BLACK HOLE

A general description

Hanjala Ibrahim
ID: 20200521
INTRODUCTION
Black holes are predicted by general relativity to be formed whenever sufficient mass is
compressed into a small enough volume. In Newtonian language, the escape velocity from
the surface becomes greater than the speed of light, so that nothing can escape. In general
relativity, a black hole is defined as a region of space-time that cannot communicate with the
external universe. The boundary of this region is called the surface of the black hole, or the
event horizon.

Figure 1: First ever image captured of Black Hole (Image credit: EHT Collaboration)
It appears impossible to compress matter on earth sufficiently to form a black hole. But in
nature, gravity itself can compress matter if there is not enough pressure to resist the inward
attractive force. When a massive star reaches the endpoint of its thermonuclear burning
phase, nuclear reactions no longer supply thermal pressure, and gravitational collapse will
proceed all the way to a black hole. By contrast, the collapse of a less massive star halts at
high density when the core is transformed entirely into nuclear matter. The envelope of the
star is blown off in a gigantic supernova explosion, leaving the core behind as a nascent
neutron star.

HISTORY OF BLACK HOLE

The “modern” history of the black hole begins with the classic paper of Oppenheimer and
Snyder (1939). They calculated the collapse of a homogeneous sphere of pressure less gas in
general relativity. They found that the sphere eventually becomes cut off from all
communication with the rest of the universe. Ultimately the matter is crushed to infinite
density at the center. Most previous discussions of the exterior gravitational field of a
spherical mass had not understood that the apparent singularity in the solution at the
Schwarzschild radius was merely a coordinate artifact. Einstein himself claimed that one
needn’t worry about the “Schwarzschild singularity” since no material body could ever be
compressed to such a radius (Einstein 1939). His error was that he considered only bodies in
equilibrium. Even the usually sober Landau had been bothered by the prospect of continued
gravitational collapse implied by the existence of a maximum stable mass for neutron stars
and white dwarfs. To circumvent this, he believed at one time that “. . . all stars heavier than
1.5M certainly possess regions in which the laws of quantum mechanics . . . are violated”
(Landau 1932).
Despite the work of Oppenheimer and Snyder, black holes were generally ignored until the
late 1950’s, when Wheeler and his collaborators began a serious investigation of the problem
of gravitational collapse (Harrison et al. 1965). It was Wheeler (1968) who coined the name
“black hole.” The discovery of quasars, pulsars, and compact X-ray sources in the 1960’s finally
gave observational impetus to the subject, and ushered in the “golden age” of black hole
research.
Black holes are now believed to exist with a variety of masses. A current estimate for the
dividing line between progenitor stars that produce neutron stars and those that produce
black holes is around 25M⊙. The resulting black holes are expected to have masses in the
range 3 – 60M⊙. As discussed below, there is also good astrophysical evidence for
supermassive black holes, with masses of order 106 – 109M⊙. There are a number of
scenarios that could produce such large black holes: the gravitational collapse of individual
supermassive gas clouds; the growth of a seed black hole capturing stars and gas from a dense
star cluster at the center of a galaxy; or the merger of smaller black holes produced by
collapse. There have also been speculations that black holes with a very wide range of masses
might have been produced from density fluctuations in the early universe, but so far there is
no convincing evidence for the existence of such primordial black holes.
This article provides just an overview of the astrophysical evidence for black holes, and
discusses some recent theoretical developments in black hole research. For a more complete
discussion of the basic properties of black holes, see the books by Misner, Thorne, and
Wheeler (1973), Shapiro and Teukolsky (1983), or Wald (1984).

TYPES OF BLACH HOLE

Stellar black holes
When a star burns through the last of its fuel, the object may collapse, or fall into itself. For
smaller stars (those up to about three times the sun's mass), the new core will become a
neutron star or a white dwarf. But when a larger star collapses, it continues to compress and
creates a stellar black hole.

Black holes formed by the collapse of individual stars are relatively small, but incredibly dense.
One of these objects packs more than three times the mass of the sun into the diameter of a
city. This leads to a crazy amount of gravitational force pulling on objects around the object.
Stellar black holes then consume the dust and gas from their surrounding galaxies, which
keeps them growing in size.
According the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "the Milky Way contains a few
hundred million" stellar black holes.
Supermassive black holes
Small black holes populate the universe, but their cousins, supermassive black holes,
dominate. These enormous black holes are millions or even billions of times as massive as the
sun, but are about the same size in diameter. Such black holes are thought to lie at the center
of pretty much every galaxy, including the Milky Way.
Scientists aren't certain how such large black holes spawn. Once these giants have formed,
they gather mass from the dust and gas around them, material that is plentiful in the center
of galaxies, allowing them to grow to even more enormous sizes.
Supermassive black holes may be the result of hundreds or thousands of tiny black holes that
merge together. Large gas clouds could also be responsible, collapsing together and rapidly
accreting mass. A third option is the collapse of a stellar cluster, a group of stars all falling
together. Fourth, supermassive black holes could arise from large clusters of dark matter. This
is a substance that we can observe through its gravitational effect on other objects; however,
we don't know what dark matter is composed of because it does not emit light and cannot be
directly observed.

Figure 2: Illustration of a young black hole (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Intermediate black holes
Scientists once thought that black holes came in only small and large sizes, but recent research
has revealed the possibility that midsize, or intermediate, black holes (IMBHs) could exist.
Such bodies could form when stars in a cluster collide in a chain reaction. Several of these
IMBHs forming in the same region could then eventually fall together in the center of a galaxy
and create a supermassive black hole.

In 2014, astronomers found what appeared to be an intermediate-mass black hole in the arm
of a spiral galaxy.
"Astronomers have been looking very hard for these medium-sized black holes," study co-
author Tim Roberts, of the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.
"There have been hints that they exist, but IMBHs have been acting like a long-lost relative
that isn't interested in being found."

Newer research, from 2018, suggested that these IMBHs may exist in the heart of dwarf
galaxies (or very small galaxies). Observations of 10 such galaxies (five of which were
previously unknown to science before this latest survey) revealed X-ray activity — common
in black holes — suggesting the presence of black holes of from 36,000 to 316,000 solar
masses. The information came from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which examines about 1
million galaxies and can detect the kind of light often observed coming from black holes that
are picking up nearby debris.

PROPERTIES AND STRUCTURE

The no-hair conjecture postulates that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a
black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, charge, and angular
momentum; the black hole is otherwise featureless. If the conjecture is true, any two black
holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable
from one another. The degree to which the conjecture is true for real black holes under the
laws of modern physics, is currently an unsolved problem.
These properties are special because they are visible from outside a 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 (through the ADM mass), far away from the black hole. Likewise, the
angular momentum (or spin) can be measured from far away using frame dragging by the
gravitomagnetic field, through for example the Lense-Thirring effect.

Figure 3: Simple illustration of a non-spinning black hole

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 a dissipative system that
is closely analogous to that of a conductive stretchy membrane with friction and electrical
resistance—the membrane paradigm. This is different from other field theories such as
electromagnetism, which do not have any friction or resistivity at the microscopic level,
because they are time-reversible. Because a 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 a black hole give very little information about what went
in. The information that is lost includes every quantity that cannot be measured far away from
the black hole horizon, including approximately conserved quantum numbers such as the
total baryon number and lepton number. This behavior is so puzzling that it has been called
the black hole information loss paradox.

PHYSICS OF BLACK HOLE

Light imprisoned
Let us begin to play like the second butterfly, and explore the black hole from the point of
view of theoretical physics. An elementary definition of a black hole is a region of space-time
in which the gravitational potential, GM/R, exceeds the square of the speed of light, c2. Such
a statement has the merit to be independent of the details of gravitational theories. It can be
used in the framework of Newtonian theory. It also provides a more popular definition of a
black hole, according to which any astronomical body whose escape velocity exceeds the
speed of light must be a black hole. Indeed, such a reasoning was done two centuries ago by
John Michell and Pierre-Simon de Laplace. In the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society (1784), John Michell pointed out that “if the semi diameter of a sphere of the same
density with the sun were to exceed that of the sun in the proportion of 500 to 1, (...) all light
emitted from such a body would be made to return towards it”, and independently, in 1796,
Laplace wrote in his Exposition du Syst`eme du Monde: “Un astre lumineux de mˆeme
densit´e que la terre et dont le diam`etre serait deux cents cinquante fois plus grand que celui
du soleil, ne laisserait, en vertu de son attraction, parvenir aucun de ses rayons jusqu’`a nous
; il est donc possible que les plus grands corps lumineux de l’univers soient, par cela mˆeme,
invisibles”. Since the density imagined at this time was that of ordinary matter, the size and
the mass of the associated “invisible body” were huge - around 107 solar masses,
corresponding to what is called today a “supermassive” black hole. Nevertheless, from the
numerical figures first proposed by Michell and Laplace, one can recognize the well-known
basic formula giving the critical radius of a body of mass M:
2
= ≈3
⊙

Where M⊙ is the solar mass. Any spherical body of mass M confined within the critical radius
RS must be a black hole.
Spherical collapse
Let us now examine the causal structure of space-time around a gravitationally collapsing star
- a process which is believed to lead to black hole formation. Figure 4 shows the complete
history of the collapse of a spherical star, from its initial contraction until the formation of a
black hole and a singularity. Two space dimensions are measured horizontally, and time is on
the vertical axis, measured upwards. The center of the star is at r = 0. The curvature of space-
time is visualized by means of the light cones generated by the trajectories of light rays. Far
away from the central gravitational field, the curvature is so weak that the light cones remain
straight. Near the gravitational field, the cones are distorted and tilted inwards by the
curvature. On the critical surface of radius r = 2M, the cones are tipped over at 45◦ and one
of their generators becomes vertical, so that the allowed directions of propagation of particles
and electromagnetic waves are oriented towards the interior of this surface. This is the event
horizon, the boundary of the black hole (grey region). Beyond this, the stellar matter
continues to collapse into a singularity of zero volume and infinite density at r = 0. Once a
black hole has formed, and after all the stellar matter has disappeared into the singularity,
the geometry of space-time itself continues to collapse towards the singularity, as shown by
the light cones.

Figure 4: A space-time diagram showing the formation of a black hole by gravitational

collapse.
The emission of the light rays at E1, E2, E3 and E4 and their reception by a distant astronomer
at R1, R2, R3 ... well illustrate the difference between the proper time, as measured by a clock
placed on the surface of the star, and the apparent time, measured by an independent and
distant clock. The (proper) time interval between the four emission events are equal.
However, the corresponding reception intervals become longer and longer. At the limit, light
ray emitted from E4, just when the event horizon is forming, takes an infinite time to reach
the distant astronomer. This phenomenon of “frozen time” is just an illustration of the
extreme elasticity of time predicted by Einstein’s relativity, according to which time runs
differently for two observers with a relative acceleration - or, from the Equivalence Principle,
in different gravitational potentials. A striking consequence is that any outer astronomer will
never be able to see the formation of a black hole. The figure 5 shows a picturesque
illustration of frozen time. A spaceship has the mission of exploring the interior of a black hole
– preferably a big one, so that it is not destroyed too quickly by the tidal forces. On board the
ship, the commander sends a solemn salute to mankind, just at the moment when the ship
crosses the horizon. His gesture is transmitted to distant spectators via television. The film on
the left shows the scene on board the spaceship in proper time, that is, as measured by the
ship’s clock as the ship falls into the black hole. The astronaut’s salute is decomposed into
instants at proper time intervals of 0.2 second. Crossing of the event horizon (black holes have
not a hard surface) is not accompanied by any particular event. The film on the right shows
the scene received by distant spectators via television. It is also decomposed into intervals

Figure 5: The astronauts salute.

of apparent time of 0.2 second. At the beginning of his gesture, the salute is slightly slower
than the real salute, but initially the delay is too small to be noticed, so the films are practically
identical. It is only very close to the horizon that apparent time starts suddenly to freeze; the
film on the right then shows the astronaut eternally frozen in the middle of his salute,
imperceptibly reaching the limiting position where he crossed the horizon. Besides this effect,
the shift in the frequencies in the gravitational field (the so-called Einstein’s effect) causes the
images to weaken, and they soon become invisible.

All these effects follow rather straightforwardly from equations. In General Relativity, the
vacuum space-time around a spherically symmetric body is described by the Schwarzschild
metric:

2 2
= 1 1
4 4
Where = is the metric of a unit 2-sphere, and we have set the gravity’s
constant G and the speed of light c equal to unity. The solution describes the external
gravitational field generated by any static spherical mass, whatever its radius (Birkhoff’s
theorem, 1923).
Non spherical collapse

A black hole may well form from an asymmetric gravitational collapse. However the
deformations of the event horizon are quickly dissipated as gravitational radiation; the event
horizon vibrates according to the so–called “quasi-normal modes” and the black hole settles
down into a final axisymmetric equilibrium configuration.
The deepest physical property of black holes is that asymptotic equilibrium solutions depend
only on three parameters: the mass, the electric charge and the angular momentum. All the
details of the in-falling matter other than mass, electric charge and angular momentum are
washed out. The proof followed from efforts over 15 years by half a dozen of theoreticians,
but it was originally suggested as a conjecture by John Wheeler, who used the picturesque
formulation “a black hole has no hair”. Markus Heusler’s lectures in this volume will develop
this so–called “uniqueness theorem”.

Figure 6: Gravitational collapse of a star.

The black hole maelstrom
There is a deep analogy between a rotating black hole and the familiar phenomenon of a
vortex - such as a giant maelstrom produced by sea currents. If we cut a light cone at fixed
time (a horizontal plane in figure 7), the resulting spatial section is a “navigation ellipse” which
determines the limits of the permitted trajectories. If the cone tips over sufficiently in the
gravitational field, the navigation ellipse detaches itself from the point of emission. The
permitted trajectories are confined within the angle formed by the tangents of the circle, and
it is impossible to go backwards.

Figure 7: Navigation circles in the black hole maelstrom.

This projection technique is useful to depict the causal structure of spacetime around a
rotating black hole (figure 7). The gravitational well caused by a rotating black hole resembles
a cosmic maelstrom. A spaceship travelling in the vicinity is sucked towards the centre of the
vortex like a boat. In the region outside the so-called static limit (clear), it can navigate to
whereever it wants. In the zone (in grey) comprised between the static limit and the event
horizon, it is forced to rotate in the same direction as the black hole; its ability to navigate
freely is decreased as it is sucked inwards, but it can still escape by travelling in an outwards
spiral. The dark zone represents the region inside the event horizon: any ship which ventured
there would be unable to escape even if it was travelling at the speed of light. A fair illustration
is the Edgar Poe’s short story: A descent into the maelstrom (1840).
Black hole thermodynamics

It is interesting to mention that the irreducible mass is related to the area A of the event
horizon by ! = "#⁄16%. Therefore the area of an event horizon cannot decrease in time
by any classical process. This was first noticed by Stephen Hawking, who drew the striking
analogy with ordinary thermodynamics, in which the entropy of a system never decreases in
time. Such a property has motivated a great deal of theoretical efforts in the 1970’s to better
understand the laws of black hole dynamics – i.e. the laws giving the infinitesimal variations
of mass, area and other black hole quantities when a black hole interacts with the external
universe – and to push the analogy with thermodynamical laws.
The quantum black hole
The details of Hawking radiation and the - not yet solved - theoretical difficulties linked to its
interpretation are discussed by other lecturers (Gerard’t Hooft, Andreas Wipf and Claus
Kiefer) in this volume. Therefore I shall only present the basic idea in a naive pictorial way
(figure 8). The black hole’s gravitational field is described by (classical) general relativity, while
the surrounding vacuum space–time is described by quantum field theory. The quantum
evaporation process is analogous to pair production in a strong magnetic field due to vacuum
polarization. In the Fermi sea populated by virtual pairs of particles-antiparticles which create
and annihilate themselves, the four various possible processes are depicted schematically in
figure 8.

Figure 8: The quantum evaporation of a mini black hole by polarization of the vacuum.
Some virtual pairs emerging from the quantum vacuum just annihilate outside the horizon
(process I). Some pairs produced in the vicinity of the black hole disappear completely in the
event horizon (process IV). Some pairs are splitted, one particle (or antiparticle) escaping the
black hole, the other one being captured (processes II and III). The calculations show that the
process II is dominant, due to the (classical) gravitational potential which polarizes the
quantum vacuum. As a consequence, a black hole radiates particles with a thermal spectrum
characterized by a blackbody temperature precisely given by the formula suggested by the
thermodynamical analogy:
) + ⨀
'=ℏ = 10 -
2%
where ℏ is Planck’s constant.
OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE
By nature, black holes do not themselves emit any electromagnetic radiation other than the
hypothetical Hawking radiation, so astrophysicists searching for black holes must generally
rely on indirect observations. For example, a black hole's existence can sometimes be inferred
by observing its gravitational influence upon its surroundings.
On 10 April 2019 an image was released of a black hole, which is seen in magnified fashion
because the light paths near the event horizon are highly bent. The dark shadow in the middle
results from light paths absorbed by the black hole. The image is in false color, as the detected
light halo in this image is not in the visible spectrum, but radio waves.

Figure 9: Close-up of the first captured image of black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), is an active program that directly observes the immediate
environment of the event horizon of black holes, such as the black hole at the center of the
Milky Way. In April 2017, EHT began observation of the black hole in the center of Messier
87. "In all, eight radio observatories on six mountains and four continents observed the galaxy
in Virgo on and off for 10 days in April 2017" to provide the data yielding the image two years
later in April 2019. After two years of data processing, EHT released the first direct image of
a black hole, specifically the supermassive black hole that lies in the center of the
aforementioned galaxy. What is visible is not the black hole, which shows as black because of
the loss of all light within this dark region, rather it is the gases at the edge of the event
horizon, which are displayed as orange or red, that define the black hole.
The brightening of this material in the 'bottom' half of the processed EHT image is thought to
be caused by Doppler beaming, whereby material approaching the viewer at relativistic
speeds is perceived as brighter than material moving away. In the case of a black hole this
phenomenon implies that the visible material is rotating at relativistic speeds (>1,000 km/s),
the only speeds at which it is possible to centrifugally balance the immense gravitational
attraction of the singularity, and thereby remain in orbit above the event horizon. This
configuration of bright material implies that the EHT observed M87 from a perspective
catching the black hole's accretion disc nearly edge-on, as the whole system rotated
clockwise. However, the extreme gravitational lensing associated with black holes produces
the illusion of a perspective that sees the accretion disc from above. In reality, most of the
ring in the EHT image was created when the light emitted by the far side of the accretion disc
bent around the black hole's gravity well and escaped such that most of the possible
perspectives on M87 (Messier 87: a supergiant elliptical galaxy with about 1 trillion stars in
the constellation Virgo) can see the entire disc, even that directly behind the "shadow".

Prior to this, in 2015, the EHT detected magnetic fields just outside the event horizon of
Sagittarius A*, and even discerned some of their properties. The field lines that pass through
the accretion disc were found to be a complex mixture of ordered and tangled. The existence
of magnetic fields had been predicted by theoretical studies of black holes.

THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS 2020

Three Laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries about one of the
most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole. Roger Penrose showed that the
general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea
Ghez discovered that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at
the center of our galaxy. A supermassive black hole is the only currently known explanation.

Roger Penrose used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that black holes are a direct
consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Einstein did not himself believe
that black holes really exist, these super-heavyweight monsters that capture everything that
enters them. Nothing can escape, not even light.
In January 1965, ten years after Einstein’s death, Roger Penrose proved that black holes really
can form and described them in detail; at their heart, black holes hide a singularity in which
all the known laws of nature cease. His groundbreaking article is still regarded as the most
important contribution to the general theory of relativity since Einstein.

Figure 10: Cross sectionof a black hole

Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez each lead a group of astronomers that, since the early
1990s, has focused on a region called Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy. The orbits of
the brightest stars closest to the middle of the Milky Way have been mapped with increasing
precision. The measurements of these two groups agree, with both finding an extremely
heavy, invisible object that pulls on the jumble of stars, causing them to rush around at
dizzying speeds. Around four million solar masses are packed together in a region no larger
than our solar system.

Using the world’s largest telescopes, Genzel and Ghez developed methods to see through the
huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust to the center of the Milky Way. Stretching the limits
of technology, they refined new techniques to compensate for distortions caused by the
Earth’s atmosphere, building unique instruments and committing themselves to long-term
research. Their pioneering work has given us the most convincing evidence yet of a
supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

“The discoveries of this year’s Laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact
and supermassive objects. But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for
answers and motivate future research. Not only questions about their inner structure, but
also questions about how to test our theory of gravity under the extreme conditions in the
immediate vicinity of a black hole”, says David Haviland, chair of the Nobel Committee for
Physics.

Roger Penrose, born 1931 in Colchester, UK. Ph.D. 1957 from University of Cambridge, UK.
Professor at University of Oxford, UK.

Reinhard Genzel, born 1952 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany. Ph.D. 1978 from
University of Bonn, Germany. Director at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics,
Garching, Germany and Professor at University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Andrea Ghez, born 1965 in City of New York, USA. Ph.D. 1992 from California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, USA. Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

CONCLUSION
Black holes connect to a wide variety of fields of physics. They are invoked to explain high-
energy phenomena in astrophysics, they are the subject of analytic and numerical inquiry in
classical general relativity, and they may provide key insights into quantum gravity. We also
seem to be on the verge of verifying that these objects actually exist in nature with the space-
time properties given by Einstein’s theory. Finding absolutely incontrovertible evidence for a
black hole would be the capstone of one of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of
science.

REFERENCES

1. Black Holes, Gary T. Horowitz - Physics Department, University of California, Santa

Barbara, CA 93106, Saul A. Teukolsky - Departments of Physics and Astronomy, Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY 14853.
2. Black Holes: A General Introduction, Jean-Pierre Luminet Observatoire de Paris-
Meudon, D´epartement d’Astrophysique Relativiste et de Cosmologie, CNRS UPR-176,
F-92195 Meudon Cedex, France.
3. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2020/press-release/
4. Black holes and the Milky Way’s darkest secret, Roger Penrose - University of Oxford,
UK, Reinhard Genzel - Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching,
Germany and University of California, Berkeley, USA, Andrea Ghez - University of
California, Los Angeles, USA.
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole
6. Relativistic Theory of Black Holes, Daniele Sasso - Progetto Indipendente ARS ·
Department of Contemporary Physics.