Black Holes, their properties and related topics.

Stars
A star is a massive, luminous ball of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth. Other stars are visible from Earth during the night when they are not outshone by the Sun or blocked by atmospheric phenomena. Historically, the most prominent stars on the celestial sphere were grouped together into constellations and asterisms, and the brightest stars gained proper names. Extensive catalogues of stars have been assembled by astronomers, which provide standardized star designations. For at least a portion of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen in its core releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Almost all naturally occurring elements heavier than helium were created by stars, either via stellar nucleosynthesis during their lifetimes or by supernova nucleosynthesis when stars explode. Astronomers can determine the mass, age, chemical composition and many other properties of a star by observing its spectrum, luminosity and motion through space. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant in its evolution and eventual fate. Other characteristics of a star are determined by its evolutionary history, including diameter, rotation, movement and temperature. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (HR diagram), allows the age and evolutionary state of a star to be determined. A star begins as a collapsing cloud of material composed primarily of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of heavier elements. Once the stellar core is sufficiently dense, some of the hydrogen is steadily converted into helium through the process of nuclear fusion.The remainder of the star's interior carries energy away from the core through a combination of radiative and conve ctive processes. The star's internal pressure prevents it from collapsing further under its own gravity. Once the hydrogen fuel at the core is exhausted, those stars having at least 0.4 times the mass of the Sun expand to become a red giant, in some cases fusing heavier elements at the core or in shells around the core. The star then evolves into a degenerate form, recycling a portion of the matter into the interstellar environment, where it will form a new generation of stars with a higher proportion of he avy elements. Binary and multi-star systems consist of two or more stars that are gravitationally bound, and generally move around each other in stable orbits. When two such stars have a relatively close orbit, their gravitational interaction can have a significant impact on their evolution. Stars can form part of a much larger gravitationally bound structure, such as a cluster or a galaxy.

Formation and evolution

Stars are formed within extended regions of higher density in the interstellar medium, altho ugh the density is still lower than the inside of an earthly vacuum chamber. These regions are called molecular clouds and consist mostly of hydrogen, with about 2328% helium and a few percent heavier elements. One example of such a star-forming region is the Orion Nebula.As massive stars are formed from molecular clouds, they powerfully illuminate those clouds. They also ionize the hydrogen, creating an H II region. Protostar formation The formation of a star begins with a gravitational instability inside a molecular cloud, often triggered by shock waves from supernovae (massive stellar explosions) or the collision of two galaxies (as in a starburst galaxy). Once a region reaches a sufficient density of matter to satisfy the criteria for Jeans instability, it begins to collapse under its own gravitational force.As the cloud collapses, individual conglomerations of dense dust and gas form what are known as Bok globules. As a globule collapses and the density increases, the gravitational energy is converted i nto heat and the temperature rises. When the protostellar cloud has approximately reached the stable condition of hydrostatic equilibrium, a protostar forms at the core. These premain sequence stars are often surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. The period of gravitational contraction lasts for about 1015 million years.

Early stars of less than 2 solar masses are called T Tauri stars, while those with greater mass are Herbig Ae/Be stars. These newly born stars emit jets of gas along their axis of rotati on, which may reduce the angular momentum of the collapsing star and result in small patches of nebulosity known as Herbig Haro objects. These jets, in combination with radiation from nearby massive stars, may help to drive away the surrounding cloud in which the star was formed. Main sequence Stars spend about 90% of their lifetime fusing hydrogen to produce helium in high -temperature and high-pressure reactions near the core. Such stars are said to be on the main sequence and are called dwarf stars. Starting at zero-age main sequence, the proportion of helium in a star's core will steadily increase. As a consequence, in order to maintain the required rate of nuclear fusion at the core, the star will slowly increase in temperature and luminositythe Sun, for example, is estimated to have increased in luminosity by about 40% since it reached the main sequence 4.6 billion years ago.

Every star generates a stellar wind of particles that causes a continual outflow of gas into space. For most stars, the amount of mass lost is negligible. The Sun loses 1014 solar masses every year, or about 0.01% of its total mass over its entire lifespan. However very massive stars can lose 107 to 105 solar masses each year, significantly affecting their evolution. Stars that begin with more than 50 solar masses can lose over half their total mass while they remain on the main sequence. An example of a HertzsprungRussell diagram for a set of stars that includes the Sun (center). (See "Classification" below.) The duration that a star spends on the main sequence depends primarily on the amount of fuel it has to fuse and the rate at which it fuses that fuel, i.e. its initial mass and its luminosity. For the Sun, this is estimated to be about 1010 years. Large stars consume their fuel very rapidly and are short-lived. Small stars (called red dwarfs) consume their fuel very slowly and last tens to hundreds of billions of years. At the end of their lives, they simply become dimmer and dimmer. However, since the lifespan of such stars is greater than the current age of the universe (13.7 billion years), no red dwarfs are expected to have yet reached this state. Besides mass, the portion of elements heavier than helium can play a significant role in the evolution of stars. In astronomy all elements heavier than helium are considered a "metal", and the chemical concentration of these elements is called the metallicity. The metallicity can influence the duration that a star will burn its fuel, control the formation of magnetic fields and modify the strength of the stellar wind. Older, population II stars have substantially less metallicity than the younger, population I stars due to the composition of the molecular clouds from which they formed. (Over time these clouds become increasingly enriched in heavier elements as older stars die and shed portions of their atmospheres.) Post-main sequence As stars of at least 0.4 solar masses exhaust their supply of hydrogen at their core, their outer layers expand greatly and cool to form a red giant. For example, in about 5 billion years, when the Sun is a red giant, it will expand out to a maximum radius of roughly 1 astronomical unit (150 million kilometres), 250 times its present size. As a giant, the Sun will lose roughly 30% of its current mass . In a red giant of up to 2.25 solar masses, hydrogen fusion proceeds in a shell -layer surrounding the core. Eventually the core is compressed enough to start helium fusion, and the star now gradually shrinks in radius and increases its surface temperature. For larger stars, the core region transitions directly from fusing hydrogen to fusing helium. After the star has consumed the helium at the core, fusion continues in a shell around a hot core of carbon and oxygen. The star then follows an evolutionary path that parallels the original red giant phase, but at a higher surface temperature. Massive stars Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star approaching the end of its life cycle.

During their helium-burning phase, very high mass stars with more than nine solar masses expand to form red supergiants. Once this fuel is exhausted at the core, they can continue to fuse elements heavier than helium. The core contracts until the temperature and pressure are sufficient to fuse carbon (see carbon burning process). This process continues, with the successive stages being fueled by neon (see neon burning process), oxygen (see oxygen burning process), and silicon (see silicon burning process). Near the end of the star's life, fusion can occur along a series of onion-layer shells within the star. Each shell fuses a different element, with the outermost shell fusing hydrogen; the next shell fusing helium, and so forth. The final stage is reached when the star begins producing iron. Since iron nuclei are more tightly bound than any heavier nuclei, if they are fused they do not release energythe process would, on the contrary, consume energy. Likewise, since they are more tightly bound than all lighter nuclei, energy cannot be released by fission. In relatively old, very massive stars, a large core of inert iron will accumulate in the center of the star. The heavier elements in these stars can work their way up to the surface, forming evolved objects known as Wolf-Rayet stars that have a dense stellar wind which sheds the outer atmosphere.

Collapse An evolved, average-size star will now shed its outer layers as a planetary nebula. If what remains after the outer atmosphere has been shed is less than 1.4 solar masses, it shrinks to a relatively tiny object (about the size of Earth) that is not massive enough for further compression to take place, known as a white dwarf.The electron-degenerate matter inside a white dwarf is no longer a plasma, even though stars are generally referred to as being spheres of plasma. White dwarfs will eventually fade into black dwarfs over a very long stretch of time. The Crab Nebula, remnants of a supernova that was first observed around 1050 AD In larger stars, fusion continues until the iron core has grown so large (more than 1.4 solar masses) that it can no longer support its own mass. This core will suddenly collapse as its electrons are driven into its protons, forming neutrons and neutrinos in a burst of inverse beta decay, or electron capture. The

shockwave formed by this sudden collapse causes the rest of the star to explode in a supernova. Supernovae are so bright that they may briefly outshine the star's entire home galaxy. When they occur within the Milky Way, supernovae have historically been observed by naked-eye observers as "new stars" where none existed before. Most of the matter in the star is blown away by the supernova explosion (forming nebulae such as the Crab Nebula) and what remains will be a neutron star (which sometimes manifests itself as a pulsar or X-ray burster) or, in the case of the largest stars (large enough to leave a stellar remnant greater than roughly 4 solar masses), a black hole. In a neutron star the matter is in a state known as neutron-degenerate matter, with a more exotic form of degenerate matter, QCD matter, possibly present in the core. Within a black hole the matter is in a state that is not currently understood. The blown-off outer layers of dying stars include heavy elements which may be recycled during new star formation. These heavy elements allow the formation of rocky planets. The outflow from supernovae and the stellar wind of large stars play an important part in shapi ng the interstellar medium.

White Dwarfs
A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a small star composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. They are very dense; a white dwarf's mass is comparable to that of the Sun and its volume is comparable to that of the Earth. Its faint luminosity comes from the emission of stored thermal energy. In January 2009, the Research Consortium on Nearby Stars project counted eight white dwarfs amon g the hundred star systems nearest the Sun. The unusual faintness of white dwarfs was first recognized in 1910 by Henry Norris Russell, Edward Charles Pickering, and Williamina Fleming, the name white dwarf was coined by Willem Luyten in 1922. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of all stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron starover 97% of the stars in our galaxy. After the hydrogenfusing lifetime of a main-sequence star of low or medium mass ends, it will expand to a red giant which fuses helium to carbon and oxygen in its core by the triple-alpha process. If a red giant has insufficient mass to generate the core temperatures required to fuse carbon, around 1 billion K, an inert mass of carbon and oxygen will build up at its center. After shedding its outer layers to form a planetary nebula, it will leave behind this core, which forms the remnant white dwarf.Usually, therefore, white dwarfs are composed of carbon and oxygen. If the mass of the progenitor is above 8 solar masses but below 10.5 solar masses,the core temperature suffices to fuse carbon but not neon, in which case an oxygen -neon magnesium white dwarf may be formed. Also, some helium white dwarfs appear to have been formed by mass loss in binary systems. The material in a white dwarf no longer undergoes fusion reactions, so the star has no source of energy, nor is it supported by the heat generated by fusion against gravitational collapse. It is supported only by electron degeneracy pressure, causing it to be extremely dense. The physics of degeneracy yields a maximum mass for a nonrotating white dwarf, the Chandrasekhar limitapproximately 1.4 solar massesbeyond which it cannot be supported by electron degeneracy pressure. A carbon-oxygen white dwarf that approaches this mass limit, typically by mass transfer from a companion star, may explode as a Type Ia supernova via a process known as carbon detonation. (SN 1006 is thought to be a famous example.) A white dwarf is very hot when it is formed, but since it has no source of energy, it will gradually radiate away its energy and cool down. This means that its radiation, which initially has a high color temperature, will lessen and redden with time. Over a very long time, a white dwarf will cool to temperatures at which it will no longer emit significant heat or light, and it will become a cold black dwarf.However, since no white dwarf can be older than the age of the Universe (approximately 13.7 billion years), even the oldest white dwarfs still radiate at temperatures of a few thousand kelvins, and no black dwarfs are thought to exist yet.

Composition and structure

Although white dwarfs are known with estimated masses as low as 0.17 and as high as 1.33 solar masses, the mass distribution is strongly peaked at 0.6 solar mass, and the majority lie between 0.5 to 0.7 solar mass. The estimated radii of observed white dwarfs, however, are typically between 0.008 and

0.02 times the radius of the Sun; this is comparable to the Earth's radius of approximately 0.009 solar radius. A white dwarf, then, packs mass comparable to the Sun's into a volume that is typically a million times smaller than the Sun's; the average density of matter in a white dwarf must therefore be, very roughly, 1,000,000 times greater than the average density of the Sun, or approximately 106 grams (1 tonne) per cubic centimeter. White dwarfs are composed of one of the densest forms of matter known, surpassed only by other compact stars such as neutron stars, black holes and, hypothetically, quark stars.

A comparison between the white dwarf IK Pegasi B (center), its A-class companion IK Pegasi A (left) and the Sun (right). This white dwarf has a surface temperature of 35,500 K.

White dwarfs were found to be extremely dense soon after their discovery. If a star is in a binary system, as is the case for Sirius B and 40 Eridani B, it is possible to estimate its mass from observations of the binary orbit. This was done for Sirius B by 1910, yielding a mass estimate of 0.94 solar mass. (A more modern estimate is 1.00 solar mass.) Since hotter bodies radiate more than colder ones, a star's surface brightness can be estimated from its effective surface temperature, and hence from its spectrum. If the star's distance is known, its overall luminosity can also be estimated. Comparison of the two figures yields the star's radius. Reasoning of this sort led to the realization, puzzling to astronomers at the time, that Sirius B and 40 Eridani B must be very dense. For example, when Ernst pik estimated the densit y of a number of visual binary stars in 1916, he found that 40 Eridani B had a density of over 25,000 times the Sun's, which was so high that he called it "impossible. As Arthur Stanley Eddington put it later in 1927. We learn about the stars by receiving and interpreting the messages which their light brings to us. The message of the Companion of Sirius when it was decoded ran: "I am composed of material 3,000 times denser than anything you have ever come across; a ton of my material would be a little nugget that you could put in a matchbox." What reply can one make to such a message? The reply which most of us made in 1914 was"Shut up. Don't talk nonsense."

As Eddington pointed out in 1924, densities of this order implied that, according to the theory of general relativity, the light from Sirius B should be gravitationally redshifted. This was confirmed when Adams measured this redshift in 1925. Such densities are possible because white dwarf material is not composed of atoms bound by chemical bonds, but rather consists of a plasma of unbound nuclei and electrons. There is therefore no obstacle to placing nuclei closer to each other than electron orbitalsthe regions occupied by electrons bound to an atomwould normally allow. Eddington, however, wondered what would happen when this plasma cooled and the energy which kept the atoms ionized was no longer present. This paradox was resolved by R. H. Fowler in 1926 by an application of the newly devised quantum mechanics. Since electrons obey the Pauli exclusion principle, no two electrons can occupy the same state, and they must obey Fermi Dirac statistics, also introduced in 1926 to determine the statistical distribution of particles which satisfy the Pauli exclusion principle. At zero temperature, therefore, electrons could not all occupy the lowestenergy, or ground, state; some of them had to occupy higher-energy states, forming a band of lowestavailable energy states, the Fermi sea. This state of the electrons, called degenerate, meant that a white dwarf could cool to zero temperature and still possess high energy. Another way of deriving this result is by use of the uncertainty principle: the high density of electrons in a white dwarf means that their positions are relatively localized, creating a corresponding uncertainty in their momenta. This means that some electrons must have high momentum and hence high kinetic energy. Compression of a white dwarf will increase the number of electrons in a given volume. Applying either the Pauli exclusion principle or the uncertainty principle, we can see that this will increase the kinetic energy of the electrons, causing pressure. This electron degeneracy pressure is what supports a white dwarf against gravitational collapse. It depends only on density and not on temperature. Degenerate matter is relatively compressible; this means that the density of a high-mass white dwarf is so much greater than that of a low-mass white dwarf that the radius of a white dwarf decreases as its mass increases. The existence of a limiting mass that no white dwarf can exceed is another consequence of being supported by electron degeneracy pressure. These masses were first published in 1929 by Wilhelm Anderson and in 1930 by Edmund C. Stoner.The modern value of the limit was first published in 1931 by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in his paper "The Maximum Mass of Ideal White Dwarfs". For a nonrotating white dwarf, it is equal to approximately 5.7/e2 solar masses, where e is the average molecular weight per electron of the star. As the carbon-12 and oxygen-16 which predominantly compose a carbon-oxygen white dwarf both have atomic number equal to half their atomic weight, one should take e equal to 2 for such a star, leading to the commonly quoted value of 1.4 solar masses. (Near the beginning of the 20th century, there was reason to believe that stars were composed chiefly of heavy elements, in his 1931 paper, Chandrasekhar set the average molecular weight per electron, e, equal to 2.5, giving a limit of 0.91 solar mass.) Together with William Alfred Fowler, Chandrasekhar received the Nobel prize for this and other work in 1983. The limiting mass is now called the Chandrasekhar limit.

If a white dwarf were to exceed the Chandrasekhar limit, and nuclear reactions did not take place, the pressure exerted by electrons would no longer be able to balance the force of gravity, and it would collapse into a denser object such as a neutron star. However, carbon-oxygen white dwarfs accreting mass from a neighboring star undergo a runaway nuclear fusion reaction, which leads to a Type Ia supernova explosion in which the white dwarf is destroyed, just before reaching the limiting mass. New research indicates that many white dwarfsat least in certain types of galaxiesmay not approach that limit by way of accretion. In a paper published in the journal Nature in February 2010, astronomers Marat Gilfanov and Akos Bogdan, both of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, postulated that at least some of the white dwarfs that become supe rnovae attain the necessary mass not by accretion but by colliding with one another. Gilfanov and Bogdan said that in elliptical galaxies such collisions are the major source of supernovae. Their hypothesis is based on the fact that the x-rays produced by the white dwarfs' accretion of mattermeasured using NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatoryare no more than 1/30th to 1/50th of what would be expected to be produced by an amount of matter falling into a white dwarf sufficient to produce enough mass to cause th e star to go supernova. In other words, at least in some circumstances, accretion simply does not add enough matter to cause a white dwarf to approach the Chandrasekhar limit, and the two astronomers concluded that no more than 5 percent of the supernovae in such galaxies could be created by the process of accretion to white dwarfs. The significance of this finding is that there could be two types of supernovae, which could mean that the Chandrasekhar limit might not always apply in determining when a white dwarf goes supernova, given that two colliding white dwarfs could have a range of masses. This in turn would confuse efforts to use exploding white dwarfs as standard measurements in determining the nature of the universe. White dwarfs have low luminosity and therefore occupy a strip at the bottom of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a graph of stellar luminosity versus color (or temperature). They should not be confused with low-luminosity objects at the low-mass end of the main sequence, such as the hydrogenfusing red dwarfs, whose cores are supported in part by thermal pressure, or the even lower-temperature brown dwarfs.

Neutron Stars
A neutron star is a type of stellar remnant that can result from the gravitational collapse of a massive star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type Ic supernova event. Such stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles without electrical charge and with a slightly larger mass than protons. Neutron stars are very hot and are supported against further collapse by quantum degeneracy pressure due to the Pauli Exclusion Principle. This principle states that no two neutrons (or any other fermionic particles) can occupy the same place and quantum state simultaneously. A typical neutron star has a mass between 1.35 and about 2.0 solar masses , with a corresponding radius of about 12 km if the Akmal-Pandharipande-Ravenhall equation of state (APR EOS) is used. In contrast, the Sun's radius is about 60,000 times that. Neutron stars have overall densities predicted by the APR EOS of 3.71017 to 5.91017 kg/m3 (2.61014 to 4.11014 times the density of the Sun), which compares with the approximate density of an atomic nucleus of 31017 kg/m3. The neutron star's density varies from below 1109 kg/m3 in the crust, increasing with depth to above 61017 or 81017 kg/m3 deeper inside (denser than an atomic nucleus). This density is approximately equivalent to the mass of the entire human population compressed to the size of a sugar cube. In general, compact stars of less than 1.44 solar masses the Chandrasekhar limit are white dwarfs, and above 2 to 3 solar masses (the TolmanOppenheimerVolkoff limit), a quark star might be created; however, this is uncertain. Gravitational collapse will usually occur on any compact star between 10 and 25 solar masses and produce a black hole.

Formation
As the core of a massive star is compressed during a supernova, and collapses into a neutron star, it retains most of its angular momentum. Since it has only a tiny fraction of its parent's radius (and therefore its moment of inertia is sharply reduced), a neutron star is formed with very high rotation speed, and then gradually slows down. Neutron stars are known to have rotation periods between about 1.4 ms to 30 seconds. The neutron star's density also gives it very high surface gravity, up to 71012 m/s2 with typical values of a few 1012 m/s2 (that is more than 1011 times of that of Earth). One measure of such immense gravity is the fact that neutron stars have an escape v elocity of around 100,000 km/s, about a third the speed of light. Matter falling onto the surface of a neutron star would be accelerated to tremendous speed by the star's gravity. The force of impact would likely destroy the object's component atoms, rendering all its matter identical, in most respects, to the rest of the star.

Structure
Current understanding of the structure of neutron stars is defined by existing mathematical models, but it might be possible to infer through studies of neutron-star oscillations. Similar to asteroseismology for ordinary stars, the inner structure might be derived by analyzing observed frequency spectra of stellar oscillations.

On the basis of current models, the matter at the surface of a neutron star is composed of ordinary atomic nuclei crushed into a solid lattice with a sea of electrons flowing through the gaps between them. It is possible that the nuclei at the surface are iron, due to iron's high binding energy per nucleon.It is also possible that heavy element cores, such as iron, simply drown beneath the surface, leaving only light nuclei like helium and hydrogen cores.If the surface temperature exceeds 106 kelvin (as in the case of a young pulsar), the surface should be fluid instead of the solid phase observed in cooler neutron stars (temperature <106 kelvins).

Cross-section of neutron star. Densities are in terms of 0 the saturation nuclear matter density, where nucleons begin to touch.

The "atmosphere" of the star is roughly one meter thick, and its dynamic is fully controlled by the star's magnetic field. Below the atmosphere one encounters a solid "crust". This crust is extremely hard and very smooth (with maximum surface irregularities of ~5 mm), because of the extreme gravitational field. Proceeding inward, one encounters nuclei with ever increasing numbers of neutrons; such nuclei would decay quickly on Earth, but are kept stable by tremendous pressures. Proceeding deeper, one comes to a point called neutron drip where neutrons leak out of nuclei and become free neutrons. In this region, there are nuclei, free electrons, and free neutrons. The nuclei become smaller and smaller until the core is reached, by definition the point where they disappear altogether. The composition of the superdense matter in the core remains uncertain. One model describes the cor e as superfluid neutron-degenerate matter (mostly neutrons, with some protons and electrons). More exotic forms of matter are possible, including degenerate strange matter (containing strange quarks in addition to up and down quarks), matter containing high-energy pions and kaons in addition to neutrons,or ultra-dense quark-degenerate matter.

Overview
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape.The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that marks the point of no return. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.Quantum mechanics predicts that black holes emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature is inversely proportional to the mass of the black hole, making it difficult to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass or greater. Objects whose gravity field is too strong for light to escape were first considered in the 18th century by John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace. The first modern solution of general relativity that would characterize a black hole was found by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, although its interpretation as a region of space from which nothing can escape was not fully appreciated for another four decades. Lo ng considered a mathematical curiosity, it was during the 1960s that theoretical work showed black holes were a generic prediction of general relativity. The discovery of neutron stars sparked interest in gravitationally collapsed compact objects as a possible astrophysical reality. Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when massive stars collapse in a supernova at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. By absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses may be formed. Despite its invisible interior, the presence of a black hole can be inferred through its interaction with other matter. Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates in binary systems, by studying their interaction with their companion stars. There is growing consensus that supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies. In particular, there is strong e vidence of a black hole of more than 4 million solar masses at the center of our Milky Way.

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. 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 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, the ADM mass, far away from the black hole. 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 o f 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 resistancethe membrane paradigm. This is different from other field theories like 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 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.

Physical Properties
The simplest black holes have mass but neither electric charge nor angular momentum. These black holes are often referred to as Schwarzschild black holes after Karl Schwarzschild who discovered this solution in 1916.According to Birkhoff's theorem, it is the only vacuum solution that is spherically symmetric. 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 a black hole's horizon; far away, the external gravitational field is identical to that of any other body of the same mass. Solutions describing more general black holes also exist. Charged black holes are described by the ReissnerNordstrm metric, while the Kerr metric describes a rotating black hole. The most general stationary black hole solution known is the KerrNewman 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. Black holes saturating this inequality are called extremal. Solutions of Einstein's equations that violate this inequality exist, but they do not possess an event horizon. These solutions have so-called naked singularities that can be observed from the outside, and hence are

deemed unphysical. The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities, when they are created through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter. This is supported by numerical simulations. Due to the relatively large strength of the electromagnetic force, bl ack 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. The black-hole candidate binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105 appears to have an angular momentum near the maximum allowed value. Black holes are commonly classified according to their mass, independent of angular momentum J or electric charge Q.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.

Types Of Black Holes:

1) Schwarzchild Black Holes : A Schwarzschild black hole or static black hole is a black hole that has no charge or angular momentum. A Schwarzschild black hole has a Schwarzschild metric, and cannot be distinguished from any other Schwarzschild black hole except by its mass. 2) ReissnerNordstrm Black Holes : These are the charged black holes and differ from the former in having two horizons the event horizon and an internal Cauchy horizon. 3) Kerr Black Holes : The Kerr metric is often used to describe rotating black holes, which exhibit even more exotic phenomena. Such black holes have different surfaces where the metric appears to have a singularity; the size and shape of these surfaces depends on the black hole's mass and angular momentum.

In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. In layman's terms it is defined as "the point of no return" i.e. the point at which the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible. The most common case of an event horizon is that surrounding a black hole. Light emitted from beyond the horizon can never reach the observer. Likewise, any object approaching the horizon from the observer's side appears to slow down and never quite pass through the horizon, with its image becoming more and more redshifted as time elapses. The traveling object, however, experiences no strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the horizon in a finite amount of proper time. More specific types of horizon include the related but distinct absolute and apparent horizons found around a black hole. Still other distinct notions include the Cauchy and Killing horizon; the photon spheres and ergospheres of the Kerr solution; particle and cosmological horizons relevant to cosmology; and isolated and dynamical horizons important in current black hole research.

Event Horizon of a black hole:

One of the most well-known examples of an event horizon derives from general relativity's description of a black hole, a celestial object so dense that no nearby matter or radiation can escape its gravitational field. Often, this is described as the boundary within which the black hole's escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. However, a more accurate description is that within this horizon, all lightlike paths (paths that light could take) and hence all paths in the forward light cones of particles within the horizon, are warped so as to fall farther into the hole. Once a particle is inside the horizon, moving into the hole is as inevitable as moving forward in time, and can actually be thought of as equivalent to doing so, depending on the spacetime coordinate system used. The surface at the Schwarzschild radius acts as an event horizon in a non-rotating body that fits inside this radius (although a rotating black hole operates slightly differently). The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to its mass. Theoretically, any amount of matter will become a black hole if compressed into a space that fits within its corresponding Schwarzschild radius. For the mass of the Sun this radius is approximately 3 kilometers and for the Earth it is about 9 mil limeters. In practice, however, neither the Earth nor the Sun has the necessary mass and therefore the necessary gravitational force, to overcome electron and neutron degeneracy pressure. The minimal mass required for a star to be able to collapse beyond these pressures is the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, which is approximately three solar masses. Black hole event horizons are especially noteworthy for three reasons. First, there are many examples near enough to study. Second, black holes tend to pull in matter from their environment, which provides examples where matter about to pass through an event horizon is expected to be observable. Third, the description of black holes given by general relativity is known to be an approximation and it is expected that quantum gravity effects become significant in the vicinity of the event horizon. This allows

observations of matter in the vicinity of a black hole's event horizon to be used to indirectly study general relativity and proposed extensions to it.

Far away from the black hole a particle can move in any direction. It is only restricted by the speed of light.

Closer to the black hole spacetime starts to deform. In some convenient coordinate systems, there are more paths going towards the black hole than paths moving away.

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.

Particle Horizon of the observable universe:

The particle horizon of the observable universe is the boundary that represents the maximum distance at which events can currently be observed. For events beyond that distance, light has not had time to reach our location, even if it were emitted at the time the universe began. How the particle horizon changes with time depends on the nature of the expansion of the universe. If the expansion has certain characteristics, there are parts of the universe that will never be observable, no matter how long the observer waits for light from those regions to arrive. The boundary past which events cannot ever be observed is an event horizon, and it represents the maximum extent of the particle horizon.

Apparent horizon of an accelerated particle:

If a particle is moving at a constant velocity in a non-expanding universe free of gravitational fields, any event that occurs in that universe will eventually be observable by the particle, because the forward light cones from these events intersect the particle's world line. On the other hand, if the particle is accelerating, in some situations light cones from some events never intersect the particle's world line. Under these conditions, an apparent horizon is present in the particle's (accelerating) reference frame, representing a boundary beyond which events are unobservable. For example, this occurs with a uniformly accelerated particle. A space -time diagram of this situation is shown in the figure to the right. As the particle accelerates, it approaches, but never reaches, the speed of light with respect to its original reference frame. On the space-time diagram, its path is a hyperbola, which asymptotically approaches a 45 degree line (the path of a light ray). An event whose light cone's edge is this asymptote or is farther away than this asymptote can never be observed by the accelerating particle. In the particle's reference frame, there appears to be a boundary behind it from which no signals can escape (an apparent horizon). While approximations of this type of situation can occur in the real world ( in particle accelerators, for example), a true event horizon is never present, as the particle must be accelerated indefinitely (requiring arbitrarily large amounts of energy and an arbitrarily large apparatus).

Interacting with an event horizon:

A misconception concerning event horizons, especially black hole event horizons, is that they represent an immutable surface that destroys objects that approach them. In practice, all event horizons appear to be some distance away from any observer and objects sent towards an event horizon never appear to cross it from the sending observer's point of view (as the horizon-crossing event's light cone never intersects the observer's world line). Attempting to make an object approaching the horizon remain stationary with respect to an observer requires applying a force whose magnitude increases unbounded (becoming infinite) the closer it gets. For the case of a horizon perceived by a uniformly accelerating observer in empty space, the horizon seems to remain a fixed distance from the observer no matter how its surroundings move. Varying the observer's acceleration may cause the horizon to appear to move over time, or may prevent an event horizon from existing, depending on the acceleration function chosen. The observer ne ver touches the horizon and never passes a location where it appeared to be. For the case of a horizon perceived by an occupant of a De Sitter Universe, the horizon always appears to be a fixed distance away for a non-accelerating observer. It is never contacted, even by an accelerating observer. For the case of the horizon around a black hole, observers stationary with respect to a distant object will all agree on where the horizon is. While this seems to allow an observer lowered towards the hole on a rope (or rod) to contact the horizon, in practice this cannot be done. The proper distance to the horizon

is finite, so the length of rope needed would be finite as well, but if the rope was lowered slowly (so that each point on the rope was approximately at rest in Schwarzschild coordinates), the proper acceleration (G-force) experienced by points on the rope closer and closer to the horizon would approach infinity, so the rope would be torn apart. If the rope is lowered quickly (perhaps even in freefall), th en indeed the observer at the bottom of the rope can touch and even cross the event horizon. But once this happens it is impossible to pull the bottom of rope back out of the event horizon, since if the rope is pulled taut, the forces along the rope increase without bound as they approach the event horizon and at some point the rope must break. Furthermore, the break must occur not at the event horizon, but at a point where the second observer can observe it. An observer crossing a black hole event horizon can calculate the moment they've crossed it, but will not actually see or feel anything special happen at that moment. In terms of visual appearance, observers who fall into the hole perceive the black region constituting the horizon as lying at some apparent distance below them, and never experience crossing this visual horizon. Other objects that had entered the horizon along the same radial path but at an earlier time would appear below the observer but still above the visual position of the horizon, and if they had fallen in recently enough the observer could exchange messages with them before either one was destroyed by the gravitational singularity.Increasing tidal forces (and eventual impact with the hole's singularity) are the only locally noticeable effects.

The Schwarzschild radius (sometimes historically referred to as the gravitational radius) is the distance from the center of an object such that, if all the mass of the object were compressed within that sphere, the escape speed from the surface would equal the speed of light. Once a stellar remnant collapses within this radius, light cannot escape and the object is no longer visible. It is a characteristic radius associated with every quantity of mass. In 1915, Karl Schwarzschild obtained an exact solution to Einstein's field equations for the gravitational field outside a non-rotating, spherically symmetric body (see Schwarzschild metric). Using the definition M=Gm/c2 , the solution contained a term of the form 1/2M-r; where the value of r making this term singular has come to be known as the Schwarzschild radius. The physical significance of this singularity, and whether this singularity could ever occur in nature, was debated for many decades; a general acceptance of the possibility of a black hole did not occur until the second half of the 20th century. The Schwarzschild radius of an object is proportional to the mass. Accordingly, the Sun has a Schwarzschild radius of approximately 3.0 km (1.86 miles) while the Earth's is only about 9.0 mm, the size of a peanut. The observable universe's mass has Schwarzschild radius of approximately 10 billion light years. An object whose radius is smaller than its Schwarzschild radius is called a black hole. The surface at the Schwarzschild radius acts as an event horizon in a non-rotating body. (A rotating black hole operates slightly differently.) Neither light nor particles can escape through this surface from the region inside, hence the name "black hole". The Schwarzschild radius of the (currently hypothesized) supermassive black hole at our Galactic Center would be approximately 13.3 million kilometres.

Classification of Schwarzschild radius:

Supermassive black hole If one accumulates matter at normal density (1 g/cm3, for example, the density of water) up to about 150,000,000 times the mass of the Sun, such an accumulation will fall inside its own Schwarzschild radius and thus it would be a supermassive black hole of 150,000,000 solar masses. (Supermassive black holes up to 18 billion solar masses have been observed.) The supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy (4.5 0.4 million solar masses) constitutes observationally the most convincing evidence for the existence of black holes in general. It is thought that large black holes like these don't form directly in one collapse of a cluster of stars. Instead they may start as a stellar-sized black hole and grow larger by the accretion of matter and other black holes. An empirical correlation between the size of supermassive black holes and the stellar velocity dispersion of a galaxy bulge is called the M-sigma relation.

Stellar black hole If one accumulates matter at nuclear density (the density of the nucleus of an atom, about 1018 kg/m3; neutron stars also reach this density), such an accumulation would fall within its own Schwarzschild radius at about 3 solar masses and thus would be a stellar black hole. Primordial black hole Conversely, a small mass has an extremely small Schwarzschild radius. A mass similar to Mount Everest has a Schwarzschild radius smaller than a nanometre. Its average density at that size would be so high that no known mechanism could form such extremely compact objects. Such black holes might possibly be formed in an early stage of the evolution of the universe, just after the Big Bang, when densities were extremely high. Therefore these hypothetical miniature black holes are called primordial black holes.

At the center of a black hole as described by general relativity lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite. 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 l ying in the plane of rotation. 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. The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density. Observers falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e. non-rotating and no charges) cannot avoid being carried into the singularity, once they cross the event horizon. They can prolong the experience by accelerating away to slow their descent, but only up to a point; after attaining a certain ideal velocity, it is best to free fall the rest of the way. 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 b een torn apart by the growing tidal forces in a process sometimes referred to as spaghettification or the noodle effect. In the case of a charged (ReissnerNordstrm) 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.The possibility of traveling to another universe is however only theoretical, since any perturbati on will destroy this possibility. 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. It is expected that none of these peculiar effects would survive in a proper quantum mechanical treatment of rotating and charged black holes. The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory. 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. A gravitational singularity or spacetime singularity is a location where the quantities that are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system. These quantities are the scalar invariant curvatures of spacetime, which includes a measure of the density of matter. For the purposes of proving the PenroseHawking singularity theorems, a spacetime with a singularity is defined to be one that contains geodesics that cannot be extended in a smooth manner. The end of such a geodesic is considered to be the singularity. This is a different definition, useful for proving theorems.

The two most important types of spacetime singularities are curvature singularities and conical singularities. Singularities can also be divided according to whether they are covered by an event horizon or not (naked singularities). According to a naive interpretation of general relativity that ignores quantum mechanics, the initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, was a singularity. Both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics break down in describing the Big Bang, but in general QM does not permit particles to inhabit a space smaller than their wavelengths. Another type of singularity predicted by general relativity is inside a black hole: any star collapsing beyond a certain point (the Schwarzschild radius) would form a black hole, inside which a singularity (covered by an event horizon) would be formed, as all the matter would flow into a certain point (or a circular line, if the black hole is rotating). This is again according to General Relativity without Quantum Mechanics, which fo rbids wavelike particles entering a space smaller than their wavelength. These hypothetical singularities are also known as curvature singularities.

Interpretations:
Many theories in physics have mathematical singularities of one kind or another. Equations for these physical theories predict that the rate of change of some quantity becomes infinite or increases without limit. This is generally a sign for a missing piece in the theory, as in the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, renormalization, and instability of a hydrogen atom predicted by the Larmor Formula. In supersymmetry, a singularity in the moduli space happens usually when there are additional massless degrees of freedom in that certain point. Similarly, it is thought that singularities in spacetime often mean that there are additional degrees of freedom that exist only within the vicinity of the singularity. The same fields related to the whole spacetime, also exist; for example, the electromagnetic field. In known examples of string theory, the latter degrees of freedom are related to closed strings, while the degrees of freedom are "stuck" to the singularity and related either to open strings or to the twisted sector of an orbifold.

Some theories, such as the theory of Loop quantum gravity suggest that si ngularities may not exist. The idea is that due to quantum gravity effects, there is a minimum distance beyond which the force of gravity no longer continues to increase as the distance between the masses become shorter.

Types
Curvature Solutions to the equations of general relativity or another theory of gravity (such as supergravity), often result in encountering points where the metric blows up to infinity. However, many of these points are in fact completely regular. Moreover, the infinities are merely a result of using an inappropriate coordinate system at this point. Thus, in order to test whether there is a singularity at a certain point, one must check whether at this point diffeomorphism invariant quantities (i.e. scalars) become infinite.

Such quantities are the same in every coordinate system, so these infinities will not "go away" by a change of coordinates. An example is the Schwarzschild solution that describes a non-rotating, uncharged black hole. In coordinate systems convenient for working in regions far away from the black hole, a part of the metric becomes infinite at the event horizon. However, spacetime at the event horizon is regular. The regularity becomes evident when changing to another coordinate system (such as the Kruskal coordinates), where the metric is perfectly smooth. On the other hand, in the center of the black hole, where the metric becomes infinite as well, the solutions suggest singularity exists. The existence of the singularity can be verified by noting that the Kretschmann scalar or square of the Riemann tensor, RR, which is diffeomorphism invariant, is infinite. While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a "point singularity". In a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), defined as a "ring singularity". Such a singularity may also theoretically become a wormhole. More generally, a spacetime is considered singular if it is geodesically incomplete, meaning that there are freely-falling particles whose motion cannot be determined at a finite time at the point of reaching the singularity. For example, any observer below the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole would fall into its center within a finite period of time. The classical version of the Big Bang cosmological model of the universe contains a causal singularity at the start of time (t=0), where all time -like geodesics have no extensions into the past. Extrapolating backward to this hypothetical time 0 results in a universe of size 0 in all spatial dimensions, infinite density, infinite temperature, and infinite space -time curvature. Conical A conical singularity occurs when there is a point where the limit of every diffeomorphism invariant quantity is finite. In which case, spacetime is not smooth at the point of the limit itself. Thus, spacetime looks like a cone around this point, where the singularity is located at the tip of the cone. The metric can be finite everywhere if a suitable coordinate system is used. An example of such a conical singularity is a cosmic string. Naked Until the early 1990s, it was widely believed that general relativity hides every singularity behind an event horizon, making naked singularities impossible. This is referred to as the cosmic censorship hypothesis. However, in 1991 Shapiro and Teukolsky performed computer simulations of a rotating plane of dust that indicated that general relativity might allow for "naked" singularities. What these objects would actually look like in such a model is unknown. Nor is it known whether singularities would still arise if the simplifying assumptions used to make the simulation were removed.

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.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. As photons travel near the event horizon of a black hole they can escape being pulled in by the gravity of a black hole by traveling at a nearly vertical direction known as an exit cone. A photon on the boundary of this cone will not completely escape the gravity of the black hole. Instead it orbits the black hole. These orbits are not stable. The photon sphere is located farther from the center of a black hole than the event horizon and ergosphere. Within a photon sphere it is possible to imagine a photon that starts at the back of your head and orbits around a black hole only then be seen by your eyes. For non -rotating black holes, the photon sphere is a sphere of radius 3/2 Rs, where Rs denotes the Schwarzschild radius (the radius of the event horizon) - see below for a derivation of this result. No unaccelerated orbit with a semi -major axis less than this distance is possible, but within the photon sphere, a constant acceleration w ill allow a spacecraft or probe to hover above the event horizon. A rotating black hole has two photon spheres. As a black hole rotates, it drags space with it. The photon sphere that is closer to the black hole is moving in the same direction as the rotation, whereas the photon sphere further away is moving against it. The greater the angular velocity of the rotation of a black hole the greater distance between the two photon spheres. Because the black hole has an axis of rotation this only holds true if approaching the black hole in the direction of the equator. If approaching at a different angle, such as one from the poles of the black hole to the equator, there is only one photon sphere. This is because approaching at this angle the possibility of trave ling with or against the rotation does not exist.

The ergosphere is a region located outside a rotating black hole. Its name is derived from the Greek word ergon, which means work. It received this name because it is theoretically possible to extract energy and mass from the black hole in this region. The ergosphere is ellipsoidal in shape and is situated so that at the poles of a rotating black hole it touches the event horizon and stretches out to a distance that is equal to the radius of the event horizon. Within the ergosphere, spacetime is dragged along in the direction of the rotation of the black hole at a speed greater than the local speed of light in relation to the rest of the universe. This process is known as the Lense-Thiring effect or frame-dragging. Because of this dragging effect, objects within the ergosphere are not stationary with respect to the rest of the universe unless they travel faster than the speed of light, which is impossible based on the laws of physics. But in truth, particles are not moving with that speed, it is the spacetime of the ergosphere that moves with a speed higher than the speed of light. A suspended plumb, held stationary outside the ergosphere, will experience infinite/diverging radial pull as it approaches the static limit. At some point it will start to fall, resulting in gravitomagnetically induced spinward motion. Another result of this dragging of space is the existence of negative energies within the ergosphere. The outer limit of the ergosphere is called the stationary limit or static limit. At the stationary limit, objects moving counter spinward at the speed of light are stationary with respect to the rest of the universe. This is because the space here is being dragged at exactly the speed of light relative to the rest of space. Outside this limit space is still dragged, but at a rate less than the speed of light. Since the ergosphere is outside the event horizon, it is sti ll possible for objects to escape from the gravitational pull of the black hole. An object can gain energy by entering the black holes rotation and then escaping from it, thus taking some of the black hole's energy with it. This process of removing energy from a rotating black hole was proposed by the mathematician Roger Penrose in 1969, and is called the Penrose process. The theoretical maximum of possible energy extraction is 29% of the total energy of a rotating black hole. When this energy is removed, the black hole loses its spin and the ergosphere no longer exists. This process is considered a possible explanation for a source of energy of such energetic phenomena as gamma ray bursts. Results from computer models show that the Penrose process is capable of producing the high energy particles that are observed being emitted from quasars and other active galactic nuclei.

The two surfaces on which the Kerr metric appears to have singularities; the inner surface is the spherical event horizon, whereas the outer surface is an oblate spheroid. The ergosphere lies between these two surfaces; within this volume, the purely temporal component gtt is negative, i.e., acts like a purely spatial metric component. Consequently, particles within this ergosphere must co-rotate with the inner mass, if they are to retain their time-like character.

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. 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, 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, Penrose proved that a singularity wil l form somewhere inside it.Shortly afterwards, 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. 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:
Gravitational collapse is the inward fall of a body due to the influence of its own gravity. In any stable body, this gravitational force is counterbalanced by the internal pressure of the body, in the opposite direction to the force of gravity (gravity being generally orientated to the center of mass). If the inwards pointing gravitational force, however, is stronger than the total combination of the outward pointing forces, the equilibrium becomes unbalanced and a collapse occurs until the internal pressure increases above that of the gravitational force and a equilibrium is once again attained (the exception being black holes). Because gravity is comparatively weak compared to other fundamental forces, gravitational collapse is usually associated with very massive bodies or collections of bodies, such as stars (including collapsed stars such as supernovae, neutron stars and black holes) and massive collections of stars such as globular clusters and galaxies. Gravitational collapse is at the heart of structure formation in the universe. An initial smooth distribution of matter will eventually collapse and cause a hierarchy of structures, such as clusters of galaxies, stellar groups, stars and planets. For example, a star is born through the gradual gravitational collapse of a cloud of interstellar matter. The compression caused by the collapse raises the temperature until nuclear fuel reignites in the center of the star and the collapse comes to a halt. The thermal pressure gradient (leading to expansion) compensates the gravity (leading to compression) and a star is in dynamical equilibrium between these two forces. Gravitational collapse of a star occurs at the end of its lifetime, also called the death of the star. When all stellar energy sources are exhausted, the star will undergo a gravitational collapse. In this sense a star

is in a "temporary" equilibrium state between a gravitational collapse at stellar birth and a further gravitational collapse at stellar death. The end states are called compact stars. The types of compact stars are: White dwarfs, in which gravity is opposed by electron degeneracy pressure; Neutron stars, in which gravity is opposed by neutron degeneracy pressure and short -range repulsive neutron-neutron interactions mediated by the strong force; Black holes, in which the physics at the center is unknown. The collapse to a white dwarf takes place over tens of thousands of years, while the star blows off its outer envelope to form a planetary nebula. If it has a companion star, a white dwarf-sized object can accrete matter from a companion star until it reaches the Chandrasekhar limit, at which point gravitational collapse takes over again. While it might seem that the white dwarf might collapse to the next stage (neutron star), they instead undergo runaway carbon fusion, blowing completely apart in a Type Ia supernova. Neutron stars are formed by gravitational collapse of larger stars, the remnant of other types of supernova. Even more massive stars, above the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit cannot find a new dynamical equilibrium with any known force opposing gravity. Hence, the collapse continues with nothing to stop it. Once it collapses to within its Schwarzschild radius, not even light can escape from the star, and hence it becomes a black hole. According to theories, at some point later the collapsing object will reach the maximum possible energy density for a certain volume of space or the Planck density (as there is nothing that can stop it), where the known laws of gravity cease to be valid. There are competing theories as to what occurs at this point, but it can no longer really be considered gravitational collapse at that stage. It might be thought that a sufficiently large neutron star could exist inside its Schwarzschild radius and appear like a black hole without having all the mass compressed to a singularity at the center; however, this is a misconception. Within the event horizon, matter would have to move outwards faster than the speed of light in order to remain stable and avoid collapsing to the center. No physical force can therefore prevent the star from collapsing to a singularity (at least within the currently understood framework of general relativity; this doesnt hold for the Einstein-Yang-Mills-Dirac system). A model for nonspherical collapse in general relativity with emission of matter and gravitati onal waves was presented in.

NGC 6745 produces material densities sufficiently extreme as to trigger star formation through gravitational collapse

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 that 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. Primordial black holes could thus account for the creation of any type of black hole.

High-energy collisions:
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. 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 = c/G 1.21019 GeV/c2 2.2108 kg), where quantum effects are expected to make the theory of general relativity break down completely. 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, m aybe even as low as 1 TeV/c2 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. Even if such micro black holes should be formed in these collisions, it is expected that they would evaporate in about 1025 seconds , posing no threat to Earth.

A simulated event in the CMS detector, a collision in which a micro black hole may be created.

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. A similar process has been suggested for the formation of intermediate -mass black holes in globular clusters. 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 coagulati on of many smaller objects. The process has also been proposed as the origin of some intermediate-mass black holes.

Hawking radiation is a thermal radiation with a black body spectrum predicted to be emitted by black holes due to quantum effects. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who provided a theoretical argument for its existence in 1974, and sometimes also after the physicist Jacob Bekenstein who predicted that black holes should have a finite, non-zero temperature and entropy. Hawking's work followed his visit to Moscow in 1973 where Soviet scientists Yakov Zeldovich and Alexander Starobinsky showed him that according to the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle, rotating black holes should create and emit particles. The Hawking radiation process reduces the mass and the energy of the black hole and is therefore also known as black hole evaporation. Because Hawking radiation allows black holes to lose mass and energy, black holes that lose more matter than they gain through other means are expected to dissipate, shrink, and ultimately vanish. Smaller micro black holes (MBHs) are predicted to be larger net emitters of radiation than larger black holes; thus, they tend to shrink and dissipate faster. Hawking's analysis became the first convincing insight into a possible theory of quantum gravity. In September 2010, a signal which is closely related to black hole Hawking radiation was claimed to have been observed in a laboratory experiment involving optical light pulses, however the results re main unrepeated and debated. Other projects have been launched to seek this radiation within the framework of analogue gravity. In June 2008, NASA launched the GLAST satellite, which will search for the terminal gamma-ray flashes expected from evaporating primordial black holes. In the very unlikely event that speculative large extra dimension theories are correct, CERN's Large Hadron Collider may be able to create micro black holes and observe their evaporation. Black holes are sites of immense gravitational attraction. Classically, the gravitation is so powerful that nothing, not even electromagnetic radiation, can escape from the black hole. It is yet unknown how gravity can be incorporated into quantum mechanics, but nevertheless far from the black hole the gravitational effects can be weak enough for calculations to be reliably performed in the framework of quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Hawking showed that quantum effects allow black holes to emit exact black body radiation, which is the average thermal radiation emitted by an idealized thermal source known as a black body. The electromagnetic radiation is as if it were emitted by a black body with a temperature that is inversely proportional to the black hole's mass. Physical insight on the process may be gained by imagining that particle -antiparticle radiation is emitted from just beyond the event horizon. This radiation does not come directly from the black hole itself, but rather is a result of virtual particles being "boosted" by the black hole's gravitation into becoming real particles. A slightly more precise, but still much simplified, view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the

black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from th e black hole). By this process, the black hole loses mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle. In another model, the process is a quantum tunneling effect, whereby particle-antiparticle pairs will form from the vacuum, and one will tunnel outside the event horizon. An important difference between the black hole radiation as computed by Hawking and thermal radiation emitted from a black body is that the latter is statistical in nature, and only its average satisfies what is known as Planck's law of black body radiation, while the former fits the data better. Thus thermal radiation contains information about the body that emitted it, while Hawking radiation seems to contain no such information, and depends only on the mass, angular momentum, and charge of the black hole (the no-hair theorem). This leads to the black hole information paradox. However, according to the conjectured gauge-gravity duality (also known as the AdS/CFT correspondence), black holes in certain cases (and perhaps in general) are equivalent to solutions of quantum field theory at a non-zero temperature. This means that no information loss is expected in black holes (since no such loss exists in the quantum field theory), and the radiation emitted by a black hole is probably the usual thermal radiation. If this is correct, then Hawking's original calculation should be corrected, though it is not known how (see below). As an example, a black hole of one solar mass has a temperature of only 60 nanokelvins; in fact, such a black hole would absorb far more cosmic microwave background radiation than it emits. A black hole of 4.5 1022 kg (about the mass of the Moon) would be in equilibrium at 2.7 kelvin, absorbing as much radiation as it emits. Yet smaller primordial black holes would emit more than they absorb, and thereby lose mass.

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.NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 will continue the search for these flashes. 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:

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. 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. (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. 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. It has also been suggested that some ultraluminous X-ray sources may be the accretion disks of intermediate- mass black holes.

X Ray Binaries:

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 TolmanOppenheimerVolkoff 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. The first strong candidate for a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in this way by Charles Thomas Bolton and Louise Webster and Paul Murdin in 1972. Some doubt, however, remained due to the uncertainties resultant from the companion star being much heavier than the candidate black hole. Currently, better candidates for black holes are found in a class of X-ray binaries called soft X-ray transients. 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 1050 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. 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.

Quasi-periodic oscillations:
The X-ray emission from accretion disks sometimes flickers at 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.

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.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*. A gravitational lens refers to a distribution of matter (such as a cluster of galaxies) between a distant source (a background galaxy) and an observer, that is capable of bending (lensing) the light from the source, as it travels towards the observer. This effect is known as gravitational lensing and is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Although Orest Chwolson is credited as being the first to discuss the effect in print in 1924, the effect is more commonly associated with Einstein, who published a more famous article on the subject in 1936. Fritz Zwicky posited in 1937 that the effect could allow galaxy clusters to act as gravitational lenses. It was not until 1979 that this effect was confirmed by observation of the so-called "Twin QSO" SBS 0957+561. Spacetime around a massive object (such as a galaxy cluster or a black hole) is curved, and as a result light rays from a background source (such as a galaxy) propagating through spacetime are bent. The lensing effect can magnify and distort the image of the background source. Unlike an optical lens, maximum 'bending' occurs closest to, and minimum 'bending' furthest from, the center of a gravitational lens. Consequently, a gravitational lens has no single focal point, but a focal line instead. If the (light) source, the massive lensing object, and the observer lie in a straight line, the original light source will appear as a ring around the massive lensing object. If there is any misalignment the observer will see an arc segment instead. This phenomenon was first mentioned in 1924 by the St. Petersburg physicist Orest Chwolson, and quantified by Albert Einstein in 1936. It is usually referred to in the literature as an Einstein ring, since Chwolson did not concern himself with the flux or radius of the ring image. More commonly, where the lensing mass is complex (such as galaxy groups and clusters) and does not cause a spherical distortion of spacetime, the source will resemble partial arcs scattered around the lens. The observer may then see multiple distorted images of the same source; the number and shape of these depending upon the relative positions of the source, lens, and observer, and the shape of the gravitational well of the lensing object.

Bending light around a massive object from a distant source. The orange arrows show the apparent position of the background source. The white arrows show the path of the light from the true position of the source

There are three classes of gravitational lensing: 1. Strong lensing: where there are easily visible distortions such as the formation of Einstein rings, arcs, and multiple images. 2. Weak lensing: where the distortions of background sources are much smaller and can only be detected by analyzing large numbers of sources to find coherent distortions of only a few percent. The lensing shows up statistically as a preferred stretching of the background objects perpendicular to the direction to the center of the lens. By measuring the shapes and orientations of large numbers of distant galaxies, their orientations can be averaged to measure the shear of the lensing field in any region. This, in turn, can be used to reconstruct the mass distribution in the area: in particular, the background distribution of dark matter can be reconstructed. Since galaxies are intrinsically elliptical and the weak gravitational lensing signal is small, a very large number of galaxies must be used in these surveys. These weak lensing surveys must carefully avoid a number of important sources of systematic error: the intrinsic shape of galaxies, the tendency of a camera's point spread function to distort the shape of a galaxy and the tendency of atmospheric seeing to distort images must be understood and carefully

accounted for. The results of these surveys are important for cosmological parameter estimation, to better understand and improve upon the Lambda-CDM model, and to provide a consistency check on other cosmological observations. They may also provide an important future constraint on dark energy. 3. Microlensing: where no distortion in shape can be seen but the amount of light received from a background object changes in time. The lensing object may be stars in the Milky Way in one typical case, with the background source being stars in a remote galaxy, or, in another case, an even more distant quasar. The effect is small, such that (in the case of strong lensing) even a galaxy with a mass more than 100 billion times that of the sun will produce multiple images separated by onl y a few arcseconds. Galaxy clusters can produce separations of several arcminutes. In both cases the galaxies and sources are quite distant, many hundreds of megaparsecs away from our Galaxy. Gravitational lenses act equally on all kinds of electromagnetic radiation, not just visible light. Weak lensing effects are being studied for the cosmic microwave background as well as galaxy surveys. Strong lenses have been observed in radio and x-ray regimes as well. If a strong lens produces multiple images, there will be a relative time delay between two paths: that is, in one image the lensed object will be observed before the other image.

In the formation known as Einstein's Cross, four images of the same distant quasar appear around a foreground galaxy due to strong gravitational lensing