel aus inkompressibler Flüssigkeit nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 424–434.
    7. ^ Droste, J. (1915). "On the field of a single centre in Einstein's theory of gravitation". Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen Proceedings 17 (3): 998–1011.
    8. ^ 't Hooft, G. (2009). Introduction to the Theory of Black Holes. pp. 47–48. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectures/blackholes/BH_lecturenotes.pdf.
    9. ^ Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    10. ^ Harpaz, Amos (1994). Stellar evolution. A K Peters, Ltd. p. 105. ISBN 1-568-81012-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4VEZv8oo0C. , Extract of page 105
    11. ^ Oppenheimer, J. R. and Volkoff, G. M. (1939-01-03). "On Massive Neutron Cores". Physical Review 55 (4): 374–381. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.55.374. http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v55/i4/p374_1.
    12. ^ Ruffini, Remo and Wheeler, John A. (January 1971). "Introducing the black hole". Physics Today: 30–41. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/1...Phys_Today.pdf.
    13. ^ Finkelstein, David (1958). "Past-Future Asymmetry of the Gravitational Field of a Point Particle". Phys. Rev. 110: 965–967. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.110.965.
    14. ^ Kruskal, M. (1960). "Maximal Extension of Schwarzschild Metric". Physical Review 119: 1743. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.119.1743. edit
    15. ^ Hewish, Antony; Bell, S. J.; Pilkington, J. D. H.; Scott, P. F.; Collins, R. A. (1968). "Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source". Nature 217: 709–713. doi:10.1038/217709a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../235037a0.html. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    16. ^ Pilkington, J D H; Hewish, A.; Bell, S. J.; Cole, T. W. (1968). "Observations of some further Pulsed Radio Sources". Nature 218: 126–129. doi:10.1038/218126a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...f/218126a0.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    17. ^ Newman, E. T.; Couch, E.; Chinnapared, K.; Exton, A.; Prakash, A.; Torrence, R. (1965). "Metric of a Rotating, Charged Mass". Journal of Mathematical Physics 6: 918. doi:10.1063/1.1704351. edit
    18. ^ Israel, W. (1967). "Event Horizons in Static Vacuum Space-Times". Physical Review 164: 1776. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.164.1776. edit
    19. ^ Carter, B. (1971). "Axisymmetric Black Hole Has Only Two Degrees of Freedom". Physical Review Letters 26: 331. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.26.331. edit
    20. ^ Carter, B. (1977). "The vacuum black hole uniqueness theorem and its conceivable generalisations.". Proceedings of the 1st Marcel Grossmann meeting on general relativity. pp. 243–254.
    21. ^ Robinson, D. (1975). "Uniqueness of the Kerr Black Hole". Physical Review Letters 34: 905. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.34.905. edit
    22. ^ a b Heusler, M. (1998). "Stationary Black Holes: Uniqueness and Beyond". Living Rev. Relativity 1 (6). http://www.livingreviews.org/Article...1998-6heusler/. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    23. ^ a b Penrose, R. (1965). "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities". Physical Review Letters 14: 57. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.57. edit
    24. ^ Ford, L. H. (2003). International Journal of Theoretical Physics 42: 1219–1227. doi:10.1023/A:1025754515197. edit
    25. ^ Bardeen, J.M.; Carter, B.; Hawking, S.W. (1973). "The four laws of black hole mechanics". Comm. Math. Phys. 31 (2): 161–170.. doi:10.1007/BF01645742. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.cmp/1103858973.
    26. ^ a b c Hawking, S.W. (1974). "Black hole explosions?". Nature 248: 30–31. doi:10.1038/248030a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../248030a0.html.
    27. ^ Michael Quinion. "Black Hole". World Wide Words. http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-bla1.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-17.
    28. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 253
    29. ^ Black Holes, The Membrane Paradigm. ISBN 9780300037708.
    30. ^ Anderson, Warren G. (1996). "The Black Hole Information Loss Problem". http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...info_loss.html. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
    31. ^ John Preskill(1994)"Black holes and information: A crisis in quantum physics"
    32. ^ Daniel Carmody(2008)"The Fate of Quantum Information in a Black Hole"
    33. ^ "Garrett Birkhoff’s Theorem". http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~whittyr/MathSci/TheoremOfTheDay/CombinatorialTheory/Birkhoff/TotDBirkhoff.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    34. ^ "Black Holes do not suck!". 2006-02-17. http://astro.airynothing.com/2006/02..._not_suck.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    35. ^ For a review see Wald, Robert. M. (1997). "Gravitational Collapse and Cosmic Censorship". http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9710068.
    36. ^ For a discussion of these numerical simulations see Berger, Beverly K. (2002). "Numerical Approaches to Spacetime Singularities". Living Rev. Relativity 5. http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2002-1. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
    37. ^ McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Shafee, Rebecca; Narayan, Ramesh; Remillard, Ronald A.; Davis, Shane W.; Li, Li-Xin (2006). "The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105". Astrophys.J. 652: 518–539. doi:10.1086/508457. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606076.
    38. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 179
    39. ^ "Anatomy of a Black Hole". http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia...kHoleAnat.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    40. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 217
    41. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 218
    42. ^ "Inside a black hole". http://nrumiano.free.fr/Estars/int_bh.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    43. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 222
    44. ^ "Black Holes". Archived from the original on September 13, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/200609131...der/l16_BH.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    45. ^ "Physical nature of the event horizon". http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/pramana/51/693-698.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    46. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 205
    47. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 264–265
    48. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 252
    49. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 237 Exercise 3.
    50. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 182
    51. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 257–259 and 265–266
    52. ^ Droz, S.; Israel, W.; Morsink, S.M. (1996). "Black holes: the inside story". Physics World 9: 34–37.
    53. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 266
    54. ^ Poisson, E.; Israel, W. (1990). "Internal structure of black holes". Physical Review D 41: 1796. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.41.1796. edit
    55. ^ Giamb�o, Roberto. "The geometry of gravitational collapse". http://www.mat.unb.br/~matcont/28_8.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    56. ^ "Black Holes and Quantum Gravity". http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_hawk.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    57. ^ "Ask an Astrophysicist : Quantum Gravity and Black Holes". http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...s/980420b.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    58. ^ Nemiroff, Robert J. (1993). "Visual distortions near a neutron star and black hole". American Journal of Physics 61: 619. doi:10.1119/1.17224.
    59. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.6
    60. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.7
    61. ^ Einstein, A. (1939). "On A Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses". Annals of Mathematics (The Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 40, No. 4) 40 (4): 922–936. doi:10.2307/1968902. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1968902.
    62. ^ "Discovering the Kerr and Kerr-Schild metrics". To appear in "The Kerr Spacetime", Eds D.L. Wiltshire, M. Visser and S.M. Scott, Cambridge Univ. Press. Roy P. Kerr. http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0706.1109. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
    63. ^ Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, R. (January 1970). "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 314 (1519): 529–548. doi:10.1098/rspa.1970.0021. http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.o...9/529.abstract.
    64. ^ a b c Carroll 2004, Section 5.8
    65. ^ a b c Rees, M.J.; Volonteri, M. (2007). "Massive black holes: formation and evolution". In Karas, V.; Matt, G.. Black Holes from Stars to Galaxies – Across the Range of Masses. Cambridge University Press. pp. 51–58. arXiv:astro-ph/0701512.
    66. ^ Penrose, R. (2002). General Relativity and Gravitation 34: 1141–1165. doi:10.1023/A:1016578408204. edit
    67. ^ Carr, B. J. (2005). "Primordial Black Holes: Do They Exist and Are They Useful?". arΧiv:astro-ph/0511743v1 [astro-ph].
    68. ^ Giddings, Steven B.; Thomas, Scott (2002). "High energy colliders as black hole factories: The end of short distance physics". Physical Review D 65: 056010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.65.056010. arXiv:hep-ph/0106219v4.
    69. ^ Harada, T. (2006). "Is there a black hole minimum mass?". Physical Review D 74: 084004. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.74.084004. edit
    70. ^ Arkani–Hamed, N (1998). "The hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter". Physics Letters B 429: 263. doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(98)00466-3. arXiv:9803315v1.
    71. ^ LHC Safety Assessment Group. "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions". CERN. http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf.
    72. ^ Cavaglià, Marco (29 January 2007). "Particle accelerators as black hole factories?". Einstein-Online. Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Ins ute).
    73. ^ Vesperini, E.; McMillan, S.L.W.; D'Ercole, A.; D'Antona, F. (2010). "Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Early Globular Clusters". arΧiv:1003.3470 [astro-ph.GA].
    74. ^ Zwart, S.; Baumgardt, H.; Hut, P.; Makino, J.; McMillan, S. (2004). "Formation of massive black holes through runaway collisions in dense young star clusters". Nature 428 (6984): 724–726. doi:10.1038/nature02448. PMID 15085124. edit
    75. ^ O’leary, R. M.; Rasio, F. A.; Fregeau, J. M.; Ivanova, N.; O’shaughnessy, R. (2006). "Binary Mergers and Growth of Black Holes in Dense Star Clusters". The Astrophysical Journal 637: 937. doi:10.1086/498446. edit
    76. ^ Page, Don N (2005). "Hawking radiation and black hole thermodynamics". New Journal of Physics 7: 203. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/203. arXiv:hep-th/0409024v3.
    77. ^ "Einstein online". Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics. 2010. http://www.einstein-online.info/elem...et_language=en. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    78. ^ Giddings, S. B.; Mangano, M. L. (2008). "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes". Physical Review D 78: 035009. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.78.035009. edit
    79. ^ Peskin, M. (2008). "The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider?". Physics 1: 14–20. doi:10.1103/Physics.1.14. edit
    80. ^ Fichtel, C.E.; Bertsch, D.L.; Dingus, B.L.; Esposito, J.A.; Hartman, R.C.; Hunter, S.D.; Kanbach, G.;; Kniffen, D.A. et al. (1994). "Search of the energetic gamma-ray experiment telescope (EGRET) data for high-energy gamma-ray microsecond bursts". Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 434 (2): 557–559. doi:10.1086/174758. ISSN 0004-637X.
    81. ^ Naeye, Robert. Testing Fundamental Physics. NASA.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...l_physics.html. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
    82. ^ a b c McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Remillard, Ronald A. (2006). "Black Hole Binaries". In Lewin, Walter; van der Klis, Michiel. Compact Stellar X-ray Sources. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521826594. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306213. section 4.1.5.
    83. ^ a b c d e f g h i Celotti, A.; Miller, J.C.; Sciama, D.W. (1999). "Astrophysical evidence for the existence of black holes". Class. Quant. Grav. 16. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9912186
    84. ^ Winter, Lisa M.; Mushotzky, Richard F.; Reynolds, Christopher S. (2006). "XMM‐Newton Archival Study of the Ultraluminous X‐Ray Population in Nearby Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 649: 730. doi:10.1086/506579. arXiv:astro-ph/0512480v2.
    85. ^ Bolton, C. T. (1972). "Identification of Cygnus X-1 with HDE 226868". Nature 235: 271–273. doi:10.1038/235271b0.
    86. ^ Webster, B.L; Murdin, P. (1972). "Cygnus X-1—a Spectroscopic Binary with a Heavy Companion ?". Nature 235: 37–38. doi:10.1038/235037a0.
    87. ^ Rolston, Bruce (10 November 1997). The First Black Hole. University of Toronto. http://news.utoronto.ca/bin/bulletin/nov10_97/art4.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    88. ^ Shipman, H. L. (1 January 1975). "The implausible history of triple star models for Cygnus X-1 Evidence for a black hole". Astrophysical Letters 16 (1): 9–12. doi:10.1016/S0304-8853(99)00384-4. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975ApL....16....9S. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    89. ^ Narayan, R.; McClintock, J. (2008). "Advection-dominated accretion and the black hole event horizon". New Astronomy Reviews 51: 733. doi:10.1016/j.newar.2008.03.002. edit
    90. ^ Goddard Space Flight Center (2008-04-01). "NASA scientists identify smallest known black hole". Press release. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-nsi040108.php. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
    91. ^ Bloom, J. S.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Djorgovski, S. G. (2002). "The Observed Offset Distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Their Host Galaxies: A Robust Clue to the Nature of the Progenitors". The Astronomical Journal 123: 1111. doi:10.1086/338893. arXiv:0010176.
    92. ^ Blinnikov, S (1984). "Exploding Neutron Stars in Close Binaries". Soviet Astronomy Letters 10: 177. Bibcode: 1984SvAL...10..177B.
    93. ^ Lattimer, J. M.; Schramm, D. N. (1976). "The tidal disruption of neutron stars by black holes in close binaries". The Astrophysical Journal 210: 549. doi:10.1086/154860.
    94. ^ Paczynski, Bohdan (1995). "How Far Away Are Gamma-Ray Bursters?". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107: 1167. doi:10.1086/133674. arXiv:astro-ph/9505096.
    95. ^ King, Andrew (2003-09-15). "Black Holes, Galaxy Formation, and the MBH-σ Relation". The Astrophysical Journal (The American Astronomical Society.): 596:L27–L29. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4...7559.text.html.
    96. ^ Ferrarese, Laura; Merritt, David (August 2000). "A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and their Host Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) 539 (1): L9–L12. doi:10.1086/312838. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000ApJ...539L...9F
    97. ^ a b J. H. Krolik (1999). Active Galactic Nuclei. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01151-6. [page needed]
    98. ^ a b c L. S. Sparke, J. S. Gallagher III (2000). Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59704-4. [page needed]
    99. ^ J. Kormendy, D. Richstone (1995). "Inward Bound---The Search For Supermassive Black Holes In Galactic Nuclei". Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics 33: 581–624. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.33.090195.003053. Bibcode: 1995ARA&A..33..581K.
    100. ^ a b Gillessen, S.; Eisenhauer, F.; Trippe, S.; Alexander, T.; Genzel, R.; Martins, F.; Ott, T. (2009). "Monitoring Stellar Orbits Around the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center". Astrophysical Journal 692: 1075–1109. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/692/2/1075. arXiv:0810.4674. edit
    101. ^ a b Ghez, A. M.; Klein, B. L.; Morris, M.; Becklin, E. E. (1998). "High Proper‐Motion Stars in the Vicinity of Sagittarius A*: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy". The Astrophysical Journal 509: 678. doi:10.1086/306528. edit
    102. ^ a b Bozza, Valerio (2009). "Gravitational Lensing by Black Holes". arΧiv:0911.2187 [gr-qc].
    103. ^ Kovacs; Cheng; Harko (2009). "Can stellar mass black holes be quark stars?". arΧiv:0908.2672 [astro-ph.HE].
    104. ^ Alexander Kusenko (2006). "Properties and signatures of supersymmetric Q-balls". arΧiv:hep-ph/0612159 [hep-ph].
    105. ^ Hansson, J.; Sandin, F. (2005). "Preon stars: a new class of cosmic compact objects". Physics Letters B 616: 1. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2005.04.034. edit
    106. ^ Kiefer, C. (2006). "Quantum gravity: general introduction and recent developments". Annalen der Physik 15: 129–148. doi:10.1002/andp.200510175. edit
    107. ^ Skenderis, K.; Taylor, M. (2008). "The fuzzball proposal for black holes". Physics Reports 467: 117. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2008.08.001. edit
    108. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1998). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. [page needed]
    109. ^ a b Wald (1999). "The Thermodynamics of Black Holes". arΧiv:gr-qc/9912119v2 [gr-qc].
    110. ^ Gerard 't Hooft (2000). "The Holographic Principle". arΧiv:hep-th/0003004 [hep-th].
    111. ^ Strominger, A.; Vafa, C. (1996). "Microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy". Physics Letters B 379: 99. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(96)00345-0. edit
    112. ^ Carlip, S. (2009). "Black Hole Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics". Lect.Notes Phys. 769: 89–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88460-6_3. edit
    113. ^ Hawking, Stephen. "Does God Play Dice?". http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/...liclectures/64. Retrieved 2009-03-14.

    Further reading

    Popular reading

    * Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Black Holes in Space-Time. Watts Franklin. ISBN 0-531-12524-6. .
    * Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, Inc. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. .
    * Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, Roger (1996). The Nature of Space and Time. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03791-2. http://books.google.com/?id=LstaQTXP65cC. .
    * 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. .
    * Stern, B. (2008). "Blackhole". http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Blackhole_%28Stern%29. , poem.
    * Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-31276-3. .
    * Wheeler, J. Craig (2007). Cosmic Catastrophes (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85714-7.

    University textbooks and monographs

    * Carroll, Sean M. (2004). Spacetime and Geometry. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-8732-3. , the lecture notes on which the book was based are available for free from Sean Carroll's website.
    * Carter, B. (1973). "Black hole equilibrium states". In DeWitt, B.S.; DeWitt, C.. Black Holes. .
    * Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1999). Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850370-9. .
    * Frolov, V.P.; Novikov, I.D. (1998). Black hole physics. .
    * Hawking, S.W.; Ellis, G.F.R. (1973). Large Scale Structure of space time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521099064. http://books.google.com/?id=QagG_KI7Ll8C. .
    * 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. .

    Review papers

    * Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    * Gallo, E.; Marolf, D. (2009). "Resource Letter BH-2: Black Holes". American Journal of Physics 77: 294. doi:10.1119/1.3056569. arXiv:0806.2316. edit
    * Hughes, Scott A. (2005). "Trust but verify: The case for astrophysical black holes". arΧiv:hep-ph/0511217v2 [hep-ph]. Lecture notes from 2005 SLAC Summer Ins ute.

    External links
    Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Black holes

    * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Singularities and Black Holes" by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich.
    * "Black hole" on Scholarpedia.
    * Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull - Interactive multimedia Web site about the physics and astronomy of black holes from the Space Telescope Science Ins ute
    * FAQ on black holes
    * "Schwarzschild Geometry" on Andrew Hamilton’s website
    * UT Brownsville Group Simulates Spinning Black-Hole Binaries
    * Advanced Mathematics of Black Hole Evaporation

    Videos

    * 16-year long study tracks stars orbiting Milky Way black hole
    * Yale University Video Lecture: Introduction to Black Holes at Google Video.
    * Movie of Black Hole Candidate from Max Planck Ins ute

    News

    * "Black Hole confirmed in Milky Way." Retrieved December 10, 2008
    * Black Hole Research News
    riveting tale chap

  20. #20
    Mrs.Useruser666 SpursWoman's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Post Count
    27,175
    proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. Usa
    vol. 95, pp. 2355–2360, march 1998
    evolution
    modification of expression and cis-regulation of hoxc8 in the
    evolution of diverged axial morphology
    heinz-georg belting*†, cooduvalli s. Shashikant*, and frank h. Ruddle*‡§
    departments of *molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and ‡genetics, yale university, pob 208103, new haven, ct 06520
    contributed by frank h. Ruddle, december 30, 1997
    abstract differential hox gene expression between
    vertebrate species has been implicated in the divergence of
    axial morphology. To examine this relationship, we have
    compared expression and transcriptional regulation of hoxc8
    in chicken and mouse. In both species, expression of hoxc8 in
    the paraxial mesoderm and neural tube is associated with
    midthoracic and brachial iden ies, respectively. During embryogenesis,
    there is a temporal delay in the activation of
    hoxc8 in chicken compared with mouse. As a result, chicken
    hoxc8 expression in the paraxial mesoderm is at a posterior
    axial level, extending over a smaller domain compared with
    mouse hoxc8 expression. This finding is consistent with a
    shorter thoracic region in chicken compared with mouse. In
    addition, the chicken hoxc8 early enhancer, differing from its
    mouse counterpart in only a few specific nucleotides, directs
    a reporter gene expression to a more posterior domain in
    transgenic mouse embryos. These findings are consistent with
    the concept that the diversification of axial morphology has
    been achieved through changes in cis-regulation of developmental
    control genes.
    Genes that control axial patterning, such as hox genes, are
    highly conserved across the animal kingdom (1). However,
    animals exhibit a high degree of diversity in the organization
    of the primary body axis. This phenomenon may be caused by
    conserved genetic programs having become variously modified
    in different organisms (2–4). Differences in hox gene
    expression may contribute to an understanding of how modifications
    of developmental programs generate axial diversity
    between species (5–7).
    Amniotes differ greatly in the number of segments contributing
    to individual anatomic regions along the vertebral column
    such as the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar regions. For
    example, the vertebral column of the mouse consists of seven
    cervical and 13 thoracic vertebrae, whereas the vertebral
    column of chicken displays 14 cervical and seven thoracic
    vertebrae. Comparisons between mouse and chicken show that
    differences in axial morphology are associated with differences
    in spatial domains of hox gene expression (5, 6). For example,
    hoxc6 is expressed at the cervicalythoracic transition in both
    mouse and chick, but at different relative levels along the
    anteroposterior axis; likewise, hoxc8 is expressed in the thoracic
    region of both mouse and chicken (6).
    Differences in expression patterns of hox genes between
    different species may be brought about by changes in components
    of their transcriptional regulation, including changes in
    cis-regulatory elements and trans-acting factors whose interactions
    determine embryonic expression patterns of hox
    genes. However, experimental exchanges of hox genes and
    their cis-regulatory regions between different organisms have
    demonstrated a high degree of functional conservation (8–24).
    The expression of trans-acting factors of hox genes probably
    are largely retained in amniotes, setting up a pre-pattern that
    provides positional coordinates along the body axis. We postulate
    that subtle changes in cis-regulatory elements leading to
    altered interactions with conserved trans-acting factors may
    contribute to diverged expression patterns of hox genes among
    different species.
    In previous studies, we identified cis-regulatory regions that
    control different phases of mouse hoxc8 expression (25–29).
    The hoxc8 early enhancer is involved in the establishment of
    the anteroposterior expression domain of hoxc8, consistent
    with its role in the regionalization of the body axis (26, 29). The
    early enhancer has been delimited to a 200-bp dna fragment
    by extensive deletion analyses in transgenic mice (26, 28). Five
    partially redundant elements within this region act in combination
    in determining early hoxc8 expression (26, 28). A
    survey among mammalian species reveals a remarkable conservation
    of the nucleotide sequence of the early enhancer
    (c.s.s., unpublished observations). Any difference in the
    nucleotide sequence and activity of this highly conserved and
    well-characterized enhancer may have strong implications on
    the divergence of hoxc8 expression between different species.
    To test this hypothesis, we have studied hoxc8 expression
    during chicken and mouse embryogenesis and compared their
    early enhancer regions for nucleotide sequence similarities,
    and enhancer activities in transgenic mice. In this report we
    provide evidence suggesting that transposition of hoxc8 expression
    between the two species is achieved by differential
    activities of the hoxc8 early enhancer.
    Materials and methods
    fvb mice (taconics) were used for obtaining staged embryos
    and for transgenic analysis. For mating, pairs were caged
    together at noon, and the females were examined for the
    presence of a vaginal plug the next morning, which was defined
    as day 0.5. Fertilized eggs from white leghorn hens (spafas)
    were incubated at 37°c in an egg incubator. The chicken
    embryos were staged as described (30).
    Immunohistochemistry was performed with a mab, c592y
    7e, against the mouse hoxc8 protein (29) as described (31)
    with minor modifications.
    For retrograde labeling experiments, mouse (10.5 day postcoital)

    2-week incubation in pbs, 10 mm edta. Specimens were cut
    on a vibratome at 80–100mm, and the image was captured with
    a black-and-white charge-coupled device camera. The same
    sections then were processed with hoxc8 mabs, and the
    expression of hoxc8 was compared with the dii label, side by
    side or by superimposing the captured images in pseudocolor.
    Production of transgenic embryos, preparation of dna for
    microinjection, and staining for b-galactosidase have been
    described (26). The reporter gene construct (construct a)
    carrying 399-bp hoxc8 early enhancer was described earlier
    (28). A 151-bp chicken enhancer was isolated by pcr using
    chicken genomic dna as a template and synthetic oligonucleotide
    primers designed from the mouse enhancer sequence
    flanking the fragment. A 399-bp enhancer fragment in which
    151 bp of the mouse sequence was replaced with the corresponding
    chicken dna fragment was generated by overlapping
    pcr. The resulting fragment was cloned by ligation at
    appropriate restriction sites in the polylinker sequence of
    phsf (26) to create a mouseychicken hybrid construct (construct
    b).
    Results
    heterochronic activation of hoxc8. Previous studies by
    burke et al. (6), using rna in situ procedures, showed that
    axial levels of hoxc8 expression differed between mouse and
    chicken midgestation embryos. To determine the temporal
    sequence of hoxc8 expression during mouse and chicken
    embryogenesis, we performed a comparative immunohistochemistry,
    using a mab raised against mouse hoxc8 (29). The
    mouse embryonic expression pattern is described in detail
    elsewhere (29). Briefly, in the mouse, hoxc8 first is detected
    at the base of allantois in day 8 embryos having 6–7 somites
    (fig. 1a). At this stage, the neural tube is still open, and the
    heart primordia have just formed (32). The earliest chicken
    embryos examined, stages 10 and 11, are similar in their
    developmental progression to day 8.0–8.5 mouse embryos. At
    these stages, the major events of gastrulation have occurred,
    and organogenesis is proceeding in the anterior portion of the
    embryos. Embryos of both species possess a similar number
    (8–12) of somites, and the degrees of the development of the
    heart and nervous system are comparable at these stages.
    However, in the chick, hoxc8 protein was not detected in stages
    10 or 12 (data not shown), but first was detected in the
    posterior regions in stage 13 embryos having 18–19 somites
    (fig. 1e). At this stage, the neural tube, with the exception of
    the caudal neuropore, is entirely closed, and the rostral
    portions, including fore-, mid- and hindbrain, the optic cups,
    and otic vesicles are formed. As in the mouse, chicken hoxc8
    expression at this stage was diffuse in all embryonic tissues
    posterior to somite condensation. Thus, the onset of hoxc8
    expression in the chicken is developmentally delayed compared
    with mouse.
    Axial levels of hoxc8 expression. A clear and differential
    anterior boundary of hoxc8 expression in the neural tube and
    paraxial mesoderm is established at subsequent stages in the
    mouse (day 8.5, fig. 1b) and in the chicken embryos (stage 14,
    fig. 1f). In the mouse, at days 9.5 and 10.5, anterior bound-
    fig. 1. Expression of hoxc8 during early mouse (a–d) and chicken (e and f) embryogenesis. The anterior boundary of expression in the neural
    tube is indicated by arrowheads. (a) embryo with 7–8 somites. (b) embryo with 10–12 somites. The staining of the foregut in a and b is caused
    by antibody trapping. (c) embryo with 28–30 somites (9.5 day postcoital). (d) embryo at 10.5 day p.c. Somite 17 is indicated in c and d. (e)
    chicken embryo at h&h stage 13 (18–19 somites). (f) embryo at h&h stage 14 (20 somites). (g) embryo at h&h stage 21. (h) at h&h stage
    23, somite 22 is indicated in g and h. The staining of the brain and the allantois is caused by antibody trapping. A, allantois; e, eye; f, forelimb
    bud, m, mesoderm; ov, otic vesicle; s, somite.
    2356 evolution: Belting et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. Usa 95 (1998)

    aries of expression of hoxc8 were observed in the neural tube
    at the level of 10th somite and in the paraxial mesoderm at the
    level of 14th somite (fig. 1 c and d). In the chick, however, at
    stages 21 and 23, anterior boundaries of expression of hoxc8
    were observed in the neural tube at the level of the 18th somite
    and in the paraxial mesoderm at the level of 20th somite. Thus,
    the axial level of expression of hoxc8 in chicken embryos is 6–8
    somites more posterior than that observed in the mouse
    embryos.
    At these stages, in both mouse and chicken embryos, hoxc8
    expression declines in the tailbud region, thus defining posterior
    boundaries of expression. However, these boundaries are
    unlike the anterior boundaries of expression, having indistinct
    margins. In the mouse, hoxc8 expression in the neural tube
    spans about six somite levels (from somites 10–15) and in the
    paraxial mesoderm about 7–8 somite levels (somites 13–21,
    with weaker levels of expression at somites 13 and 21). In the
    chick, hoxc8 expression in the neural tube spans about six
    somite levels (somites 18–23; strong expression in somites
    19–20) and in paraxial mesoderm about five somite levels
    (somites 21–25). Thus hoxc8 expression in paraxial mesoderm
    is 2–3 somite levels shorter in the chicken compared with
    mouse. Although the expression domain of hoxc8 in the
    paraxial mesoderm is smaller and more posterior compared
    with mouse, the expression pattern is coincident with the
    smaller thoracic region in chick. Thus, hoxc8 expression in the
    paraxial mesoderm is different not only with respect to absolute
    axial levels but also in the number of expressing somites.
    Early and late phases of neural tube expression of hoxc8.
    In the mouse, two phases of hoxc8 expression can be distinguished
    in the neural tube, an early and a late phase (29). In
    the early phase (day 8–9.5), hoxc8 expression is found in most,
    if not all, cells along the dorsoventral extent of the neural tube
    (data not shown). In the late phase (after day 10.5), hoxc8
    expression is restricted to differentiating neurons, predominantly
    in motor neurons in the ventrolateral region of the
    neural tube (fig. 1d). In the chick, similar phases of hoxc8
    expression in the neural tube are observed. In the early phase
    (stage 13–15) hoxc8 is distributed uniformly in the neural tube,
    whereas in the late phase hoxc8 is distributed predominantly
    in the motor neurons in the ventrolateral region (fig. 1h). The
    distribution of hoxc8 within the subregions of the spinal cord
    at subsequent stages is very similar in both species.
    Association of hoxc8 expression with motor neurons. To
    determine whether the axial shift of hoxc8 expression in the
    neural tube of mouse and chicken corresponds to a transposition
    of regional iden y of spinal nerves, brachial motor
    neurons were identified and tested for colocalization with
    hoxc8 protein. Brachial motor neurons of day 10.5 mouse and
    stage 24 chicken embryos were retrograde-labeled with dii as
    described in materials and methods. The embryos were sectioned
    serially, and the dii signal was compared with the
    distribution of hoxc8 protein on the same sections. In both
    mouse and chick, sections through the anterior brachial neural
    tube at somite levels 9 and 17, respectively, showed no hoxc8
    expression (fig. 2 a and d). At more posterior levels, (at
    somite levels 11 in mouse and 19 in chick), however, dii label
    coincided with the domain of hoxc8 expression (fig. 2 b and
    d). These findings were confirmed on horizontal sections
    (data not shown). Thus, hoxc8 expression in the central
    nervous system is transposed according to the functional
    iden y of expressing motor neurons.
    Hoxc8 early enhancer of mouse and chick. The mouse
    hoxc8 early enhancer is involved in the establishment of spatial
    domains of hoxc8 expression (25, 26, 29). We isolated the
    chicken hoxc8 early enhancer to test whether the difference in
    the spatiotemporal pattern of chicken hoxc8 expression compared
    with mouse is caused by differences in the chicken
    enhancer. Primers were designed, based on most conserved
    regions of hoxc8 early enhancer, to amplify a 151-bp fragment
    of the chicken enhancer by pcr. This enhancer is highly
    conserved between the mouse and chicken with respect to
    structure and overall sequence similarity (fig. 3a). The sequence
    similarity over 151 bp is 80%. The critical elements
    (fig. 3a, a–e) required for the mouse enhancer activity in
    fig. 2. (a–d) expression of hoxc8 in the brachial region of the
    neural tube. Cross-section through the neural tube of a mouse embryo
    at the level of the ninth (a) and 11th (b) somite. (c and d)
    cross-sections through the neural tube of a chicken embryo at the level
    of the 17th and 19th somites. Hoxc8 expression is shown in green, dii
    label in red and resulting overlap in yellow. (e and f) expression of
    mouse and chicken reporter genes in transgenic mouse embryos. (e)
    construct a (399-bp mouse sequence); b, construct b (399-bp mousechicken
    hybrid construct). The arrowheads indicates somite 14. The
    arrow indicates the anterior limit of reporter gene expression mediated
    by construct b (f). F, forelimb bud; nc, notochord; r, ventral root; v,
    ventral horn.
    Evolution: Belting et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. Usa 95 (1998) 2357


    and chicken [hamburger and hamilton (h&h) 24]
    embryos were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde in pbs. Brachial
    motor neurons were retrograde-labeled by placing finely
    ground 1,19-dioctadecyl-3,3,39,39-tetramethylindocarbocyanine
    (dii) crystals into one severed forelimb bud and a 1- to
    the publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by page charge
    payment. This article must therefore be hereby marked ‘‘advertisement’’ in
    accordance with 18 u.s.c. §1734 solely to indicate this fact.
    © 1998 by the national academy of sciences 0027-8424y98y952355-6$2.00y0
    pnas is available online at http:yywww.pnas.org.
    Abbreviations: Dii, 1,19-dioctadecyl-3,3,39,39-tetramethylindocarbocyanine;
    h&h, hamburger and hamilton.
    Data deposition: The sequence reported in this paper has been
    deposited in the genbank database (accession no. Aj223359).
    †present address: Ins ute for biology i, university of freiburg,
    hauptstr. 1, d-79104 freiburg, germany.
    §to whom reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail: Frank.ruddle@
    yale.edu.
    2355

    transgenic mice are arranged identically in the chicken enhancer.
    In addition to clusters of subs utions between the
    known sites, there are several differences within and in proximity
    to these elements.
    The chicken enhancer was tested for its ability to direct the
    expression of a reporter gene (hsp68-lacz) in transgenic mice to
    determine whether differences in its nucleotide sequence from
    that of mouse affects enhancer activity. A 399-bp dna fragment
    containing the mouse early enhancer region (construct a, fig.
    3b) directs the reporter gene expression in day 9.5 embryos to the
    neural tube and paraxial mesoderm at the level of somite 14 and
    19, respectively (ref. 28 and fig. 2e). From this construct, the
    151-bp fragment of the mouse enhancer containing the critical
    elements of the enhancer was replaced with the corresponding
    sequences from the chick. The resulting construct (construct b,
    fig. 3b) directed the expression of the reporter gene in day 9.5
    embryos to more posterior regions of the embryo in both neural
    tube and mesoderm (fig. 2f). Five founder embryos that were
    generated displayed identical patterns. Expression in the neural
    tube was consistently found posterior to the 18th somite, whereas
    expression in the mesoderm was several somites posterior to that
    in the neural tube. Thus, chicken hoxc8 enhancer differing from
    the mouse counterpart in a few nucleotides directs the reporter
    gene expression to a different anterior boundary in the neural
    tube and mesoderm. This posteriorization of the reporter gene
    activity in the neural tube and mesoderm is consistent with the
    more posterior localized expression of hoxc8 in the chick.
    Discussion
    the investigation of the genetic basis of morphological diversity
    among animals now has become feasible because of the
    identification of highly conserved regulatory genes that control
    embryonic patterning and morphogenesis. To examine the
    correlation of hox gene expression and axial variation, we have
    compared the spatiotemporal distribution of hoxc8 in mouse
    and chick. Our findings can be summarized as follows: Hoxc8
    expression is modified in concert with variation in axial
    morphology within the paraxial mesoderm and the neural tube
    (fig. 4). Posteriorization of hoxc8 expression in chicken is
    achieved through a temporal delay of activation compared
    fig. 3. The hoxc8 early enhancer in mouse and chick. (a) nucleotide sequence comparison of the critical region of chicken and mouse hoxc8
    early enhancers. One hundred fifty-one bp of the critical region of the early enhancer are shown. Five elements essential for the activity of the early
    enhancer are indicated (a–e). (b) design of mouse and mouse-chicken hybrid reporter constructs. Construct a consists of a 399-bp early hoxc8
    enhancer ligated to a mouse hsp68ylacz reporter gene. Construct b was generated by replacing 151 bp of the critical enhancer region of the mouse
    with that of chick.
    Fig. 4. Schematic comparison of hoxc8 expression in chicken and
    mouse in relationship to morphological landmarks. Cervical, thoracic,
    and lumbar regions of the vertebral column and the brachial region of
    the neural tube are indicated. Brachial spinal nerves c6, c7, c8, and
    t1 in mouse and c13, c14, c15, and t1 in chicken are shown. Shaded
    region in somites and neural tube represent hoxc8 expression. Regions
    of highest expression are indicated in dark shades. The double-headed
    arrow indicates the anteroposterior orientation of the body axis. A,
    anterior; p, posterior; nt, neural tube; t, thoracic vertebrae; s, somites;
    sn, spinal nerves; v, vertebrae.
    2358 evolution: Belting et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. Usa 95 (1998)

    with mouse. The comparison of chicken and mouse enhancer
    elements shows that only a few nucleotide changes within the
    critical region of the early hoxc8 enhancer suffice to transpose
    reporter gene expression to more posterior body regions.
    The role of hox genes in the regionalization of the nervous
    system has been examined most closely in the hindbrain (33).
    Within the hindbrain hox genes are expressed in the same
    segments in mouse and chick, reflecting that the organization,
    in respect to the number of rhombomeres, has been conserved
    between these two species (34–36). In contrast, the brachial
    region of the spinal cord is transposed in these species and our
    results show that the shift of hoxc8 expression along the body
    axis corresponds to this anatomical modification.
    The different axial position and extent of hoxc8 expression
    in the segmental mesoderm reflects two major differences in
    the axial organization of the vertebral column of chicken and
    mouse. First, the relative expansion of the cervical region in
    the chicken is reflected by a posteriorization of hoxc8 expression.
    Second, the overall reduction of thoracic segments is
    reflected by a reduced number of somites expressing hoxc8
    compared with the mouse. This association of hoxc8 expression
    with regional morphology of vertebrae suggests a role in
    the specification of midthoracic iden y within the paraxial
    mesoderm. The axial fate of somites already is established in
    the presomitic mesoderm (37). Thus, the observation that
    hoxc8 is found at the correct place and at the right time in the
    segmental plate and before somite condensation is consistent
    with a role in the establishment of thoracic iden y in the
    paraxial mesoderm. Further support for a causal relationship
    between hoxc8 expression and midthoracic iden y stems
    from genetic analyses in mice. Ectopic expression of hoxc8 in
    somites of the lower thoracic and upper lumbar region leads to
    anterior transformations within this region, including the
    formation of lumbar ribs (38). Similarly, disruption of hoxc9
    causes a posterior expansion of hoxc8 expression and the
    appearance of supernumerary ribs as well (39). These results
    also demonstrate that anatomical regions can be expanded by
    an extension of hox gene expression along the primary body
    axis and agrees well with the finding that a larger expression
    domain of hoxc8 in the mouse, compared with the chick, is
    linked to a higher number of thoracic vertebrae. This finding
    suggests that axial variation among amniotes is not only
    generated by axial shifts in the anterior expression boundaries
    of hox genes, but also by expansion or reduction of their
    overall expression domains.
    The axial variation in hoxc8 expression may be caused by
    changes in the transcriptional regulation of hoxc8. Differences
    in hox gene expression could be caused by genetic changes in
    cis elements andyor trans-acting factors. Changes in transregulation
    are more difficult to study because of the multiplicity
    of potential (and lack of bona fide) regulatory proteins.
    Changes in cis-elements in this report were studied by comparing
    a minimal sequence of the hoxc8 early enhancer. The
    nucleotide sequence of the early enhancer region is highly
    conserved among mammals and the sequence of cis-acting
    elements (a–e) are invariant. Compared with mammalian
    hoxc8 early enhancer sequence, the chicken enhancer sequence
    showed more nucleotide sequence changes. Many of
    the nucleotide differences were observed in the vicinity of the
    genetically defined sites, a, d, and e. It is conceivable that
    these and other specific nucleotide differences contribute
    toward overall posteriorization of the reporter gene expression
    mediated through the chicken enhancer. In the case of the
    mouse enhancer, mutations at individual sites a, c, d, and e,
    lead to posteriorization of the reporter gene expression (28).
    The anterior extent of the reporter gene expression is determined
    by combinatorial interactions at these elements. In
    addition, nucleotide changes outside of the defined elements
    in the chicken enhancer may be affecting hitherto undefined
    cis-acting elements. A systematic exchange of nucleotide sequences
    between mouse and chicken enhancers will pinpoint
    critical nucleotides involved in the posteriorization of the
    reporter gene expression directed by the chicken enhancer.
    Comparative analysis of vertebrate cis-regulatory regions,
    using reporter gene assays in transgenic mouse embryos, have
    shown remarkable conservation of transcriptional regulation
    of hox genes (13–15, 17–19, 22). Many of these elements direct
    reporter gene expression to similar spatial domains in transgenic
    mouse embryos. On the other hand, a chicken hoxb4
    enhancer, although capable of directing expression of the
    reporter gene to the correct anterior boundary in the neural
    tube, directed expression to a more posterior boundary in the
    mesoderm, suggesting a species-specific differences in the
    enhancer activity (18). Transcriptional heterochrony also has
    been suggested to be an important mechanism by which subtle
    changes in temporal colinearity of hox genes may result in the
    evolution of body plans (40). A replacement of a conserved
    mouse hoxd11 regulatory region with its zebrafish counterpart
    lead to a slightly premature activation of hoxd11, leading to
    rostral shift of its expression boundary and anterior transposition
    of the sacrum (22).
    In conclusion, we have shown that the hoxc8 expression in
    mouse and chicken is similar with respect to anatomical
    features such as the brachial spinal nerves and the midthoracic
    region of the vertebral column. However, significant differences
    also exist in relational features of the body plan such as
    the ratio of cervical and thoracic domains. We also show in
    mouse transgenic experiments where we compare the early
    enhancers of mouse and chick that chicken enhancer constructs
    simulate a chicken relational pattern of expression.
    Additional experiments will be required to determine the
    specificity of nucleotide changes in the regulation of hoxc8
    expression pattern and correlated modifications of the body
    plan.
    We thank charles bieberich and gunter wagner for discussion of
    earlier versions of this manuscript. This work has been supported by
    national ins utes of health grant gm09966 to f.h.r.
    1. Ruddle, f. H., bartels, j. L., bentley, k. L., kappen, c., murtha,
    m. T. & pendleton, j. W. (1994) annu. Rev. Genet. 28, 423–442.
    2. Lewis, e. B. (1978) nature (london) 276, 567–570.
    3. Carrol, s. B. (1995) nature (london) 376, 479–485.
    4. Palopoli, m. F. & patel, n. H. (1996) curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 6,
    502–508.
    5. Gaunt, s. J. (1994) int. J. Dev. Biol. 38, 549–552.
    6. Burke, a. C., nelson, c. E., morgan, b. A. & tabin, c. (1995)
    development (cambridge, u.k.) 121, 333–346.
    7. Averof, m. & patel, n. H. Nature (london) 388, 682–686.
    8. Malicki, j., schughart, k. & mcginnis, w. (1990) cell 63,
    961–967.
    9. Mcginnis, n., kuziora, m. A. & mcginnis, w. (1990) cell 63,
    969–976.
    10. Awgulewitsch, a. & jacobs, d. (1992) nature (london) 358,
    341–344.
    11. Malicki, j., cianetti, l. C., peschle, c. & mcginnis, w. (1992)
    nature (london) 358, 345–347.
    12. Zhao, j. J., lazzarini, r. A. & pick, l. (1993) genes dev. 7,
    343–354.
    13. Marshall, h., studer, m., popperl, h., aparicio, s., kuroiwa, a.,
    brenner, s. & krumlauf, r. (1994) nature (london) 370, 567–
    571.
    14. Studer, m., popperl, h., marshall, h., kuroiwa, a. & krumlauf,
    r. (1994) science 265, 1728–1732.
    15. Aparicio, s., morrison, a., gould, a., gilthorpe, j., chaudhuri,
    c., rigby, p., krumlauf, r.&brenner, s. (1995) proc. Natl. Acad.
    Sci. Usa 92, 1684–1688.
    16. Frasch, m., chen, x. & lufkin, t. (1995) development (cambridge,
    u.k.) 121, 957–974.
    17. Knittel, t., kessel, m., kim, m. H. & gruss, p. (1995) development
    (cambridge, u.k.) 121, 1077–1088.
    Evolution: Belting et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. Usa 95 (1998) 2359

    +1

  21. #21
    R.C. Drunkford TimDunkem's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    14,390
    A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.[1] Quantum mechanics predicts that black holes also emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature decreases with the mass of the black hole, making it unlikely to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass.

    Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can be observed through its interaction with other matter. A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space. Alternatively, when gas falls into a stellar black hole from a companion star, the gas spirals inward, heating to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and Earth-orbiting telescopes.

    Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates, and have also found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. In 1998, astronomers found compelling evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than 2 million solar masses is located near the Sagittarius A* region in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and more recent results using additional data find evidence that the supermassive black hole is more than 4 million solar masses.
    Contents
    [hide]

    * 1 History
    o 1.1 General relativity
    o 1.2 Golden age
    * 2 Properties and structure
    o 2.1 Physical properties
    o 2.2 Event horizon
    o 2.3 Singularity
    o 2.4 Photon sphere
    o 2.5 Ergosphere
    * 3 Formation and evolution
    o 3.1 Gravitational collapse
    + 3.1.1 Primordial black holes in the Big Bang
    o 3.2 High-energy collisions
    o 3.3 Growth
    o 3.4 Evaporation
    * 4 Observational evidence
    o 4.1 Accretion of matter
    o 4.2 X-ray binaries
    + 4.2.1 Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow
    + 4.2.2 Quasi-periodic oscillations
    o 4.3 Gamma ray bursts
    o 4.4 Galactic nuclei
    o 4.5 Gravitational lensing
    o 4.6 Alternatives
    * 5 Open questions
    o 5.1 Entropy and thermodynamics
    o 5.2 Black hole unitarity
    * 6 See also
    * 7 Notes
    * 8 References
    * 9 Further reading
    * 10 External links

    History
    Schwarzschild black hole
    Simulation of gravitational lensing by a black hole which distorts the image of a galaxy in the background (click here for larger animation)

    The idea of a body so massive that even light could not escape was first put forward by geologist John Mic in a letter written to Henry Cavendish in 1783 to the Royal Society:

    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.
    —John Mic [2]

    In 1796, 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).[3][4] Such "dark stars" were largely ignored in the nineteenth century, since it was not understood how a massless wave such as light could be influenced by gravity.[5]
    General relativity

    In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, having earlier shown that gravity does influence light's motion. A few months later, Karl Schwarzschild gave the solution for the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass.[6] A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass and wrote more extensively about its properties.[7] This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, where it became singular, meaning that some of the terms in the Einstein equations became infinite. The nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time. In 1924, Arthur Eddington showed that the singularity disappeared after a change of coordinates (see Eddington coordinates), although it took until 1933 for Georges Lemaître to realize that this meant the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was an unphysical coordinate singularity.[8]

    In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using general relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit) would collapse.[citation needed] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[9] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[10] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately three solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[11]

    Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this property, the collapsed stars were called "frozen stars,"[12] because 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. This is a known property of modern black holes, but it must be emphasized that the light from the surface of the frozen star becomes redshifted very fast, turning the black hole black very quickly. Many physicists could not accept the idea of time standing still at the Schwarzschild radius, and there was little interest in the subject for over 20 years.
    Golden age
    See also: Golden age of general relativity

    In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface r = 2m [in geometrized units, i.e. 2Gm/c2, where r is the radius of the surface and m is the mass of the black hole] as an event horizon, "a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction".[13] This did not strictly contradict Oppenheimer's results, but extended them to include the point of view of infalling observers. Finkelstein's solution extended the Schwarzschild solution for the future of observers falling into the black hole. A complete extension had already been found by Martin Kruskal, who was urged to publish it.[14]

    These results came at the beginning of the golden age of general relativity, which is marked by general relativity and black holes becoming mainstream subjects of research. This process was helped by the discovery of pulsars in 1967,[15][16] which were within a few years shown to be rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars, like black holes, were regarded as just theoretical curiosities; but the discovery of pulsars showed their physical relevance and spurred a further interest in all types of compact objects that might be formed by gravitational collapse.

    In this period more general black hole solutions where found. In 1963, Roy Kerr found the exact solution for a rotating black hole. Two years later Ezra T. Newman found the axisymmetric solution for a black hole which is both rotating and electrically charged.[17] Through the work of Werner Israel,[18] Brandon Carter,[19][20] and D. C. Robinson[21] the no-hair theorem emerged, stating that a stationary black hole solution is completely described by the three parameters of the Kerr–Newman metric; mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.[22]

    For a long time, it was suspected that the strange features of the black hole solutions were pathological artefacts from the symmetry conditions imposed, and that the singularities would not appear in generic situations. This view was held in particular by Belinsky, Khalatnikov, and Lif z, who tried to prove that no singularities appear in generic solutions. However, in the late sixties Roger Penrose[23] and Stephen Hawking used global techniques to prove that singularities are generic.[24]

    Work by James Bardeen, Jacob Bekenstein, Carter, and Hawking in the early 1970s led to the formulation of the laws of black hole mechanics.[25] These laws describe the behaviour of a black hole in close analogy to the laws of thermodynamics by relating mass to energy, area to entropy, and surface gravity to temperature. The analogy was completed when Hawking, in 1974, showed that quantum field theory predicts that black holes should radiate like a black body with a temperature proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole.[26]

    The term "black hole" was first publicly used by John Wheeler during a lecture in 1967. Although he is usually credited with coining the phrase, he always insisted that it was suggested to him by somebody else. The first recorded use of the term is in a 1964 letter by Anne Ewing to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[27] After Wheeler's use of the term, it was quickly adopted in general use.
    Properties and structure

    The no-hair theorem states that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, charge, and angular momentum.[22] Any two black holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable according to classical (i.e. non-quantum) mechanics.

    These properties are special because they are visible from outside the black hole. For example, a charged black hole repels other like charges just like any other charged object. Similarly, the total mass inside a sphere containing a black hole can be found by using the gravitational analog of Gauss's law, the ADM mass, far away from the black hole.[28] Likewise, the angular momentum can be measured from far away using frame dragging by the gravitomagnetic field.

    When an object falls into a black hole, any information about the shape of the object or distribution of charge on it is evenly distributed along the horizon of the black hole, and is lost to outside observers. The behavior of the horizon in this situation is closely analogous to that of a conductive stretchy membrane with friction and electrical resistance, a dissipative system (see membrane paradigm).[29] This is different from other field theories like electromagnetism, which does not have any friction or resistivity at the microscopic level, because they are time-reversible. Because the black hole eventually achieves a stable state with only three parameters, there is no way to avoid losing information about the initial conditions: the gravitational and electric fields of the black hole give very little information about what went in. The information that is lost includes every quan y that cannot be measured far away from the black hole horizon, including the total baryon number, lepton number, and all the other nearly conserved pseudo-charges of particle physics. This behavior is so puzzling that it has been called the black hole information loss paradox.[30][31][32]
    Physical properties

    The simplest black hole has mass but neither electric charge nor angular momentum. These black holes are often referred to as Schwarzschild black holes after the physicist Karl Schwarzschild who discovered this solution in 1915.[6] According to Birkhoff's theorem, it is the only vacuum solution that is spherically symmetric.[33] This means that there is no observable difference between the gravitational field of such a black hole and that of any other spherical object of the same mass. The popular notion of a black hole "sucking in everything" in its surroundings is therefore only correct near the black hole horizon; far away, the external gravitational field is identical to that of any other body of the same mass.[34]

    Solutions describing more general black holes also exist. Charged black holes are described by the Reissner-Nordström metric, while the Kerr metric describes a rotating black hole. The most general stationary black hole solution known is the Kerr-Newman metric, which describes a black hole with both charge and angular momentum.

    While the mass of a black hole can take any positive value, the charge and angular momentum are constrained by the mass. In Planck units, the total electric charge Q and the total angular momentum J are expected to satisfy

    Q^2+\left ( \tfrac{J}{M} \right )^2\le M^2\,

    for a black hole of mass M. Black holes saturating this inequality are called extremal. Solutions of Einstein's equations violating the inequality exist, but do not have a horizon. These solutions have naked singularities and are deemed unphysical. The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter.[35] This is supported by numerical simulations.[36]

    Due to the relatively large strength of the electromagnetic force, black holes forming from the collapse of stars are expected to retain the nearly neutral charge of the star. Rotation, however, is expected to be a common feature of compact objects, and the black-hole candidate binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105[37] appears to have an angular momentum near the maximum allowed value.
    Class Mass Size
    Supermassive black hole ~105–109 MSun ~0.001–10 AU
    Intermediate-mass black hole ~103 MSun ~103 km = REarth
    Stellar black hole ~10 MSun ~30 km
    Micro black hole up to ~MMoon up to ~0.1 mm

    Black holes are commonly classified according to their mass, independent of angular momentum J or electric charge Q. The size of a black hole, as determined by the radius of the event horizon, or Schwarzschild radius, is roughly proportional to the mass M through

    r_\mathrm{sh} =\frac{2GM}{c^2} \approx 2.95\, \frac{M}{M_\mathrm{Sun}}~\mathrm{km,}

    where rsh is the Schwarzschild radius and MSun is the mass of the Sun. This relation is exact only for black holes with zero charge and angular momentum, for more general black holes it can differ up to a factor of 2. The table on the right lists the various classes of black hole that are distinguished.
    Event horizon
    Main article: Event horizon
    Image:BH-no-escape-1.svg
    Far away from the black hole a particle can move in any direction. It is only restricted by the speed of light.
    Image:BH-no-escape-2.svg
    Closer to the black hole spacetime starts to deform. There are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away.
    Image:BH-no-escape-3.svg
    Inside of the event horizon all paths bring the particle closer to the center of the black hole. It is no longer possible for the particle to escape.

    The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon—a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.[38]

    As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a large mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole.[39]

    To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole.[40] Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it.[41] At the same time, all processes on this object slow down causing emitted light to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift.[42] Eventually, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen.

    On the other hand, an observer falling into a black hole does not notice any of these effects as he crosses the event horizon. According to his own clock, he crosses the event horizon after a finite time, although he is unable to determine exactly when he crosses it, as it is impossible to determine the location of the event horizon from local observations.[43]

    For a non rotating (static) black hole, the Schwarzschild radius delimits a spherical event horizon. The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to the mass.[44] Rotating black holes have distorted, nonspherical event horizons. Since the event horizon is not a material surface but rather merely a mathematically defined demarcation boundary, nothing prevents matter or radiation from entering a black hole, only from exiting one. The description of black holes given by general relativity is known to be an approximation, and some scientists expect that quantum gravity effects will become significant near the vicinity of the event horizon.[45] This would allow observations of matter near a black hole's event horizon to be used to indirectly study general relativity and proposed extensions to it.
    Singularity
    Main article: Gravitational singularity

    At the center of a black hole as described by general relativity lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite.[46] For a non-rotating black hole this region takes the shape of a single point and for a rotating black hole it is smeared out to form a ring singularity lying in the plane of rotation.[47] In both cases the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution.[48] The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density.

    An observer falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e. non-rotating and no charges) cannot avoid the singularity. Any attempt to do so will only shorten the time taken to get there.[49] When they reach the singularity, they are crushed to infinite density and their mass is added to the total of the black hole. Before that happens, they will have been torn apart by the growing tidal forces in a process sometimes referred to as spaghettification or the noodle effect.[50]

    In the case of a charged (Reissner–Nordström) or rotating (Kerr) black hole it is possible to avoid the singularity. Extending these solutions as far as possible reveals the hypothetical possibility of exiting the black hole into a different spacetime with the black hole acting as a wormhole.[51] The possibility of traveling to another universe is however only theoretical, since any perturbation will destroy this possibility.[52] It also appears to be possible to follow closed timelike curves (going back to one's own past) around the Kerr singularity, which lead to problems with causality like the grandfather paradox.[53] It is expected that none of these peculiar effects would survive in a proper quantum mechanical treatment of rotating and charged black holes.[54]

    The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory.[55] This breakdown, however, is expected; it occurs in a situation where quantum mechanical effects should describe these actions due to the extremely high density and therefore particle interactions. To date it has not been possible to combine quantum and gravitational effects into a single theory. It is generally expected that a theory of quantum gravity will feature black holes without singularities.[56][57]
    Photon sphere
    Main article: Photon sphere

    The 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 the Schwarzschild radius. The orbits are dynamically unstable, hence any small perturbation (such as a particle of infalling matter) will grow over time, either setting it on an outward trajectory escaping the black hole or on an inward spiral eventually crossing the event horizon.

    While light can still escape from inside the photon sphere, any light that crosses the photon sphere on an inbound trajectory will be captured by the black hole. Hence any light reaching an outside observer from inside the photon sphere must have been emitted by objects inside the photon sphere but still outside of the event horizon.

    Other compact objects, such as neutron stars, can also have photon spheres.[58] This follows from the fact that the gravitational field of an object does not depend on its actual size, hence any object that is smaller than 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to its mass will indeed have a photon sphere.
    Ergosphere
    Main article: Ergosphere
    The ergosphere is an oblate spheroid region outside of the event horizon, where objects cannot remain stationary.

    Rotating black holes are surrounded by a region of spacetime in which it is impossible to stand still, called the ergosphere. This is the result of a process known as frame-dragging; general relativity predicts that any rotating mass will tend to slightly "drag" along the spacetime immediately surrounding it. Any object near the rotating mass will tend to start moving in the direction of rotation. For a rotating black hole this effect becomes so strong near the event horizon that an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in the opposite direction to just stand still.[59]

    The ergosphere of a black hole is bounded by the (outer) event horizon on the inside and an oblate spheroid, which coincides with the event horizon at the poles and is noticeably wider around the equator. The outer boundary is sometimes called the ergosurface.

    Objects and radiation can escape normally from the ergosphere. Through the Penrose process, objects can emerge from the ergosphere with more energy than they entered. This energy is taken from the rotational energy of the black hole causing it to slow down.[60]
    Formation and evolution

    Considering the exotic nature of black holes, it may be natural to question if such bizarre objects could exist in nature or to suggest that they are merely pathological solutions to Einstein's equations. Einstein himself wrongly thought that black holes would not form, because he held that the angular momentum of collapsing particles would stabilize their motion at some radius.[61] This led the general relativity community to dismiss all results to the contrary for many years. However, a minority of relativists continued to contend that black holes were physical objects,[62] and by the end of the 1960s, they had persuaded the majority of researchers in the field that there is no obstacle to forming an event horizon.

    Once an event horizon forms, Roger Penrose proved that a singularity will form somewhere inside it.[23] Shortly afterwards, Stephen Hawking showed that many cosmological solutions describing the Big Bang have singularities without scalar fields or other exotic matter (see Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems). The Kerr solution, the no-hair theorem and the laws of black hole thermodynamics showed that the physical properties of black holes were simple and comprehensible, making them respectable subjects for research.[63] The primary formation process for black holes is expected to be the gravitational collapse of heavy objects such as stars, but there are also more exotic processes that can lead to the production of black holes.
    Gravitational collapse
    Main article: Gravitational collapse

    Gravitational collapse occurs when an object's internal pressure is insufficient to resist the object's own gravity. For stars this usually occurs either because a star has too little "fuel" left to maintain its temperature through stellar nucleosynthesis, or because a star which would have been stable receives 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).[64]

    The collapse may be stopped by the degeneracy pressure of the star's cons uents, condensing the matter in an exotic denser state. The result is one of the various 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.[64]

    If the mass of the remnant exceeds about 3–4 solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit)—either because the original star was very heavy or because the remnant collected additional mass through accretion of matter—even the degeneracy pressure of neutrons is insufficient to stop the collapse. After this, no known mechanism (except possibly quark degeneracy pressure, see quark star) is powerful enough to stop the collapse and the object will inevitably collapse to a black hole.[64]

    This gravitational collapse of heavy stars is assumed to be responsible for the formation of stellar mass black holes. Star formation in the young universe may have resulted in very heavy stars, which upon their collapse would have produced black holes of up to 103 solar masses. These heavy black holes could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of most galaxies.[65]

    While most of the energy released during gravitational collapse is emitted very quickly, an outside observer does not actually see the end of this process. Even though the collapse takes a finite amount of time from the reference frame of infalling matter, a distant observer sees the infalling material slow and halt just above the event horizon, due to gravitational time dilation. Light from the collapsing material takes longer and longer to reach the observer, with the light emitted just before the event horizon forms delayed an infinite amount of time. Thus the external observer never sees the formation of the event horizon; instead, the collapsing material seems to become dimmer and increasingly red-shifted, eventually fading away.[66]
    Primordial black holes in the Big Bang

    Gravitational collapse requires great densities. In the current epoch of the universe these high densities are only found in stars, but in the early universe shortly after the big bang densities were much greater, possibly allowing for the creation of black holes. The high density alone is not enough to allow the formation of black holes since a uniform mass distribution will not allow the mass to bunch up. In order for primordial black holes to form in such a dense medium, there must be initial density perturbations which can then grow under their own gravity. Different models for the early universe vary widely in their predictions of the size of these perturbations. Various models predict the creation of black holes, ranging from a Planck mass to hundreds of thousands of solar masses.[67] Primordial black holes could thus account for the creation of any type of black hole.
    High-energy collisions
    A simulated event in the CMS detector, a collision in which a micro black hole may be created.

    Gravitational collapse is not the only process that could create black holes. In principle, black holes could also be created in high-energy collisions that create sufficient density. However, to date, no such events have ever been detected either directly or indirectly as a deficiency of the mass balance in particle accelerator experiments.[68] This suggests that there must be a lower limit for the mass of black holes. Theoretically, this boundary is expected to lie around the Planck mass (mP = √ħc/G ≈ 1.2×1019 GeV/c2 ≈ 2.2×10−8 kg), where quantum effects are expected to make the theory of general relativity break down completely.[69] This would put the creation of black holes firmly out of reach of any high energy process occurring on or near the Earth. Certain developments in quantum gravity however suggest that the Planck mass could be much lower: some braneworld scenarios for example put it much lower, maybe even as low as 1 TeV/c2[70] This would make it possible for micro black holes to be created in the high energy collisions occurring when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, or possibly in the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These theories are however very speculative, and the creation of black holes in these processes is deemed unlikely by many specialists.[71] Even if such micro black holes should be formed in these collisions, it is expected that they would evaporate in about 10−25 seconds, posing no threat to Earth[72]
    Growth

    Once a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing additional matter. Any black hole will continually absorb gas and interstellar dust from its direct surroundings and omnipresent cosmic background radiation. This is the primary process through which supermassive black holes seem to have grown.[65] A similar process has been suggested for the formation of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters.[73]

    Another possibility is for a black hole to merge with other objects such as stars or even other black holes. This is thought to have been important especially for the early development of supermassive black holes, which are thought to have formed from the coagulation of many smaller objects.[65] The process has also been proposed as the origin of some intermediate-mass black holes.[74][75]
    Evaporation
    Main article: Hawking radiation

    In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes are not entirely black but emit small amounts of thermal radiation.[26] He got this result by applying quantum field theory in a static black hole background. The result of his calculations is that a black hole should emit particles in a perfect black body spectrum. This effect has become known as Hawking radiation. Since Hawking's result, many others have verified the effect through various methods.[76] If his theory of black hole radiation is correct, then black holes are expected to emit a thermal spectrum of radiation, and thereby lose mass, because according to the theory of relativity mass is just highly condensed energy (E = mc2).[26] Black holes will shrink and evaporate over time. The temperature of this spectrum (Hawking temperature) is proportional to the surface gravity of the black hole, which for a Schwarzschild black hole is inversely proportional to the mass. Large black holes, therefore, emit less radiation than small black holes.

    A stellar black hole of one solar mass has a Hawking temperature of about 100 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background. Stellar mass (and larger) black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and will thus grow instead of shrink. To have a Hawking temperature larger than 2.7 K (and be able to evaporate), a black hole needs to be lighter than the Moon (and therefore a diameter of less than a tenth of a millimeter).[77]

    On the other hand, if a black hole is very small the radiation effects are expected to become very strong. Even a black hole that is heavy compared to a human would evaporate in an instant. A black hole the weight of a car (~10−24 m) would only take a nanosecond to evaporate, during which time it would briefly have a luminosity more than 200 times that of the sun. Lighter black holes are expected to evaporate even faster, for example a black hole of mass 1 TeV/c2 would take less than 10−88 seconds to evaporate completely. Of course, for such a small black hole quantum gravitation effects are expected to play an important role and could even – although current developments in quantum gravity do not indicate so[78] – hypothetically make such a small black hole stable.[79]
    Observational evidence

    By their very nature, black holes do not directly emit any signals other than the hypothetical Hawking radiation; since the Hawking radiation for an astrophysical black hole is predicted to be very weak, this makes it impossible to directly detect astrophysical black holes from the Earth. A possible exception to the Hawking radiation being weak is the last stage of the evaporation of light (primordial) black holes; searches for such flashes in the past has proven unsuccessful and provides stringent limits on the possibility of existence of light primordial black holes.[80] NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 will continue the search for these flashes.[81]

    Astrophysicists searching for black holes thus have to rely on indirect observations. A black hole's existence can sometimes be inferred by observing its gravitational interactions with its surroundings.
    Accretion of matter
    See also: Accretion disc
    Formation of extragalactic jets from a black hole's accretion disk

    Due to conservation of angular momentum, gas falling into the gravitational well created by a massive object will typically form a disc-like structure around the object. Friction within the disc causes angular momentum to be transported outward allowing matter to fall further inward releasing potential energy and increasing the temperature of the gas.[82] In the case of compact objects such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes, the gas in the inner regions becomes so hot that it will emit vast amounts of radiation (mainly X-rays), which may be detected by telescopes. This process of accretion is one of the most efficient energy producing process known; up to 40% of the rest mass of the accreted material can be emitted in radiation.[82] (In nuclear fusion only about 0.7% of the rest mass will be emitted as energy.) In many cases, accretion discs are accompanied by relativistic jets emitted along the poles, which carry away much of the energy. The mechanism for the creation of these jets is currently not well understood.

    As such many of the universe's more energetic phenomena have been attributed to the accretion of matter on black holes. In particular, active galactic nuclei and quasars are thought to be the accretion discs of supermassive black holes.[83] Similarly, X-ray binaries are thought to be binary star systems in which one of the two stars is a compact object accreting matter from its companion.[83] It has also been suggested that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the accretion disks of intermediate-mass black holes.[84]
    X-ray binaries
    See also: X-ray binary

    X-ray binaries are binary star systems that are luminous in the X-ray part of the spectrum. These X-ray emissions are generally thought to be caused by one of the component stars being a compact object accreting matter from the other (regular) star. The presence of an ordinary star in such a system provides a unique opportunity for studying the central object and determining if it might be a black hole.
    Artist impression of a binary system with an accretion disk around a compact object being fed by material from the companion star.

    If such a system emits signals that can be directly traced back to the compact object, it cannot be a black hole. The absence of such a signal does, however, not exclude the possibility that the compact object is a neutron star. By studying the companion star it is often possible to obtain the orbital parameters of the system and obtain an estimate for the mass of the compact object. If this is much larger than the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (that is, the maximum mass a neutron star can have before collapsing) then the object cannot be a neutron star and is generally expected to be a black hole.[83]

    The first strong candidate for a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in this way by Charles Thomas Bolton[85] and Webster and Murdin[86] in 1972.[87][88] Some doubt, however, remained due to the uncertainties resultant from the companion star being much heavier than the candidate black hole.[83] Currently, better candidates for black holes are found in a class of X-ray binaries called soft X-ray transients.[83] In this class of system the companion star is relatively low mass allowing for more accurate estimates in the black hole mass. Moreover, these systems are only active in X-ray for several months once every 10–50 years. During the period of low X-ray emission (called quiescence), the accretion disc is extremely faint allowing for detailed observation of the companion star during this period. One of the best such candidates is V404 Cyg.
    Quiescence and advection-dominated accretion flow

    The faintness of the accretion disc during quiescence is thought to be caused by the flow entering a mode called an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF). In this mode, almost all the energy generated by friction in the disc is swept along with the flow instead of radiated away. If this model is correct, then it forms strong qualitative evidence for the presence of an event horizon.[89] Because, if the object at the center of the disc had a solid surface, it would emit large amounts of radiation as the highly energetic gas hits the surface, an effect that is observed for neutron stars in a similar state.[82]
    Quasi-periodic oscillations
    See also: Quasi-periodic oscillations

    The X-ray emissions from accretion disks sometimes exhibit a flickering around certain frequencies. These signals are called quasi-periodic oscillations and are thought to be caused by material moving along the inner edge of the accretion disk (the innermost stable circular orbit). As such their frequency is linked to the mass of the compact object. They can thus be used as an alternative way to determine the mass of potential black holes.[90]
    Gamma ray bursts

    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[91] or by collisions between neutron stars,[92] and both types of event involve sufficient mass and pressure to produce black holes. It appears that a collision between a neutron star and a black hole can also cause a GRB,[93] 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[94] so the black holes associated with them are billions of years old.
    Galactic nuclei
    See also: Active galactic nucleus
    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.

    It is now widely accepted that the center of every or at least nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.[95] The close observational correlation between the mass of this hole and the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy's bulge, known as the M-sigma relation, strongly suggests a connection between the formation of the black hole and the galaxy itself. [96]

    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.[97][98] However, theoretical and observational studies have shown that the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in these galaxies may contain supermassive black holes.[97][98] 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.[98]

    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.[99]

    Currently, the best evidence for a supermassive black hole comes from studying the proper motion of stars near the center of our own Milky Way.[100] Since 1995 astronomers have tracked the motion of 90 stars in a region called Sagittarius A*. By fitting their motion to Keplerian orbits they were able to infer in 1998 that 2.6 million solar masses must be contained in a volume with a radius of 0.02 lightyears.[101] Since then one of the stars—called S2—has completed a full orbit. From the orbital data they were able to place better constraints on the mass and size of the object causing the orbital motion of stars in the Sagittarius A* region, finding that there is a spherical mass of 4.3 million solar masses contained within a radius of less than 0.002 lightyears.[100] While this is more than 3000 times the Schwarzschild radius corresponding to that mass, it is at least consistent with the central object being a supermassive black hole, and no "realistic cluster [of stars] is physically tenable."[101]
    Gravitational lensing
    Further information: Gravitational lens

    The deformation of spacetime around a massive object causes light rays to be deflected much like light passing through an optic lens. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing. Observations have been made of weak gravitational lensing, in which photons are deflected by only a few arcseconds. However, it has never been directly observed for a black hole.[102] One possibility for observing gravitational lensing by a black hole would be to observe stars in orbit around the black hole. There are several candidates for such an observation in orbit around Sagittarius A*.[102]
    Alternatives

    The evidence for stellar black holes strongly relies on the existence of an upper limit for the mass of a neutron star. The size of this limit heavily depends on the assumptions made about the properties of dense matter. New exotic phases of matter could push up this bound.[83] A phase of free quarks at high density might allow the existence of dense quark stars,[103] and some supersymmetric models predict the existence of Q stars.[104] Some extensions of the standard model posit the existence of preons as fundamental building blocks of quarks and leptons which could hypothetically form preon stars.[105] These hypothetical models could potentially explain a number of observations of stellar black hole candidates. However, it can be shown from general arguments in general relativity that any such object will have a maximum mass.[83]

    Since the average density of a black hole inside its Schwarzschild radius is inversely proportional to the square of its mass, supermassive black holes are much less dense than stellar black holes (the average density of a large supermassive black hole is comparable to that of water).[83] Consequently, the physics of matter forming a supermassive black hole is much better understood and the possible alternative explanations for supermassive black hole observations are much more mundane. For example, a supermassive black hole could be modelled by a large cluster of very dark objects. However, typically such alternatives are not stable enough to explain the supermassive black hole candidates.[83]

    The evidence for stellar and supermassive black holes implies that in order for black holes not to form, general relativity must fail as a theory of gravity, perhaps due to the onset of quantum mechanical corrections. A much anticipated feature of a theory of quantum gravity is that it will not feature singularities or event horizons (and thus no black holes).[106] In recent years, much attention has been drawn by the fuzzball model in string theory. Based on calculations in specific situations in string theory, the proposal suggest that generically the individual states of a black hole solution do not have an event horizon or singularity (and can thus not really be considered to be a black hole), but that for a distant observer the statistical average of such states does appear just like an ordinary black hole in general relativity.[107]
    Open questions
    Entropy and thermodynamics
    Further information: Black hole thermodynamics
    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.

    In 1971, Stephen Hawking showed under general conditions[Note 1] that the total area of the event horizons of any collection of classical black holes can never decrease, even if they collide and merge.[108] This result, now known as the second law of black hole mechanics, is remarkably similar to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of a system can never decrease. As with classical objects at absolute zero temperature, it was assumed that black holes had zero entropy. If this were the case, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated by entropy-laden matter 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.[109]

    The link with the laws of thermodynamics was further strengthened by Hawking's discovery that quantum field theory predicts that a black hole radiates blackbody radiation at a constant temperature. This seemingly causes a violation of the second law of black hole mechanics, since the radiation will carry away energy from the black hole causing it to shrink. The radiation, however also carries away entropy, and it can be proven under general assumptions that the sum of the entropy of the matter surrounding the black hole and one quarter of the area of the horizon as measured in Planck units is in fact always increasing. This allows the formulation of the first law of black hole mechanics as an analogue of the first law of thermodynamics, with the mass acting as energy, the surface gravity as temperature and the area as entropy.[109]

    One puzzling feature is that the entropy of a black hole scales with its area rather than with its volume, since entropy is normally an extensive quan y that scales linearly with the volume of the system. This odd property led 't Hooft and Susskind to propose the holographic principle, which suggests that anything that happens in volume of spacetime can be described by data on the boundary of that volume.[110]

    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.). Without a satisfactory theory of quantum gravity, one cannot perform such a computation for black holes. Some progress has been made in various approaches to quantum gravity. In 1995, Strominger and Vafa showed that counting the microstates of a specific supersymmetric black hole in string theory reproduced the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy.[111] Since then, similar results have been reported for different black holes both in string theory and in other approaches to quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity.[112]
    Black hole unitarity
    Main article: Black hole information paradox
    Unsolved problems in physics Is physical information lost in black holes? Question mark2.svg

    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 (T-symmetry). Liouville's theorem dictates conservation of phase space volume, which can be thought of as "conservation of information", so there is some problem even in classical physics. In quantum mechanics, this corresponds to a vital property called unitarity, which has to do with the conservation of probability (it can also be thought of as a conservation of quantum phase space volume as expressed by the density matrix).[113]
    See also

    * Black holes in fiction
    * Black string
    * Kugelblitz (astrophysics)
    * List of black holes
    * Susskind-Hawking battle


    He1523a.jpg Star portal

    * Timeline of black hole physics
    * White hole
    * Wormhole

    Notes

    1. ^ In particular, he assumed that all matter satisfies the weak energy condition.

    References

    1. ^ Davies, P. C. W. (1978). "Thermodynamics of Black Holes". Rep. Prog. Phys. 41: 1313–1355. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/41/8/004. http://cosmos.asu.edu/publications/p...Holes%2034.pdf.
    2. ^ Mic , J. (1784). "On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude, &c. of the Fixed Stars, in Consequence of the Diminution of the Velocity of Their Light, in Case Such a Diminution Should be Found to Take Place in any of Them, and Such Other Data Should be Procured from Observations, as Would be Farther Necessary for That Purpose". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (London) (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 74) 74: 35–57. http://www.jstor.org/pss/106576.
    3. ^ "Dark Stars (1783)". Thinkquest. 1999. http://library.thinkquest.org/25715/....htm#darkstars. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
    4. ^ Laplace; see Israel, Werner (1987), "Dark stars: the evolution of an idea", in Hawking, Stephen W. & Israel, Werner, 300 Years of Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, Sec. 7.4
    5. ^ Thorne (1994:123–124).
    6. ^ a b Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 189–196. and Schwarzschild, Karl (1916). "Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Kugel aus inkompressibler Flüssigkeit nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. D. Wiss.: 424–434.
    7. ^ Droste, J. (1915). "On the field of a single centre in Einstein's theory of gravitation". Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen Proceedings 17 (3): 998–1011.
    8. ^ 't Hooft, G. (2009). Introduction to the Theory of Black Holes. pp. 47–48. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectures/blackholes/BH_lecturenotes.pdf.
    9. ^ Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    10. ^ Harpaz, Amos (1994). Stellar evolution. A K Peters, Ltd. p. 105. ISBN 1-568-81012-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4VEZv8oo0C. , Extract of page 105
    11. ^ Oppenheimer, J. R. and Volkoff, G. M. (1939-01-03). "On Massive Neutron Cores". Physical Review 55 (4): 374–381. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.55.374. http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v55/i4/p374_1.
    12. ^ Ruffini, Remo and Wheeler, John A. (January 1971). "Introducing the black hole". Physics Today: 30–41. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/1...Phys_Today.pdf.
    13. ^ Finkelstein, David (1958). "Past-Future Asymmetry of the Gravitational Field of a Point Particle". Phys. Rev. 110: 965–967. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.110.965.
    14. ^ Kruskal, M. (1960). "Maximal Extension of Schwarzschild Metric". Physical Review 119: 1743. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.119.1743. edit
    15. ^ Hewish, Antony; Bell, S. J.; Pilkington, J. D. H.; Scott, P. F.; Collins, R. A. (1968). "Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source". Nature 217: 709–713. doi:10.1038/217709a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../235037a0.html. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    16. ^ Pilkington, J D H; Hewish, A.; Bell, S. J.; Cole, T. W. (1968). "Observations of some further Pulsed Radio Sources". Nature 218: 126–129. doi:10.1038/218126a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...f/218126a0.pdf. Retrieved 2007-07-06.
    17. ^ Newman, E. T.; Couch, E.; Chinnapared, K.; Exton, A.; Prakash, A.; Torrence, R. (1965). "Metric of a Rotating, Charged Mass". Journal of Mathematical Physics 6: 918. doi:10.1063/1.1704351. edit
    18. ^ Israel, W. (1967). "Event Horizons in Static Vacuum Space-Times". Physical Review 164: 1776. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.164.1776. edit
    19. ^ Carter, B. (1971). "Axisymmetric Black Hole Has Only Two Degrees of Freedom". Physical Review Letters 26: 331. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.26.331. edit
    20. ^ Carter, B. (1977). "The vacuum black hole uniqueness theorem and its conceivable generalisations.". Proceedings of the 1st Marcel Grossmann meeting on general relativity. pp. 243–254.
    21. ^ Robinson, D. (1975). "Uniqueness of the Kerr Black Hole". Physical Review Letters 34: 905. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.34.905. edit
    22. ^ a b Heusler, M. (1998). "Stationary Black Holes: Uniqueness and Beyond". Living Rev. Relativity 1 (6). http://www.livingreviews.org/Article...1998-6heusler/. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    23. ^ a b Penrose, R. (1965). "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities". Physical Review Letters 14: 57. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.57. edit
    24. ^ Ford, L. H. (2003). International Journal of Theoretical Physics 42: 1219–1227. doi:10.1023/A:1025754515197. edit
    25. ^ Bardeen, J.M.; Carter, B.; Hawking, S.W. (1973). "The four laws of black hole mechanics". Comm. Math. Phys. 31 (2): 161–170.. doi:10.1007/BF01645742. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.cmp/1103858973.
    26. ^ a b c Hawking, S.W. (1974). "Black hole explosions?". Nature 248: 30–31. doi:10.1038/248030a0. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../248030a0.html.
    27. ^ Michael Quinion. "Black Hole". World Wide Words. http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-bla1.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-17.
    28. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 253
    29. ^ Black Holes, The Membrane Paradigm. ISBN 9780300037708.
    30. ^ Anderson, Warren G. (1996). "The Black Hole Information Loss Problem". http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...info_loss.html. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
    31. ^ John Preskill(1994)"Black holes and information: A crisis in quantum physics"
    32. ^ Daniel Carmody(2008)"The Fate of Quantum Information in a Black Hole"
    33. ^ "Garrett Birkhoff’s Theorem". http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~whittyr/MathSci/TheoremOfTheDay/CombinatorialTheory/Birkhoff/TotDBirkhoff.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    34. ^ "Black Holes do not suck!". 2006-02-17. http://astro.airynothing.com/2006/02..._not_suck.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    35. ^ For a review see Wald, Robert. M. (1997). "Gravitational Collapse and Cosmic Censorship". http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9710068.
    36. ^ For a discussion of these numerical simulations see Berger, Beverly K. (2002). "Numerical Approaches to Spacetime Singularities". Living Rev. Relativity 5. http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2002-1. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
    37. ^ McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Shafee, Rebecca; Narayan, Ramesh; Remillard, Ronald A.; Davis, Shane W.; Li, Li-Xin (2006). "The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105". Astrophys.J. 652: 518–539. doi:10.1086/508457. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606076.
    38. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 179
    39. ^ "Anatomy of a Black Hole". http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia...kHoleAnat.html. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    40. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 217
    41. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 218
    42. ^ "Inside a black hole". http://nrumiano.free.fr/Estars/int_bh.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    43. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 222
    44. ^ "Black Holes". Archived from the original on September 13, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060913170030/http://www.physics.eku.edu/Yoder/l16_BH.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    45. ^ "Physical nature of the event horizon". http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/pramana/51/693-698.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
    46. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 205
    47. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 264–265
    48. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 252
    49. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 237 Exercise 3.
    50. ^ Wheeler 2007, p. 182
    51. ^ Carroll 2004, pp. 257–259 and 265–266
    52. ^ Droz, S.; Israel, W.; Morsink, S.M. (1996). "Black holes: the inside story". Physics World 9: 34–37.
    53. ^ Carroll 2004, p. 266
    54. ^ Poisson, E.; Israel, W. (1990). "Internal structure of black holes". Physical Review D 41: 1796. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.41.1796. edit
    55. ^ Giamb�o, Roberto. "The geometry of gravitational collapse". http://www.mat.unb.br/~matcont/28_8.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    56. ^ "Black Holes and Quantum Gravity". http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_hawk.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    57. ^ "Ask an Astrophysicist : Quantum Gravity and Black Holes". http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...s/980420b.html. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
    58. ^ Nemiroff, Robert J. (1993). "Visual distortions near a neutron star and black hole". American Journal of Physics 61: 619. doi:10.1119/1.17224.
    59. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.6
    60. ^ Carroll 2004, Ch. 6.7
    61. ^ Einstein, A. (1939). "On A Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses". Annals of Mathematics (The Annals of Mathematics, Vol. 40, No. 4) 40 (4): 922–936. doi:10.2307/1968902. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1968902.
    62. ^ "Discovering the Kerr and Kerr-Schild metrics". To appear in "The Kerr Spacetime", Eds D.L. Wiltshire, M. Visser and S.M. Scott, Cambridge Univ. Press. Roy P. Kerr. http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0706.1109. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
    63. ^ Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, R. (January 1970). "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology". Proceedings of the Royal Society A 314 (1519): 529–548. doi:10.1098/rspa.1970.0021. http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.o...9/529.abstract.
    64. ^ a b c Carroll 2004, Section 5.8
    65. ^ a b c Rees, M.J.; Volonteri, M. (2007). "Massive black holes: formation and evolution". In Karas, V.; Matt, G.. Black Holes from Stars to Galaxies – Across the Range of Masses. Cambridge University Press. pp. 51–58. arXiv:astro-ph/0701512.
    66. ^ Penrose, R. (2002). General Relativity and Gravitation 34: 1141–1165. doi:10.1023/A:1016578408204. edit
    67. ^ Carr, B. J. (2005). "Primordial Black Holes: Do They Exist and Are They Useful?". arΧiv:astro-ph/0511743v1 [astro-ph].
    68. ^ Giddings, Steven B.; Thomas, Scott (2002). "High energy colliders as black hole factories: The end of short distance physics". Physical Review D 65: 056010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.65.056010. arXiv:hep-ph/0106219v4.
    69. ^ Harada, T. (2006). "Is there a black hole minimum mass?". Physical Review D 74: 084004. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.74.084004. edit
    70. ^ Arkani–Hamed, N (1998). "The hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter". Physics Letters B 429: 263. doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(98)00466-3. arXiv:9803315v1.
    71. ^ LHC Safety Assessment Group. "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions". CERN. http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf.
    72. ^ Cavaglià, Marco (29 January 2007). "Particle accelerators as black hole factories?". Einstein-Online. Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Ins ute).
    73. ^ Vesperini, E.; McMillan, S.L.W.; D'Ercole, A.; D'Antona, F. (2010). "Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Early Globular Clusters". arΧiv:1003.3470 [astro-ph.GA].
    74. ^ Zwart, S.; Baumgardt, H.; Hut, P.; Makino, J.; McMillan, S. (2004). "Formation of massive black holes through runaway collisions in dense young star clusters". Nature 428 (6984): 724–726. doi:10.1038/nature02448. PMID 15085124. edit
    75. ^ O’leary, R. M.; Rasio, F. A.; Fregeau, J. M.; Ivanova, N.; O’shaughnessy, R. (2006). "Binary Mergers and Growth of Black Holes in Dense Star Clusters". The Astrophysical Journal 637: 937. doi:10.1086/498446. edit
    76. ^ Page, Don N (2005). "Hawking radiation and black hole thermodynamics". New Journal of Physics 7: 203. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/203. arXiv:hep-th/0409024v3.
    77. ^ "Einstein online". Max Planck Ins ute for Gravitational Physics. 2010. http://www.einstein-online.info/elem...et_language=en. Retrieved {{subst:today}}.
    78. ^ Giddings, S. B.; Mangano, M. L. (2008). "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes". Physical Review D 78: 035009. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.78.035009. edit
    79. ^ Peskin, M. (2008). "The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider?". Physics 1: 14–20. doi:10.1103/Physics.1.14. edit
    80. ^ Fichtel, C.E.; Bertsch, D.L.; Dingus, B.L.; Esposito, J.A.; Hartman, R.C.; Hunter, S.D.; Kanbach, G.;; Kniffen, D.A. et al. (1994). "Search of the energetic gamma-ray experiment telescope (EGRET) data for high-energy gamma-ray microsecond bursts". Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 434 (2): 557–559. doi:10.1086/174758. ISSN 0004-637X.
    81. ^ Naeye, Robert. Testing Fundamental Physics. NASA.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GL...l_physics.html. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
    82. ^ a b c McClintock, Jeffrey E.; Remillard, Ronald A. (2006). "Black Hole Binaries". In Lewin, Walter; van der Klis, Michiel. Compact Stellar X-ray Sources. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521826594. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306213. section 4.1.5.
    83. ^ a b c d e f g h i Celotti, A.; Miller, J.C.; Sciama, D.W. (1999). "Astrophysical evidence for the existence of black holes". Class. Quant. Grav. 16. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9912186
    84. ^ Winter, Lisa M.; Mushotzky, Richard F.; Reynolds, Christopher S. (2006). "XMM‐Newton Archival Study of the Ultraluminous X‐Ray Population in Nearby Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 649: 730. doi:10.1086/506579. arXiv:astro-ph/0512480v2.
    85. ^ Bolton, C. T. (1972). "Identification of Cygnus X-1 with HDE 226868". Nature 235: 271–273. doi:10.1038/235271b0.
    86. ^ Webster, B.L; Murdin, P. (1972). "Cygnus X-1—a Spectroscopic Binary with a Heavy Companion ?". Nature 235: 37–38. doi:10.1038/235037a0.
    87. ^ Rolston, Bruce (10 November 1997). The First Black Hole. University of Toronto. http://news.utoronto.ca/bin/bulletin/nov10_97/art4.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    88. ^ Shipman, H. L. (1 January 1975). "The implausible history of triple star models for Cygnus X-1 Evidence for a black hole". Astrophysical Letters 16 (1): 9–12. doi:10.1016/S0304-8853(99)00384-4. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975ApL....16....9S. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
    89. ^ Narayan, R.; McClintock, J. (2008). "Advection-dominated accretion and the black hole event horizon". New Astronomy Reviews 51: 733. doi:10.1016/j.newar.2008.03.002. edit
    90. ^ Goddard Space Flight Center (2008-04-01). "NASA scientists identify smallest known black hole". Press release. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-nsi040108.php. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
    91. ^ Bloom, J. S.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Djorgovski, S. G. (2002). "The Observed Offset Distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Their Host Galaxies: A Robust Clue to the Nature of the Progenitors". The Astronomical Journal 123: 1111. doi:10.1086/338893. arXiv:0010176.
    92. ^ Blinnikov, S (1984). "Exploding Neutron Stars in Close Binaries". Soviet Astronomy Letters 10: 177. Bibcode: 1984SvAL...10..177B.
    93. ^ Lattimer, J. M.; Schramm, D. N. (1976). "The tidal disruption of neutron stars by black holes in close binaries". The Astrophysical Journal 210: 549. doi:10.1086/154860.
    94. ^ Paczynski, Bohdan (1995). "How Far Away Are Gamma-Ray Bursters?". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107: 1167. doi:10.1086/133674. arXiv:astro-ph/9505096.
    95. ^ King, Andrew (2003-09-15). "Black Holes, Galaxy Formation, and the MBH-σ Relation". The Astrophysical Journal (The American Astronomical Society.): 596:L27–L29. http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1538-4...7559.text.html.
    96. ^ Ferrarese, Laura; Merritt, David (August 2000). "A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and their Host Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) 539 (1): L9–L12. doi:10.1086/312838. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000ApJ...539L...9F
    97. ^ a b J. H. Krolik (1999). Active Galactic Nuclei. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01151-6. [page needed]
    98. ^ a b c L. S. Sparke, J. S. Gallagher III (2000). Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59704-4. [page needed]
    99. ^ J. Kormendy, D. Richstone (1995). "Inward Bound---The Search For Supermassive Black Holes In Galactic Nuclei". Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics 33: 581–624. doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.33.090195.003053. Bibcode: 1995ARA&A..33..581K.
    100. ^ a b Gillessen, S.; Eisenhauer, F.; Trippe, S.; Alexander, T.; Genzel, R.; Martins, F.; Ott, T. (2009). "Monitoring Stellar Orbits Around the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center". Astrophysical Journal 692: 1075–1109. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/692/2/1075. arXiv:0810.4674. edit
    101. ^ a b Ghez, A. M.; Klein, B. L.; Morris, M.; Becklin, E. E. (1998). "High Proper‐Motion Stars in the Vicinity of Sagittarius A*: Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy". The Astrophysical Journal 509: 678. doi:10.1086/306528. edit
    102. ^ a b Bozza, Valerio (2009). "Gravitational Lensing by Black Holes". arΧiv:0911.2187 [gr-qc].
    103. ^ Kovacs; Cheng; Harko (2009). "Can stellar mass black holes be quark stars?". arΧiv:0908.2672 [astro-ph.HE].
    104. ^ Alexander Kusenko (2006). "Properties and signatures of supersymmetric Q-balls". arΧiv:hep-ph/0612159 [hep-ph].
    105. ^ Hansson, J.; Sandin, F. (2005). "Preon stars: a new class of cosmic compact objects". Physics Letters B 616: 1. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2005.04.034. edit
    106. ^ Kiefer, C. (2006). "Quantum gravity: general introduction and recent developments". Annalen der Physik 15: 129–148. doi:10.1002/andp.200510175. edit
    107. ^ Skenderis, K.; Taylor, M. (2008). "The fuzzball proposal for black holes". Physics Reports 467: 117. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2008.08.001. edit
    108. ^ Hawking, Stephen (1998). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. [page needed]
    109. ^ a b Wald (1999). "The Thermodynamics of Black Holes". arΧiv:gr-qc/9912119v2 [gr-qc].
    110. ^ Gerard 't Hooft (2000). "The Holographic Principle". arΧiv:hep-th/0003004 [hep-th].
    111. ^ Strominger, A.; Vafa, C. (1996). "Microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy". Physics Letters B 379: 99. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(96)00345-0. edit
    112. ^ Carlip, S. (2009). "Black Hole Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics". Lect.Notes Phys. 769: 89–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88460-6_3. edit
    113. ^ Hawking, Stephen. "Does God Play Dice?". http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/...liclectures/64. Retrieved 2009-03-14.

    Further reading

    Popular reading

    * Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Black Holes in Space-Time. Watts Franklin. ISBN 0-531-12524-6. .
    * Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, Inc. ISBN 0-553-38016-8. .
    * Hawking, Stephen; Penrose, Roger (1996). The Nature of Space and Time. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03791-2. http://books.google.com/?id=LstaQTXP65cC. .
    * 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. .
    * Stern, B. (2008). "Blackhole". http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Blackhole_%28Stern%29. , poem.
    * Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-31276-3. .
    * Wheeler, J. Craig (2007). Cosmic Catastrophes (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85714-7.

    University textbooks and monographs

    * Carroll, Sean M. (2004). Spacetime and Geometry. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-8732-3. , the lecture notes on which the book was based are available for free from Sean Carroll's website.
    * Carter, B. (1973). "Black hole equilibrium states". In DeWitt, B.S.; DeWitt, C.. Black Holes. .
    * Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1999). Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850370-9. .
    * Frolov, V.P.; Novikov, I.D. (1998). Black hole physics. .
    * Hawking, S.W.; Ellis, G.F.R. (1973). Large Scale Structure of space time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521099064. http://books.google.com/?id=QagG_KI7Ll8C. .
    * 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. .

    Review papers

    * Detweiler, S. (1981). "Resource letter BH-1: Black holes". American Journal of Physics 49 (5, pp): 394–400. doi:10.1119/1.12686.
    * Gallo, E.; Marolf, D. (2009). "Resource Letter BH-2: Black Holes". American Journal of Physics 77: 294. doi:10.1119/1.3056569. arXiv:0806.2316. edit
    * Hughes, Scott A. (2005). "Trust but verify: The case for astrophysical black holes". arΧiv:hep-ph/0511217v2 [hep-ph]. Lecture notes from 2005 SLAC Summer Ins ute.

    External links
    Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Black holes

    * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Singularities and Black Holes" by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich.
    * "Black hole" on Scholarpedia.
    * Black Holes: Gravity's Relentless Pull - Interactive multimedia Web site about the physics and astronomy of black holes from the Space Telescope Science Ins ute
    * FAQ on black holes
    * "Schwarzschild Geometry" on Andrew Hamilton’s website
    * UT Brownsville Group Simulates Spinning Black-Hole Binaries
    * Advanced Mathematics of Black Hole Evaporation

    Videos

    * 16-year long study tracks stars orbiting Milky Way black hole
    * Yale University Video Lecture: Introduction to Black Holes at Google Video.
    * Movie of Black Hole Candidate from Max Planck Ins ute

    News

    * "Black Hole confirmed in Milky Way." Retrieved December 10, 2008
    * Black Hole Research News
    Good read.

    Thanks.

  22. #22
    I needs six for my fix. UnWantedTheory's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Post Count
    2,101
    Mental re ation (MR) is a generalized disorder, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors that appears before adulthood. It has historically been defined as an Intelligence Quotient score under 70.[1] Once focused almost entirely on cognition, the definition now includes both a component relating to mental functioning and one relating to individuals' functional skills in their environment. As a result, a person with a below-average intelligence quotient (BAIQ) may not be considered mentally re ed. Syndromic mental re ation is intellectual deficits associated with other medical and behavioral signs and symptoms. Non-syndromic mental re ation is intellectual deficits that appear without other abnormalities.
    Mental re ation is a subtype of intellectual disability, and that term is now preferred by most advocates in most English-speaking countries as a euphemism for mental re ation. However, intellectual disability is a broader concept, and includes intellectual deficits that are too mild to properly qualify as mental re ation, too specific (as in specific learning disability), or acquired later in life, through acquired brain injuries or neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. Intellectual disabilities may appear at any age.
    Developmental disability is any disability that is due to problems with growth and development. This term encompasses many congenital medical conditions that have no mental or intellectual components, although it, too, is sometimes used as a euphemism for mental re ation.


    Among children, the cause is unknown for one-third to one-half of cases. Down syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome and Fragile X syndrome are the three most common inborn causes. However, doctors have found many other causes. The most common are:
    Diagnosis

    According to the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV),[8] three criteria must be met for a diagnosis of mental re ation: an IQ below 70, significant limitations in two or more areas of adaptive behavior (as measured by an adaptive behavior rating scale, i.e. communication, self-help skills, interpersonal skills, and more), and evidence that the limitations became apparent before the age of 18.
    It is formally diagnosed by professional assessment of intelligence and adaptive behavior.
    IQ below 70

    The first English-language IQ test, the Terman-Binet, was adapted from an instrument used to measure potential to achieve developed by Binet in France. Terman translated the test and employed it as a means to measure intellectual capacity based on oral language, vocabulary, numerical reasoning, memory, motor speed and analysis skills. The mean score on the currently available IQ tests is 100, with a standard deviation of 15 (WAIS/WISC-IV) or 16 (Stanford-Binet). Sub-average intelligence is generally considered to be present when an individual scores two standard deviations below the test mean. Factors other than cognitive ability (depression, anxiety, etc.) can contribute to low IQ scores; it is important for the evaluator to rule them out prior to concluding that measured IQ is "significantly below average".
    The following ranges, based on Standard Scores of intelligence tests, reflect the categories of the American Association of Mental Re ation, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV-TR, and the International Classification of Diseases-10[citation needed]:
    ClassIQProfound mental re ationBelow 20Severe mental re ation20–34Moderate mental re ation35–49Mild mental re ation50–69Borderline intellectual functioning70–84
    Since the diagnosis is not based only on IQ scores, but must also take into consideration a person's adaptive functioning, the diagnosis is not made rigidly. It encompasses intellectual scores, adaptive functioning scores from an adaptive behavior rating scale based on descriptions of known abilities provided by someone familiar with the person, and also the observations of the assessment examiner who is able to find out directly from the person what he or she can understand, communicate, and the like.
    Significant limitations in two or more areas of adaptive behavior



    Adaptive behavior, or adaptive functioning, refers to the skills needed to live independently (or at the minimally acceptable level for age). To assess adaptive behavior, professionals compare the functional abilities of a child to those of other children of similar age. To measure adaptive behavior, professionals use structured interviews, with which they systematically elicit information about persons' functioning in the community from people who know them well. There are many adaptive behavior scales, and accurate assessment of the quality of someone's adaptive behavior requires clinical judgment as well. Certain skills are important to adaptive behavior, such as:
    Evidence that the limitations became apparent in childhood

    This third condition is used to distinguish mental re ation from dementing conditions such as Alzheimer's disease or due to traumatic injuries with attendant brain damage.
    Management

    By most definitions mental re ation is more accurately considered a disability rather than a disease. MR can be distinguished in many ways from mental illness, such as schizophrenia or depression. Currently, there is no "cure" for an established disability, though with appropriate support and teaching, most individuals can learn to do many things.
    There are thousands of agencies around the world that provide assistance for people with developmental disabilities. They include state-run, for-profit, and non-profit, privately run agencies. Within one agency there could be departments that include fully staffed residential homes, day rehabilitation programs that approximate schools, workshops wherein people with disabilities can obtain jobs, programs that assist people with developmental disabilities in obtaining jobs in the community, programs that provide support for people with developmental disabilities who have their own apartments, programs that assist them with raising their children, and many more. There are also many agencies and programs for parents of children with developmental disabilities.
    Beyond that there are specific programs that people with developmental disabilities can take part in wherein they learn basic life skills. These "goals" may take a much longer amount of time for them to accomplish, but the ultimate goal is independence. This may be anything from independence in tooth brushing to an independent residence. People with developmental disabilities learn throughout their lives and can obtain many new skills even late in life with the help of their families, caregivers, clinicians and the people who coordinate the efforts of all of these people.
    Although there is no specific medication for mental re ation, many people with developmental disabilities have further medical complications and may take several medications. For example autisic children with developmental delay may utilize anti-psychotics or mood stabilizers to help with behavior. Use of psychotropic medications such as benzodiazepines in people with mental re ation requires monitoring and vigilance as side effects occur commonly and are often misdiagnosed as behavioural and psychiatric problems.[9]
    History of the condition

    Intellectual disabilities of all kinds have been do ented under a variety of names throughout history. Throughout much of human history, society was unkind to those with any type of disability, and people with intellectual disabilities were commonly viewed as burdens on their families.
    Greek and Roman philosophers, who valued reasoning abilities, disparaged people with intellectual disabilities as barely human.[10] The oldest physiological view of mental re ation is in the writings of Hippocrates in the late fifth century BCE, who believed that it was caused by an imbalance in the four humors in the brain.
    Until the Enlightenment in Europe, care and asylum was provided by families and the church (in monasteries and other religious communities), focusing on the provision of basic physical needs such as food, shelter and clothing. Negative stereotypes were prominent in social at udes of the time. During the Renaissance communities would sometimes send away those who were developmentally delayed in boats. These "ships of fools" would then show up at another harbour, only to be sent away to the next community.
    In the 13th century, England declared people with intellectual disabilities to be incapable of making decisions or managing their affairs.[10] Guardianships were created to take over their financial affairs.
    In the 17th century, Thomas Willis provided the first description of intellectual disabilities as a disease.[10] He believed that it was caused by structural problems in the brain. According to Willis, the anatomical problems could be either an inborn condition or acquired later in life.
    In the 18th and 19th centuries, housing and care moved away from families and towards an asylum model. People were placed by, or removed from, their families (usually in infancy) and housed in large professional ins utions, many of which were self-sufficient through the labor of the residents. Some of these ins utions provided a very basic level of education (such as differentiation between colors and basic word recognition and numeracy), but most continued to focus solely on the provision of basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. Conditions in such ins utions varied widely, but the support provided was generally non-individualized, with aberrant behavior and low levels of economic productivity regarded as a burden to society. Heavy tranquilization and assembly line methods of support were the norm, and the medical model of disability prevailed. Services were provided based on the relative ease to the provider, not based on the needs of the individual.
    In the late 19th century, in response to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Francis Galton proposed selective breeding of humans to reduce intellectual disabilities.[10] Early in the twentieth century the eugenics movement became popular throughout the world. This led to the forced sterilization and prohibition of marriage in most of the developed world and later used by Hitler as rationale for the mass murder of mentally challenged individuals during the holocaust. Eugenics was later abandoned as an evil violation of human rights, and the practice of forced sterilization and prohibition from marriage was discontinued by most of the developed world by the mid 20th century.
    In 1905, Alfred Binet produced the first standardized test for measuring intelligence in children.[10]
    Although ancient Roman law had declared people with mental re ation to be incapable of the deliberate intent to harm that was necessary for a person to commit a crime, during the 1920s, Western society believed they were morally degenerate.[10]
    Ignoring the prevailing at ude, Civitans adopted service to the developmentally disabled as a major organizational emphasis in 1952. Their earliest efforts included workshops for special education teachers and daycamps for disabled children, all at a time when such training and programs were almost nonexistent.[11] The segregation of people with developmental disabilities wasn't widely questioned by academics or policy-makers until the 1969 publication of Wolf Wolfensberger's seminal work "The Origin and Nature of Our Ins utional Models",[12] drawing on some of the ideas proposed by SG Howe 100 years earlier. This book posited that society characterizes people with disabilities as deviant, sub-human and burdens of charity, resulting in the adoption of that "deviant" role. Wolfensberger argued that this dehumanization, and the segregated ins utions that result from it, ignored the potential productive contributions that all people can make to society. He pushed for a shift in policy and practice that recognized the human needs of "re ates" and provided the same basic human rights as for the rest of the population.
    The publication of this book may be regarded as the first move towards the widespread adoption of the social model of disability in regard to these types of disabilities, and was the impetus for the development of government strategies for desegregation. Successful lawsuits against governments and an increasing awareness of human rights and self-advocacy also contributed to this process, resulting in the passing in the U.S. of the Civil Rights of Ins utionalized Persons Act in 1980.
    From the 1960s to the present, most states have moved towards the elimination of segregated ins utions. Normalization and deins utionalization are dominant.[10] Along with the work of Wolfensberger and others including Gunnar and Rosemary Dybwad,[13] a number of scandalous revelations around the horrific conditions within state ins utions created public outrage that led to change to a more community-based method of providing services.[14]
    By the mid-1970s, most governments had committed to de-ins utionalization, and had started preparing for the wholesale movement of people into the general community, in line with the principles of normalization. In most countries, this was essentially complete by the late 1990s, although the debate over whether or not to close ins utions persists in some states, including Massachusetts.[15]
    In the past, lead poisoning and infectious diseases were significant causes of intellectual disabilities. Some causes of mental re ation are decreasing, as medical advances, such as vaccination, increases. Other causes are increasing, perhaps due to rising maternal age, which is associated with several syndromic forms of mental re ation.
    Along with the changes in terminology, and the downward drift in acceptability of the old terms, ins utions of all kinds have had to repeatedly change their names. This affects the names of schools, hospitals, societies, government departments, and academic journals. For example, the Midlands Ins ute of Mental Subnormality became the British Ins ute of Mental Handicap and is now the British Ins ute of Learning Disability. This phenomenon is shared with mental health and motor disabilities, and seen to a lesser degree in sensory disabilities.
    Several traditional terms denoting varying degrees of mental deficiency long predate psychiatry. All terms have been subjected to the euphemism treadmill. In common usage, these terms are simple forms of abuse. They are often encountered in old do ents such as books, academic papers, and census forms (for example, the British census of 1901 has a column heading including the terms imbecile and feeble-minded).
    Negative connotations associated with these numerous terms for mental re ation reflect society's at ude about the condition. There are competing desires among elements of society, some of whom seek neutral medical terms, and others who want to use such terms as weapons with which to abuse people.[16]
    Today, the term "re ed" is slowly being replaced by new words like "special" or "challenged." The term "developmental delay" is popular among caretakers and parents of individuals with mental re ation. Using the word "delay" is preferred over "disability" by many people, because the former term encapsulates the core deficit that creates mental re ation in the first place. Delay suggests that a person has been held back from their potential, rather than someone who has been disabled.[citation needed]
    Usage has changed over the years, and differed from country to country, which needs to be borne in mind when looking at older books and papers. For example, "mental re ation" in some contexts covers the whole field, but previously applied to what is now the mild MR group. "Feeble-minded" used to mean mild MR in the UK, and once applied in the US to the whole field. "Borderline MR" is not currently defined, but the term may be used to apply to people with IQs in the 70s. People with IQs of 70 to 85 used to be eligible for special consideration in the US public education system on grounds of mental re ation.[citation needed]
    • Cretin is the oldest and comes from a dialectal French word for Christian.[17] The implication was that people with significant intellectual or developmental disabilities were "still human" (or "still Christian") and deserved to be treated with basic human dignity. Individuals with the condition were considered to be incapable of sinning, thus "christ-like" in their disposition. This term is not used in scientific endeavors since the middle of the 20th century and is generally considered a term of abuse. "Cretinism" is also used as an obsolescent term to refer to the condition of congenital hypothyroidism, in which there is some degree of mental re ation.
    • Amentia has a long history, mostly associated with dementia. The difference between amentia and dementia was originally defined by time of onset. Amentia was the term used to describe an individual who developed deficits in mental functioning early in life, while dementia described individuals who develop mental deficiencies as adults. During the 1890s, amentia was used to describe someone who was born with mental deficiencies. By 1912, ament was a classification lumping "idiots, imbeciles, and feeble minded" individuals in a category separate from a dement classification, in which the onset is later in life.[16]
    • Idiot indicated the greatest degree of intellectual disability, where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot guard himself or herself against common physical dangers. The term was gradually replaced by the term profound mental re ation.
    • Imbecile indicated an intellectual disability less extreme than idiocy and not necessarily inherited. It is now usually subdivided into two categories, known as severe mental re ation and moderate mental re ation.
    • Moron was defined by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded in 1910, following work by Henry H. Goddard, as the term for an adult with a mental age between eight and twelve; mild mental re ation is now the term for this condition. Alternative definitions of these terms based on IQ were also used. This group was known in UK law from 1911 to 1959/60 as "feeble-minded".
    • Mongolism was a medical term used to identify someone with Down syndrome. The Mongolian People's Republic requested that the medical community cease use of the term as a description of mental re ation. Their request was granted in the 1960s, when the World Health Organization agreed that the term should cease being used within the medical community.[16]
    • In the field of special education, educable (or "educable mentally re ed") refers to MR students with IQs of approximately 50–75 who can progress academically to a late elementary level. Trainable (or "trainable mentally re ed") refers to students whose IQs fall below 50 but who are still capable of learning personal hygiene and other living skills in a sheltered setting, such as a group home. In many areas, these terms have been replaced by use of "severe" and "moderate" mental re ation. While the names change, the meaning stays roughly the same in practice.
    • Re ed comes from the Latin re are, "to make slow, delay, keep back, or hinder." The term was recorded in 1426 as a "fact or action of making slower in movement or time." The first record of re ed in relation to being mentally slow was in 1895. The term re ed was used to replace terms like idiot, moron, and imbecile because it was not a derogatory term. By the 1960s, however, the term had taken on a partially derogatory meaning as well.[16] The noun "re " is particularly seen as pejorative; as of 2010, the Special Olympics, Best Buddies and over 100 other organizations are striving to help eliminate the use of the "r-word" (analogous to the "n-word") in everyday conversation.[18][19]
    The term "mental re ation" is a diagnostic term denoting the group of disconnected categories of mental functioning such as "idiot", "imbecile", and "moron" derived from early IQ tests, which acquired pejorative connotations in popular discourse. The term "mental re ation" acquired pejorative and shameful connotations over the last few decades due to the use of the words "re ed" and "re " as insults. This may have contributed to its replacement with euphemisms such as "mentally challenged" or "intellectually disabled". While "developmental disability" may be considered to subsume other disorders (see below), "developmental disability" and "developmental delay" (for people under the age of 18), are generally considered more acceptable terms than "mental re ation".


    • In North America mental re ation is subsumed into the broader term developmental disability, which also includes epilepsy, autism, cerebral palsy and other disorders that develop during the developmental period (birth to age 18.) Because service provision is tied to the designation developmental disability, it is used by many parents, direct support professionals, and physicians. In the United States, however, in school-based settings, the more specific term mental re ation is still typically used, and is one of 13 categories of disability under which children may be identified for special education services under Public Law 108-446.
    • The phrase intellectual disability is increasingly being used as a synonym for people with significantly below-average cognitive ability.[20] These terms are sometimes used as a means of separating general intellectual limitations from specific, limited deficits as well as indicating that it is not an emotional or psychological disability. Intellectual disability may also used to describe the outcome of traumatic brain injury or lead poisoning or dementing conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. It is not specific to congenital disorders such as Down syndrome.
    The American Association on Mental Re ation continued to use the term mental re ation until 2006.[21] In June 2006 its members voted to change the name of the organization to the "American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities," rejecting the options to become the AAID or AADD. Part of the rationale for the double name was that many members worked with people with pervasive developmental disorders, most of whom do not have mental re ation.[22]


    In the UK, "mental handicap" had become the common medical term, replacing "mental subnormality" in Scotland and "mental deficiency" in England and Wales, until Stephen Dorrell, Secretary of State for Health for the United Kingdom from 1995–97, changed the NHS's designation to "learning disability." The new term is not yet widely understood, and is often taken to refer to problems affecting schoolwork (the American usage), which are known in the UK as "learning difficulties." British social workers may use "learning difficulty" to refer to both people with MR and those with conditions such as dyslexia.[23] In education, "learning difficulties" is applied to a wide range of conditions: "specific learning difficulty" may refer to dyslexia, dyscalculia or dyspraxia, while "moderate learning difficulties", "severe learning difficulties" and "profound learning difficulties" refer to more significant impairments.[24][25]
    In England and Wales between 1983 and 2008 the Mental Health Act 1983 defined "mental impairment" and "severe mental impairment" as "a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind which includes significant/severe impairment of intelligence and social functioning and is associated with abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned."[26] As behavior was involved, these were not necessarily permanent conditions: they were defined for the purpose of authorizing detention in hospital or guardianship. The term Mental Impairment was removed from the Act in November 2008, but the grounds for detention remained. However, English statute law uses "mental impairment" elsewhere in a less well-defined manner—e.g. to allow exemption from taxes—implying that mental re ation without any behavioral problems is what is meant.
    A BBC poll conducted in the United Kingdom came to the conclusion that 're ' was the most offensive disability-related word.[27] On the reverse side of that, when a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother live used the phrase "walking like a re ", despite complaints from the public and the charity Mencap, the communications regulator Ofcom did not uphold the complaint saying "it was not used in an offensive context [...] and had been used light-heartedly". It was however noted that two previous similar complaints from other shows were upheld.[28]


    The term "mental re ation" is still used in Australia; however, "intellectual disability" is now the preferred and more commonly used descriptor.[29][30]


    People with such disabilities are often not seen as full citizens of society. Person-centered planning and approaches are seen as methods of addressing the continued labelling and exclusion of socially devalued people, such as people with disabilities, encouraging a focus on the person as someone with capacities and gifts, as well as support needs.
    There has been a change in the perception of people with intellectual disabilities over the past generation. People with intellectual disabilities were routinely excluded from public education, or educated away from other typically developing children. This changed in 1975 with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This mandated that all children be educated, and that be educated with typically developing children. [1] This gave children the same education and opportunities as their non-disabled children received, giving these children with intellectual disabilities not only comprable skills to their peers, but the same dreams and aspirations as their non disabled peers. [2]
    These educated people with intellectual disabilities are now working together to change the perception of people with intellectual disabilities in the society. They are part of a new movement called the self advocacy movement. Some of these organizations have been effective in lobbying the legislature to make changes to laws that effect people with intellectual disabilities. [3] The campaign led by people with intellectual disabilities to ban the “R” word, [4] succeed and Federal Legislation was signed into law by President Obama. [5]
    This has also led to the concept and policy of self direction, allowing people with intellectual disabilities to make decisions about their own lives.
    See also

    References

    1. ^ "2h.com". 2h.com. http://www.2h.com/articles/iq-tests/...iq-scores.html. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    2. ^ Badano, Jose L.; Norimasa Mitsuma, Phil L. Beales, Nicholas Katsanis (September 2006). "The Ciliopathies : An Emerging Class of Human Genetic Disorders". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 7: 125–148. doi:10.1146/annurev.genom.7.080505.115610. PMID 16722803. http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/....080505.115610. Retrieved 2008-06-15.
    3. ^ Siderius LE, Hamel BC, van Bokhoven H, et al. (2000). "X-linked mental re ation associated with cleft lip/palate maps to Xp11.3-q21.3". Am. J. Med. Genet. 85 (3): 216–220. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1096-8628(19990730)85:3<216::AID-AJMG6>3.0.CO;2-X. PMID 10398231.
    4. ^ Laumonnier F, Holbert S, Ronce N, et al. (2005). "Mutations in PHF8 are associated with X linked mental re ation and cleft lip/cleft palate". J. Med. Genet. 42 (10): 780–786. doi:10.1136/jmg.2004.029439. PMID 16199551.
    5. ^ McNeil, Donald G., Jr. (2006-12-16). "In Raising the World's I.Q., the Secret's in the Salt". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...0russia&st=cse. Retrieved 2009-07-21.
    6. ^ Wines, Michael (2006-12-28). "Malnutrition Is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa's Future". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/wo...nutrition.html. Retrieved 2009-07-21.
    7. ^ Sundaram SK, Sivaswamy L, Makki MI, Behen ME, Chugani HT. (2008). Absence of arcuate fasciculus in children with global developmental delay of unknown etiology: a diffusion tensor imaging study. J Pediatr. 152(2):250–5. PMID 18206698
    8. ^ "eMedicine - Mental Re ation : Article by C Simon Sebastian, MD". http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic3095.htm. Retrieved 2007-08-23.
    9. ^ Kalachnik, JE.; Hanzel, TE.; Sevenich, R.; Harder, SR. (Sep 2002). "Benzodiazepine behavioral side effects: review and implications for individuals with mental re ation". Am J Ment Re 107 (5): 376–410. doi:10.1352/0895-8017(2002)107<0376:BBSERA>2.0.CO;2. PMID 12186578.
    10. ^ a b c d e f g Wickham, Parnell. Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society. http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Re-So/Re ation.html. Retrieved 8 October 2010.
    11. ^ Armbrester, Margaret E. (1992). The Civitan Story. Birmingham, AL: Ebsco Media. pp. 74–75.
    12. ^ Wolf Wolfensberger (January 10, 1969). "The Origin and Nature of Our Ins utional Models". Changing Patterns in Residential Services for the Mentally Re ed. President's Committee on Mental Re ation, Washington, D.C.. http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/lib/...htm?page=print.
    13. ^ "The ARC Highlights - Beyond Affliction: Beyond Affliction Do ent". Disabilitymuseum.org. http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/beyo.../ng0002tx.html. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    14. ^ "Christmas in Purgatory & Willowbrook". Arcmass.org. http://www.arcmass.org/StateHousePol...2/Default.aspx. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    15. ^ "Fernald School Closing and RICCI Class". Arcmass.org. http://www.arcmass.org/StateHousePol...5/Default.aspx. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    16. ^ a b c d Mental Health Care, Inc.
    17. ^ "cretin". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2006. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cretin. Retrieved 2008-08-04.
    18. ^ "SpecialOlympics.org". SpecialOlympics.org. http://www.specialolympics.org/coalition.aspx. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    19. ^ "R-Word.org". R-Word.org. 2010-06-18. http://r-word.org/. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    20. ^ Mencap.org.uk: Website of the UK's leading learning disability charity. Retrieved 28 June 2006.
    21. ^ "FAQ on Intellectual Disability". AAIDD. http://www.aamr.org/content_104.cfm. Retrieved February 5, 2010.
    22. ^ Chakrabarti S, Fombonne E (2001). "Pervasive developmental disorders in preschool children". JAMA 285 (24): 3093–9. doi:10.1001/jama.285.24.3093. PMID 11427137. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/285/24/3093.
    23. ^ Social Work, Alcohol and Drugs, Disability and Ill Health - Learning disabilities.
    24. ^ Teachernet, Cognition and Learning Needs.
    25. ^ Teacher Training Resource Bank, Severe Learning Difficulties.
    26. ^ "Draft Illustrative Code of Practice". http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/PDF/Draft%2...uly%202007.pdf. Retrieved 2007-08-23.
    27. ^ Rohrer, Finlo (2008-09-22). "UK | Magazine | The path from cinema to playground". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7629376.stm. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    28. ^ Beckford, Martin (2010-03-11). "Ofcom says TV channels have 'human right' to broadcast offensive material". Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...-material.html. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    29. ^ Kidspot Australia / Get Started Australia. "Mental Re ation - Mentally Re ed - Kidspot Australia". Kidspot.com.au. http://www.kidspot.com.au/familyheal...03+article.htm. Retrieved 2010-06-29.
    30. ^ "Australian Psychological Society : Psychologists and intellectual disability". Psychology.org.au. http://www.psychology.org.au/publica...ch/disability/. Retrieved 2010-06-29.



    I thought this might be relevant. Those who are worried for the OP please read.
    Last edited by UnWantedTheory; 12-02-2010 at 06:30 PM.

  23. #23
    NostraSpurMus phxspurfan's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Post Count
    14,364

  24. #24
    Believe. maddnezz's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Post Count
    664
    lol bonner

    lol jefferson

    lol griffin

    lol clippers

    lol spurs

    lol fail
    LOL at your ........wait, that's not right. YOU CAN SUCK IT! YOU, CUBAN, JET AND THE FUNKY GERMAN !

  25. #25
    you are a faggot Phillip's Avatar
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Post Count
    5,774
    the OP, this thread, and him being able to troll the spurs forum at will.

    i'm against banning people and whatnot but is ridiculous these days on ST. always the same stupid in' "lol" and "lmao" threads in here, keep that in the club, troll forum, or nba forum.

    btw, did i mention, you phillip!
    there is a reason i get away with it

    i make only 1 thread for each loss

    and successfully troll morons like you who get mad. aka the morons that kori and timvp dont like anyways, and would probably rather them get trolled, than ban me from making these threads

    plus i am the creator of the LMAO threads

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •