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Black holes are engines of chaos, bleeding radiation across the cosmos as they shovel the smeared guts of dead stars into their bottomless stomachs. But when it comes down to it, even the biggest of black holes appear to be relatively simple beasts.
Unlike every other star, planet, and rock in the Universe, everything you need to know about a quiet, solitary black hole can be written under three dot points: mass, angular momentum, and charge – at least, according to the metaphorically-named 'no-hair theorem'.
Once a glowing mass of star dust has collapsed into a point of unimaginable density, the formerly complex mix of elements vanishes into a pit of no return, effectively turning every black hole into the same thing. In fact, they can all be described by one short, simple equation called the Kerr solution.
'Hair' refers to all the other information about the matter that formed a black hole or is being sucked into it – according to our understanding, it should all flow down a one-way street past the black hole's event horizon, leaving no hair to connect the black hole's guts with the outside Universe.
But maybe we're being a little hasty. A team of researchers from the University of Southampton and University of Cambridge in the UK and The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) in Spain has identified circumstances under which black holes might become a little … hairy.
www.sciencealert.com
Unlike every other star, planet, and rock in the Universe, everything you need to know about a quiet, solitary black hole can be written under three dot points: mass, angular momentum, and charge – at least, according to the metaphorically-named 'no-hair theorem'.
Once a glowing mass of star dust has collapsed into a point of unimaginable density, the formerly complex mix of elements vanishes into a pit of no return, effectively turning every black hole into the same thing. In fact, they can all be described by one short, simple equation called the Kerr solution.
'Hair' refers to all the other information about the matter that formed a black hole or is being sucked into it – according to our understanding, it should all flow down a one-way street past the black hole's event horizon, leaving no hair to connect the black hole's guts with the outside Universe.
But maybe we're being a little hasty. A team of researchers from the University of Southampton and University of Cambridge in the UK and The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) in Spain has identified circumstances under which black holes might become a little … hairy.
Black Holes Might Not Be Quite as 'Simple' as We Thought, New Paper Suggests
Black holes are engines of chaos, bleeding radiation across the cosmos as they shovel the smeared guts of dead stars into their bottomless stomachs.
www.sciencealert.com
