![]() (If the star isn’t quite massive enough, the core remnant is pushed outward by the Pauli exclusion principle and becomes a neutron star.) This is called a core-collapse supernova. If the star is massive enough, the collapsing core squeezes into such a dense ball that it forms an event horizon and becomes a black hole. The resulting compression of its gases triggers a catastrophic explosion, ejecting a fair amount of the gas to leave behind the stellar core, which becomes increasingly dense. Without the energy from the fusion, the star can no longer resist its own gravitational pull and collapses in on itself. The typical story of black hole formation (at least for stellar-mass black holes) goes something like this: A massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, and the fusion reaction keeping the star alive peters out. The quantum gravity predictions I describe in this post are not guaranteed or even likely to be true.) Stellar Collapse ![]() ( DISCLAIMER: I want to emphasize that, although the science in this post is peer-reviewed, it’s extremely speculative. Carlo Rovelli, one of the founders of loop quantum gravity. ![]() The conclusion is crazy, but the reasoning is surprisingly elegant. Carlo Rovelli, one of the founders of loop quantum gravity, recently proposed something crazy: Not only do black holes not really have event horizons, they eventually explode. That is, of course…if there actually is an event horizon, not just something that looks like one. Escape is simply forbidden by the laws of physics. I’m also ignoring the negligible amount of Hawking radiation that black holes theoretically produce.) Once you pass the event horizon of a black hole, you cannot ever escape. (Of course, as I’ve described before, black holes can glow very brightly, thanks to all the in-falling matter. Nothing can escape the gravitational pull of a black hole, not even light. It contains either a neutron star or a black hole… could that black hole someday explode? ( Image created using data from the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra space telescopes.) The Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A, all that remains of a star that ran out of fuel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |