New research suggests that black holes may actually be “frozen stars,” bizarre quantum objects that lack a singularity and an event horizon, potentially solving some of the biggest paradoxes in black hole physics.
Episode · The Joy of Why · Nothing escapes a black hole… or does it? In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking described a subtle process by which black holes can “evaporate,” with some particles evading gravitational oblivion. This phenomenon, now dubbed “Hawking radiation,” seems inherently at odds with general relativity, but it gets weirder still: If particles can escape, do they preserve some information about the matter that was obliterated? Leonard Susskind, a physicist at Stanford University, found himself at odds with Hawking when it came to answering this question. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with Susskind about the “black hole war” that ensued and the powerful scientific lessons that have radiated from one of the most famous paradoxes in physics.
Explore the theory that some black holes might be hidden wormholes, offering shortcuts through space-time. Discover how scientists aim to detect them.
New study suggests that black holes may not be the featureless, structureless entities that Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts them to be.
The frozen star is a recent proposal for a nonsingular solution of Einstein’s equations that describes an ultracompact object which closely resembles a black hole from an external perspective. The frozen star is also meant to be an alternative, classical description of an earlier proposal, the highly quantum polymer model. Here, we show that the thermodynamic properties of frozen stars closely resemble those of black holes: frozen stars radiate thermally, with a temperature and an entropy that are perturbatively close to those of black holes of the same mass. Their entropy is calculated using the Euclidean-action method of Gibbons and Hawking. We then discuss their dynamical formation by estimating the probability for a collapsing shell of “normal’’ matter to transition, quantum mechanically, into a frozen star.
A new study published in Physical Review Letters (PRL) proposes using gravitational wave detectors like LIGO to search for scalar field dark matter.
Discover how primordial dark energy could unravel astronomy’s greatest puzzles—from the Hubble tension to early galaxy formation—with FreeAstroScience.
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Results could aid understanding of how black holes produce vast intergalactic jets. Scientists have observed new details of how plasma interacts with magnetic fields, potentially providing insight into the formation of enormous plasma jets that stretch between the stars.
Whether between galaxies or within doughnut-shaped fusion devices known as tokamaks, the electrically charged fourth state of matter known as plasma regularly encounters powerful magnetic fields, changing shape and sloshing in space. Now, a new measurement technique using protons, subatomic particles that form the nuclei of atoms, has captured details of this sloshing for the first time, potentially providing insight into the formation of enormous plasma jets that stretch between the stars.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) created detailed pictures of a magnetic field bending outward because of the pressure created by expanding plasma. As the plasma pushed on the magnetic field, bubbling and frothing known as magneto-Rayleigh Taylor instabilities arose at the boundaries, creating structures resembling columns and mushrooms.
And could entire civilizations seek to leave this reality behind?
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I find it weird that black holes would be moving throughout the galaxy because most are stationary.
A fluffy cluster of stars spilling across the sky may have a secret hidden in its heart: a swarm of over 100 stellar-mass black holes.
The star cluster in question is called Palomar 5. It’s a stellar stream that stretches out across 30,000 light-years, and is located around 80,000 light-years away.
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