![]() Those particles could be familiar or something new. According to the paper, Planck cores may emit particles (because there’s no event horizon, these black holes aren’t completely black). ![]() 15 to the preprint database arXiv, physicist Igor Nikitin at the Fraunhofer Institute for Scientific Algorithms and Computing in Germany takes the “radical singularity” idea and kicks it up a notch. For example, we can watch stars orbit the centers of the galaxies, and use their orbital speeds to calculate the total amount of mass in those galaxies. We can only determine its existence through its gravitational effects on normal, luminous matter. Like, for example, explaining the mystery of dark matter.ĭark matter makes up 85% of the mass of the universe, and yet it never interacts with light. And there might be some bonus side-effects. That’s a useful thing to do, because singularities need some serious out-of-the-box thinking. In other words, Planck cores are the physics equivalent of spitballing ideas. Radical problems require radical solutions, and so replacing “singularity” with “Planck core” isn’t all that far-fetched, even though the theory is barely more than a faint sketch of an outline, one without the physics or mathematics to confidently describe that kind of environment. Only extremely sensitive observations, which we do not yet have the technology for, would be able to tell the difference. But to outside observers, the gravitational pull would be so strong that it would look and act like an event horizon. With a Planck core, which wouldn’t be a singularity, a black hole would no longer host an event horizon - there would be no place where the gravitational pull exceeds the speed of light. This is called a Planck core, because the idea theorizes that the matter inside a black hole is compressed all the way down to the smallest possible scale, the Planck length, which is 1.6 * 10^ minus 35 meters. One theory of black hole singularities replaces those infinitely tiny points of infinitely compressed matter with something much more palatable: an incredibly tiny point of incredibly compressed matter. That means the current understanding of black holes will eventually need to be updated or replaced with something else that can explain what's at the center of a black hole.īut that doesn’t stop physicists from trying. The very property that defines a black hole - the singularity - seems to be physically impossible, because matter can’t actually collapse down to an infinitely tiny point. Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universeĪnd yet, mysteries remain at the very heart of black hole science. We’ve even taken a picture of a black hole’s "shadow" - the hole it carves out from the glow of surrounding gas. Physicists on Earth have heard the gravitational waves emitted when black holes collide. Astronomers have watched as the atmosphere of a star gets sucked into a black hole. These simple yet surprising statements have held up to decades of observations.
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