Space & Astronomy

Are black holes as we know them impossible ?

By T.K. Randall
September 27, 2014

Image: Black Hole - Large Magellanic Cloud
Credit: Alain r / CC BY-SA 2.5 (adapted) A black hole typically forms when a collapsing star of sufficient mass produces an area of spacetime with a gravitational pull so great that not even light can escape from it.

Now physics professor Laura Mersini-Houghton has called in to question the very nature of black holes thanks to new research suggesting that our conventional view of these phenomena and how they work may actually be fundamentally wrong.When a star dies, she argues, it loses too much of its mass to sustain sufficient density to collapse and form a singularity. On this basis the idea of a black hole as we know it may not even exist at all.

If this turns out to be true that it could also mean that scientists will need to rewrite the book on our understanding of the Big Bang which was also thought to have started within a singularity.

"I'm still not over the shock," said Prof Mersini-Houghton. "We've been studying this problem for a more than 50 years and this solution gives us a lot to think about."

Source: Tech Times

Tags: Big Bang, Black Holes