N3O

Black Holes

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar pointed out, way back in 1934, that the

life-history of a star of small mass must be essentially different from that
of a star of large mass. Stars like the Sun, when they run out of their in-
ternal nuclear fuel, stabilize into smaller entities of about a thousand
kilometers in size, called white dwarfs. On the other hand, a star of
larger mass, beyond about 1.4 solar masses, cannot pass into this stage,
and as Chandrasekhar pointed out, ‘one is left speculating on other
possibilities’.
For decades, the question as to what is the final fate of a massive star
has remained unanswered. In recent years much research has focused
on this issue, which has become one of the most important unresolved
problems in astrophysics and cosmology today.
Large-mass stars, when they run out of their internal nuclear fuel,
undergo a continual gravitational collapse, which is a catastrophic
shrinkage of the star’s size under the pull of its own gravity. In this case,
exciting outcomes for the collapsing star are predicted by the general
theory of relativity. These have profound implications for fundamental
physics and cosmology. We aim to discuss these developments here.
A model of continual collapse for a massive star using the general
theory of relativity was constructed for the first time by Robert Op-
penheimer and Herbert Snyder in 1939, and by S. Datt in 1938 (OSD).
It was this calculation that gave rise to the concepts of black hole and
event horizon, even though these terms weren’t actually coined till the
1960s. We will discuss these developments here, and how they eventu-
ally led to many other themes in black hole physics in the later 1960s
and early 1970s, and formed the basis for several important astrophysical
applications of black holes in modern relativistic astrophysics.
Actually, the idea of a black hole is not new and is in fact natural
(Fig. 3.1). For example, consider a star and the particles or projectiles
escaping from it. It is a basic property of gravity that the heavier the
star is, the greater the pull of its gravity, and the greater the velocity an

The Story of Collapsing Stars. First Edition. Pankaj S. Joshi.

© Pankaj S. Joshi 2015. Published in 2015 by Oxford University Press.
42 Black Holes

Figure 3.1 Black hole, an artist’s conception.

object will need to escape from it. However, we know that the veloc-
ity of light is the maximum that any particle can approach. Therefore,
in principle, we can think of objects which are either so massive or so
compact that their escape velocity will be greater than that of light. In
that case, no material particle or even light rays will be able to escape
from the surface of such a body, which could be termed a ‘black hole’
for all practical purposes. In fact, Pierre-Simon Laplace alluded to such
a possibility way back in 1799.

Life of a Star
It would be appropriate to say that like human beings, stars also have
a certain life-cycle. They are born in gigantic clouds of dust and inter-
galactic material in the depths of space and time, in the faraway regions
of the Universe. Once they come into existence, they evolve and shine
for millions of years, and then eventually enter the phase of dissolution
and final extinction.
Most of the shining life of a star is essentially hydrogen burning
inside, fusing into helium, and later into heavier elements. Finally,
when all the star’s matter is converted to iron, no more nuclear
processes are possible within and no new internal energy is produced.
 Life of a Star 43

At this stage, the all-pervasive force of gravity takes over to determine

the star’s final evolution.
Earlier in its life-cycle, there is a balance between the force of gravity
that pulls the star’s matter toward its center, and the outward pres-
sures generated by the internal fusion processes. This balance keeps the
star stable, maintaining a normal life of shining and radiating light and
energy produced within. Once internal pressures subside, gravity takes
over and the star begins to contract and collapse in on itself.
It is now known that for a star of small enough mass, comparable
to that of the Sun or somewhat larger, the natural white dwarf stage
is an initial step toward the star’s eventual extinction. On the other
hand, a star of larger mass, more than about 1.4 times the mass of the
Sun, cannot pass into a white dwarf final state. Such stars, up to 3 to 5
solar masses in size, will settle into another stable configuration, which
is called a neutron star. However, for even more massive stars, grav-
ity predicts continual and eventual total collapse. What will be its final
fate? This is one of the most intriguing questions in modern astrophys-
ics and cosmology, with far-reaching consequences for fundamental
physics.
Stars are born in huge, faraway clouds of interstellar dust, mainly
when shockwaves, possibly generated by a supernova explosion else-
where, compress the matter together. Gravity then takes over and the
cloud shrinks further while its central temperatures rise. As the process
continues, at a certain stage nuclear burning is ignited within the core.
This is the birth of a star where the internal pressures generated by the
heat and light produced within resist any further contraction due to
gravity. In this case, a stable balance between the pressures generated
internally and the inward pull of gravity is finally reached.
There are star-forming regions in the Universe where conditions for
such processes to initiate are favorable and stars are continuously born
there, as we can observe by using the infra-red part of the light spec-
trum emitted from these regions. The stars born can be typically as
massive as our Sun, which is also a standard star, or a few times larger,
or even much more massive. Stars mainly burn their internal hydro-
gen, fusing it into helium atoms and releasing energy in the process.
Heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen are created in the process
and eventually this nuclear burning process stops or slows down when
much of the matter is converted to iron. Then the star cools and the in-
ternal pressures subside. Again, gravity, which is an ever-present force,
takes over and starts compressing the star inward.
44 Black Holes

When our Sun runs out of its internal fuel, its core will contract un-
der its own gravity, but it will be supported by a new quantum pressure
within created by very-fast-moving electrons, called the electron de-
generacy pressure. Such an object is called a white dwarf, which is about
a thousand kilometers in radius (Fig. 3.2).
Similarly, stars with masses greater than that of the Sun will settle
into a final state, which is a neutron star, as mentioned earlier. This
state will be reached after an initial collapse and the star losing some
of its original mass. These are pure neutron objects created in the col-
lapse under the strong crush of gravity, which collapses even the atoms.
The quantum pressure of these neutrons support and balance the star,
which is barely some ten to fifteen kilometers in size. The final out-
come of collapse thus depends on the initial mass of the star, which
again stabilizes at a much smaller radius due to the balancing pressures
generated by either electrons or neutrons within. The outer layers of
the star are thrown off in the form of a supernova blast which is created
in the final stage of the star’s collapse.

Life-cycle of a star

Average White
star dwarf
Red giant Planetary
nebula

Neutron star
Stellar
nebula
Massive star
Red Black hole
supergiant Supernova

Figure 3.2 The depiction of final states of stars of different masses. A small-
mass star, comparable to that of our sun, will eventually settle into a white
dwarf final state. But for stars with larger masses there will be a supernova
explosion and a neutron star will form, or for even greater masses, there will
be a continual collapse and a black hole is believed to develop as the collapse
end-state.
 Collapse of Massive Stars 45

Much more massive stars, larger than the neutron star mass limit,
cannot, however, settle into a white dwarf or neutron star state. This
is because internal quantum pressures due to electrons or neutrons
within are not enough to stabilize the collapsing star, as the inward
force of gravity is much more powerful. Therefore, a continual gravita-
tional collapse ensues, which no known physical force can halt. Such a
total collapse becomes inevitable once the star exhausts its internal nu-
clear fuel. In this sense, the life-history of a star of large mass is radically
different from that of small-mass stars.

Collapse of Massive Stars

A star as massive as ten or twenty times the Sun burns much faster and
lives only a few million years, compared to a lifetime of several billion
years for a smaller star such as the Sun. What is the final fate of such a
massive star? This is one of the most important, unresolved problems in
astrophysics and cosmology today.
The fundamental question about the fate of massive stars was high-
lighted by Chandrasekhar (and also independently by Lev Landau), who
pointed out a major result of his investigations, which was basically that
the life-history of a small-mass star must be essentially different from
that of a large-mass star. In the case of a small-mass star, the natural
white dwarf stage is an initial step toward its complete extinction. How-
ever, a star that is larger than a certain critical limit cannot pass into the
white dwarf or neutron star type of equilibrium stage. We must then
speculate about other possibilities.
We can see the seeds of modern black hole physics already present
in the above inquiry. The issue of the end-state for large-mass stars re-
mained unresolved and elusive for a long time after Chandrasekhar’s
initial discussion. While his work pointed out the stable configuration
limit for the formation of a white dwarf, the issue of the final fate of
much larger stars remains very much unresolved today, because such a
star cannot settle either as a white dwarf or as a neutron star.
The issue is clearly important in both high-energy astrophysics and
cosmology. For example, our observations today on the existence of
dark energy in the Universe and the cosmic acceleration it produces
are intimately connected with observations of supernovae, which are
the product of collapsing stars. It is the observational evidence of
supernovae exploding far away in the Universe which tells us how the
46 Black Holes

Universe may be accelerating and the rate at which this acceleration is

taking place.
At the heart of such a supernova lies the phenomenon of cata-
strophic gravitational collapse of a massive star, wherein a powerful
shockwave is generated, blowing off the outer layers of the star. If a star
is able to throw off enough of its matter in such an explosion, it might
eventually settle as a neutron star. However, if matter accretes onto
the neutron star, there will be a further continual collapse, which we
will have to explore further. On the other hand, stars which are more
massive and well above the normal supernovae mass limit straightaway
enter a continual collapse mode at the end of their life-cycle without
any intermediate neutron star stage.
The final fate of such a star is decided by the general theory of rela-
tivity. The point is that the usual laws of physics and quantum theory
explain the formation of white dwarfs and neutron stars in terms of
the electron degeneracy pressure and the neutron degeneracy pres-
sure, respectively. But such ‘quantum pressures’ are only able to resist a
star’s gravitational collapse when its mass is no more than about five to
eight solar masses at the very highest. When the initial mass is greater
than this, these pressures can no longer generate an equilibrium for
the star, and it collapses under the full seize of gravity, which shrinks it
completely. The other three fundamental forces of nature which were
significant earlier are no longer important and the final fate of the star
is now determined by the general theory of relativity.
The important point here is that stars which are tens of times the
mass of the Sun burn much faster and are far more luminous. Such
stars cannot endure more than about ten to twenty million years,
which is a much shorter lifespan than that of our Sun, which will
live much longer. Therefore, the question of the final fate of such
short-lived massive stars is of central importance in astronomy and
astrophysics.
What needs to be investigated then is what happens in terms of the
final outcome when such a massive star dies on exhausting its internal
nuclear fuel. The general theory of relativity predicts that the collaps-
ing massive star must terminate into a spacetime singularity, where
the matter energy densities, spacetime curvatures, and other physical
quantities all blow up. It then becomes crucial to know whether such
super-ultra-dense regions forming in the stellar collapse are visible to
an external observer, or whether they will always be hidden within a
 A Black Hole is Born 47

black hole and an event horizon of gravity that possibly forms as the star
collapses. This is one of the most important open issues in the physics
of black holes today.

A Black Hole is Born

To understand the final state of collapse for a massive star, we need to
trace the time evolution of the system and its dynamical progression
using Einstein’s equations of gravity. The star shrinks under the force
of its own gravity, which comes to dominate other basic interactions of
nature such as the weak and strong nuclear forces that typically provide
the outward pressure to balance the pull of gravity.
Einstein’s theory was first used for understanding the final fate of
massive collapsing stars by Oppenheimer and Snyder, and independ-
ently by Datt in the late 1930s. OSD studied the continual gravitational
collapse of a pressureless, homogeneous uniform density matter cloud
using the general theory of relativity. The most interesting result was
that the collapse, as it evolves in time, leads to the formation of what
was later called an event horizon. This is a one-way surface formed in
spacetime which causes a region of space and time to be invisible and
non-communicable to observers far away in the Universe. This hidden
region is called a black hole, though the terms black hole and event ho-
rizon were actually coined much later, in 1969, by John Wheeler. Thus,
the continual collapse of such a massive matter cloud in the OSD model
creates a black hole as the collapse end-state.
In order to deal with the complex Einstein equations, the OSD work
made several simplifying assumptions. Oppenheimer, Snyder, and Datt
assumed in their calculations that the density distribution within a star
is strictly homogeneous, that is it was taken to be uniform everywhere.
Also, they neglected the gas pressure forces within a spherical star, tak-
ing them to be zero, thus assuming the matter to be pressureless dust
only. Their calculations showed that an event horizon surface devel-
ops as collapse progresses, such that no material particles or photons
from the region inside the horizon escape. Once the star collapses to a
radius smaller than the horizon, it has entered the black hole region
in spacetime. It then collapses to a singularity of extreme density. For
a collapsing star to create a black hole, an event horizon must develop
prior to the formation of the final singularity. Once the star enters the
event horizon surface, the causal structure of spacetime implies that
48 Black Holes

no material particles or light rays from that region can escape, and it is
entirely cut off from observers far away in the Universe.
What is obtained from the OSD model is an interior view of the col-
lapsing cloud. In general such a solution depends on the properties of
matter, equation of state, and the physical processes taking place within
the stellar interior. However, assuming the matter to be pressureless
dust and the density to be uniform makes it possible to solve the prob-
lem explicitly and analytically. In OSD’s case the energy–momentum
tensor is taken to be that of pressureless dust, and we solve Einstein’s
equations to determine the metric potentials; as a result, the geometry
of the collapsing dust ball is obtained.
To understand the process of how an event horizon and black hole
form when a massive star collapses, we first note that the star eventually
collapses to a singularity of infinite density and spacetime curvatures.
The general relativity calculation implies that as the star collapses the
force of gravity on its surface keeps growing and eventually a stage is
reached when no light signal emitted from its surface is able to es-
cape. This is the epoch when an event horizon has formed, and the
star then enters the black hole region of spacetime. The in-falling emit-
ter does not feel anything special when entering the horizon, but any
faraway observer stops seeing the light from it. The strong gravity of
the star causes this one-way membrane, that is the event horizon, to
form. Within the horizon the collapse continues to crush the star into
a spacetime singularity.
The physics accepted today for describing the formation of black
holes as the end-state of stellar collapse relies on the OSD dust model. In
this case, all the matter falls into the spacetime singularity at the same
time, while the event horizon forms earlier than the singularity, thus
fully covering it. This is how a black hole region in spacetime results
as the end-state of collapse. The issue of the final fate of a gravitational
collapse must be probed within the framework of a suitable theory of
gravity, because the ultra-strong gravity effects will be important in
such a scenario. Hence, the OSD model uses the general theory of rel-
ativity to examine the final fate of an idealized massive matter cloud,
as described earlier. As we noted, the dynamical collapse created the
spacetime singularity, which was preceded by an event horizon. This is
what developed as a black hole in spacetime. The singularity is hidden
inside such a black hole, and the collapse eventually settles to a final
state which is the Schwarzschild geometry that we mentioned earlier.
 Gravitational Collapse 49

Gravitational Collapse
It would be useful to discuss and understand the basic features of this
gravitational collapse scenario in some detail. For the collapsing spher-
ical homogeneous dust cloud, the collapse is initiated from a regular
configuration at an initial time t = 0. Once the collapse has started,
it cannot be halted and the star continues shrinking to smaller and
smaller diameters. At the initial time and later, when the star surface
is outside the event horizon, which is also called its Schwarzschild radius,
any light ray emitted from the surface of the star can escape to a far-
away observer. However, once the star has collapsed below the event
horizon radius, which is at the value r = 2m, it has entered the black
hole region of no escape in spacetime. This region develops in space-
time as the collapse progresses, and is bounded by the event horizon
radius (Fig. 3.3).
Then the collapse of all the matter to an infinite density and curva-
ture singularity at the center r = 0 happens. This inevitably takes place
in a finite proper time as measured by an observer sitting on the sur-
face of the star. Thus, the star collapses totally at a finite time in the
future and all its matter is crushed to the spacetime singularity at the
center. There is a singularity at the center now and the rest of spacetime
is empty, with its geometry described by the Schwarzschild metric. This
is called the Schwarzschild black hole.
Any event in this region within the Schwarzschild black hole is called
a trapped surface. This is a two-dimensional sphere in spacetime and its ba-
sic property is that both the outgoing and ingoing families of light rays
emitted from this point converge inward. So no light and therefore no
material particles emerge from this region. Such a black hole region
in the resulting Schwarzschild geometry ranges from the center to the
Schwarzschild surface, the event horizon being the outer boundary. On
the event horizon, the radial outward photons stay where they are, but
all the rest are dragged in toward the center of the black hole. No infor-
mation from this black hole can propagate outside the r = 2m region.
Since no emissions or light rays from the singularity can travel out to
an observer at infinity, the singularity is causally disconnected from the
outside spacetime.
The spacetime region within and enclosed by the event horizon is
the black hole region. The size of the event horizon scales as the total
collapsing mass; that is, the larger the mass of the star, the larger the
50 Black Holes

Spacetime

r = 2m

r=0
singularity

Event
horizon

Apparent
horizon
Light ray
Boundary
of the star

t
Collapsing
matter
r
Initial surface

Figure 3.3 The spacetime diagram for the dynamical evolution of a homo-
geneous spherical dust cloud collapse, as described by the Oppenheimer–
Snyder–Datt solution. Such a collapse creates a Schwarzschild black hole
in spacetime. The homogeneous dust cloud collapses from an initial epoch
of time where the density at all points within the star and other physical
quantities are all regular and well-behaved. The shaded region indicates the
collapsing matter. Light rays emitted from points on the surface of the star
would reach a faraway observer as long as the star has not entered the hori-
zon. But as the collapse progresses, an absolute event horizon forms which is a
wavefront at a radius r = 2m. No light ray from the star’s surface can then reach
an outside observer, and a black hole forms in spacetime, which is the region
bounded by the event horizon. The spacetime singularity forming at the cen-
ter due to the collapse of matter to infinite density is completely hidden below
the event horizon and hence invisible to any outside observers.

event horizon. If the collapsing star is about ten solar masses, the event
horizon or black hole will be about 60 kilometers in diameter. Again,
any event that happens within the event horizon cannot send out a sig-
nal to faraway observers. On the other hand, events that occur outside
the horizon will be able to signal faraway observers.
The OSD collapse model eventually became a basic paradigm for the
black hole concept. It is thought that all massive stars in the Universe
will collapse to black holes at the end of their life-cycles as described
 Horizon and Singularity 51

earlier, retaining all the qualitative features. Further to this, a very con-
siderable amount of research and astrophysical applications about black
holes, which occupy a major role in astrophysics and cosmology today,
has been developed in recent decades. Such black holes could suck in
more matter from their surroundings and grow larger and larger.

The Debate on Horizon and Singularity

Two important features stand out from the gravitational collapse sce-
nario mentioned above. The first is the formation of an event horizon as
the collapse develops and the second is the eventual termination of col-
lapse in the singularity of infinite density and curvatures. Both of these
eventually became the subject of much discussion and debate for many
years and have had a far-reaching impact on the further development
of gravitation theory, as we shall discuss here.
Interestingly, however, not much attention was initially paid to this
model after it was worked out. In fact, it was widely thought by grav-
itation theorists and astronomers at the time that it would be absurd
for a star to reach an ultra-dense state during its evolution. The rather
unusual features of the OSD model and their far-reaching implications
were, so to speak, already conspicuous. But these were mainly ignored
and an attitude prevailed that such an extreme contraction of a physi-
cally realistic star could never be realized in nature. It was believed that
there must be a way for the collapsing cloud to achieve equilibrium be-
fore it reaches a singularity stage. Also, Einstein wrote a paper in 1939
arguing that such a final state for a star is not possible.
In fact, further to the advent of general relativity theory in 1915, grav-
itation physics was a relatively quiet field, with few developments till
about the 1950s. However, the 1960s saw the emergence of new observa-
tions in astrophysics, such as quasars and very-high-energy phenomena
such as energetic galactic jets. These observations, together with im-
portant theoretical developments such as studying the global structure
of spacetimes and singularities, led to important results in black hole
physics and relativistic astrophysics and cosmology.
Thus, the discovery of quasars and radio galaxies in the 1960s re-
vived an interest in black hole physics through to the 1970s. Interest
in gravitational collapse scenarios was also rekindled because no other
physical processes had been able to explain the extreme energies wit-
nessed in quasars and energetic galactic jets. Resurgent interest in black
holes focused on their dynamical formation and physical properties
52 Black Holes

and the surrounding regions of spacetime. Attention was drawn again

to the dynamical gravitational collapse of massive stars and their fi-
nal fate, and to black holes as possible physical mechanisms underlying
very-high-energy phenomena in the Universe.
Thus, the occurrence of event horizons and of spacetime singular-
ities became a matter of much discussion. The formation of an event
horizon is one of the most intriguing features to come out of OSD’s
study of the collapse of a massive star. Although terms and concepts
such as event horizon and black hole were not prevalent at the time,
physicists could immediately see the extreme features displayed by the
OSD model. This model for the continual collapse of a massive star has
the remarkable physical feature that as the collapse evolves to a certain
stage, the star enters the horizon and at that epoch the causal structure
of spacetime is such that no material particle or light ray can escape the
surface of the star. Another most intriguing feature as we noted is that
after the star has entered the horizon, after a finite time the physical
radius of the entire star shrinks to vanishing value and all the matter
finally collapses simultaneously to a singularity at the center.
So the main debate that came up further to the OSD model was that
researchers thought that both the spacetime singularity and the event
horizon appeared because this was a too idealized model. In fact, the oc-
currence of spacetime singularities was not new to researchers in the
1930s. However, it was believed that the singularity occurring in the
OSD model as well as in other important solutions to Einstein’s equa-
tions, such as the Schwarzschild and FRW models, would not occur in
more realistic solutions. Also, it was believed a horizon or black hole
would never occur because an actual star cannot be compacted to such
small sizes. As we shall discuss in the next chapter, the issue of the oc-
currence of singularities was resolved once the singularity theorems
showed that spacetime singularities occur for much more general sce-
narios. As for the event horizon, an assumption was made in the form
of the cosmic censorship conjecture, stating that all realistic massive
stars will collapse similarly to the OSD collapse, retaining the same
qualitative features. This meant that massive stars will collapse into a
spacetime singularity, which will be hidden within a black hole.

Black Hole Physics

As discussed earlier, further to the Schwarzschild and FRW solutions
and the OSD gravitational collapse model developed in the early
 Black Hole Physics 53

decades following the positing of the general theory of relativity, the

two major issues of spacetime singularities and event horizons domi-
nated the discussion in gravity physics for many decades to come.
As for the problem of occurrence of spacetime singularities, as will
be discussed in the next chapter, we now know that singularities do
occur in general relativity in fairly generic situations under broad and
reasonable physical conditions. However, as of today we know very little
about the nature and structure of singularities and about their prop-
erties, as they can develop in various situations in general relativity in
either static or dynamically evolving models.
The second major issue has been the development of event horizons
and how they cover singularities during gravitational collapse. As we
saw in the OSD collapse scenario, the event horizon develops well
before the epoch of singularity, which is then fully hidden within
the ‘zone of no communication’ with external observers, i.e. within a
black hole.
With the issue of the occurrence of singularities being settled in the
early 1970s, physicists also assumed that whenever they occur, the sin-
gularities of collapse will be covered within event horizons, just as in the
OSD scenario. Such an assumption, first proposed by Penrose in 1969,
is the cosmic censorship conjecture. In other words under reasonable phys-
ical conditions the final outcome of gravitational collapse will always
be a black hole in spacetime, with the curvature singularity of collapse
always being hidden inside it.
Further to the censorship formulation, many important develop-
ments took place in black hole physics, which started in earnest, and
several important theoretical aspects as well as astrophysical applica-
tions of black holes began to develop. The classical as well as quantum
aspects of black holes were then explored and interesting thermo-
dynamic analogies for black holes were presented as a result. Many
astrophysical applications for the real Universe were then developed for
black holes, for example in models using black holes for the descrip-
tion of phenomena such as jets emitted from the centers of galaxies and
extremely energetic gamma ray bursts.
Researchers were aware that the homogeneous and pressureless dust
collapse is a very highly idealized model. The OSD model made these
assumptions simply because it was very difficult to deal with Einstein’s
complicated equations, and there was no way to solve the system other-
wise. In fact, the study of any realistic dynamical gravitational collapse
models within Einstein gravity is a rather difficult task due to the
54 Black Holes

nonlinearity and complexity of Einstein’s equations which govern the

dynamical evolution of the star. So not much progress was made for
many decades after the OSD work. It was always clear to physicists
that the study of more realistic models of the gravitational collapse of
massive stars was of utmost importance if black holes were to be taken
seriously. The OSD scenario neglects pressures that play an important
role in the dynamics of any realistic star and the density distribution
cannot be homogeneous and uniform. In real stars, the density is typ-
ically higher at the center, decreasing away from the center; they have
non-zero gas pressures within; and they have shapes other than exactly
spherical.
But physicists had an immediate and urgent motivation to make the
censorship assumption. Observations of very-high-energy phenomena
in the Universe in the early 1960s such as quasars, radio galaxies, and
active galactic nuclei were unexplainable in terms of any other known
physical mechanism. It appeared that strong gravity fields must be in-
volved here in a non-trivial manner and that general relativity needed
to be used in an extensive and rigorous manner to explain them. The
censorship hypothesis provided a major impetus to developments in
black hole physics. Assuming provisionally that it holds, physicists in-
vestigated the properties of black holes and created detailed laws of
black hole dynamics. They also utilized black holes to explain various
ultra-high-energy processes observed in the Universe, such as quasars
and X-ray-emitter binary star systems.
By the early 1970s physicists thought it pragmatic to assume censor-
ship and moved on with developing black hole physics in a big way. The
emphasis was on studying black hole solutions to Einstein’s equations
and their different properties and applications, rather than on gravita-
tional collapse, which was difficult to investigate in any case. Black holes
were defined in a general way and their properties were studied in detail.
These developments occupied much of the researchers’ attention, who
also studied the implications for very high energy cosmic phenomena.
In the following, we describe some of the milestone developments in
black hole physics.

Schwarzschild Black Hole

The outcome of OSD gravitational collapse is a black hole, as we dis-
cussed earlier. It has two parts. At its core is the spacetime singularity
 Black Hole Physics 55

where all the matter of the star has been compacted and crushed. Sur-
rounding the singularity is the region of space from which no escape
is possible to faraway observers. The circumference of such a region is
called the event horizon. Once any object or light rays have entered this
region, they can never escape. For the collapsing body also, once it en-
ters the horizon, no light emitted by it can escape and it is fully trapped
within the horizon. The final geometry of this black hole is then the
Schwarzschild geometry as worked out by him in 1916 (Fig. 3.4).
To understand the formation of a black hole during collapse, the
concept of an escape cone is helpful. Consider the collapsing star and an
observer located on the surface of the star who keeps emitting beams
of light as the collapse proceeds. As shown in Fig. 3.3, as long as the star
has not entered the event horizon, the light emitted by the observer
can escape and reach a faraway observer. Once the observer reaches the

Photon
sphere

ild
rzsch
wa
Sch ius
rad
Singularity

event
horizon

Figure 3.4 Typical structure of a Schwarzschild black hole. This is a spherical

object, at the center of which is located a spacetime singularity of infinite grav-
ity and spacetime curvatures. The location of the event horizon is defined by
the Schwarzschild radius and the region inside the horizon is the black hole,
which is the region of no escape for any particles or light rays that have entered
below the same. The photon sphere lies outside the event horizon.
56 Black Holes

horizon, all the light rays that he emits fall into the singularity at the
center, except one radial ray that just stays at the horizon, at a constant
distance from the singularity. Further to this, once the observer enters
the horizon, all the rays emitted fall into the singularity, and there is no
escape possible. Eventually the observer falls into the singularity, to be
crushed out of existence.
The black hole has clearly a very intense gravitational field. There-
fore, the behavior of light rays and particle trajectories around a black
hole is quite important. An interesting aspect and manifestation of
these strong gravity fields is the existence of a photon sphere around the
black hole. This is a surface on which photons can in principle just coast
along in a circular orbit, without falling into the hole. As such it is an
unstable surface, where light ray orbits are also not stable, and these
photons can fall in the black hole or escape with a slightest perturba-
tion. The photon sphere plays an important role in the phenomenon of
gravitational lensing, or the bending of light rays by a black hole.
We note that just as the OSD collapse is a specialized model, the same
is true for the Schwarzschild black hole. Only if the star is made of
spherical dust with no pressure and is fully homogeneous will its col-
lapse create such a black hole. But most stars are inhomogeneous, are
not fully spherical, and also have rotation. Hence as the collapse pro-
ceeds, their shapes can distort and their rotation speed up. We need to
know how such changes affect the collapse as well as the formation of
black holes. It will be very difficult to obtain fully solved analytic models
such as the OSD in such a case, and we may have to resort to numerical
models to trace the collapse for such a matter cloud.
Kerr Black Holes
The Kerr metric is a rotating axi-symmetric solution to Einstein’s
equations. As we pointed out earlier, the Schwarzschild geometry is
a natural outcome of the OSD collapse. However, no such collapse
model is known which would give rise to a Kerr geometry as the fi-
nal collapse state. But the ‘no-hair theorem’ conjectures that typically
all collapsing configurations should end up creating a Kerr black hole.
While the only parameter that characterizes a Schwarzschild black hole
is its mass, a Kerr black hole is characterized by two parameters, namely
its mass and the spin.
Kerr black holes have found many astrophysical applications and
have interesting properties, one being they drag their surrounding
 Black Hole Physics 57

spacetime in the same direction as their rotation. As shown by Roger

Penrose, this effect would allow a spinning black hole to be a source of
energy.
Recently, computer simulations by Ramesh Narayan and collabora-
tors showed that by dragging spacetime, an accreting black hole can
fling out a small fraction of gas into powerful collimated relativistic jets.
Such jets have actually been known for decades and their energy source
has been a matter of debate. One popular explanation is that the power
comes from the black hole itself. Evidence from computer simulations
has shown that such a possibility is likely. There is also observational
evidence in favor of this interpretation.
Black Hole Thermodynamics
In the 1970s, the golden era of development of black hole physics, many
analogies were found for the behavior of black holes with the usual laws
of thermodynamics. For example, assuming what is called the asymp-
totic predictability for spacetime, which is essentially the same as the
cosmic censorship assumption together with faraway Minkowski flat
behavior of spacetime, it was shown that the area of an event horizon
must always increase and that it can never decrease. This is in close
analogy to the second law of thermodynamics. This area theorem by
Hawking guarantees the monotonic growth of the surface area of any
black hole, provided the matter and fields interacting with it respect the
weak positive energy condition.
Similar analogies of black hole behavior with the first and third laws
of thermodynamics have also been pointed out under various assump-
tions. These possibilities have created a lot of interest in black hole
physics. Of course, it is known that as for the second law or the area
theorem, in a cosmological background which is not asymptotically
flat, the area theorem need not hold.
Quantum Black Holes
Further to developments in black hole thermodynamics such as those
just described, semi-classical gravity was explored in curved back-
ground spacetimes such as those of black holes. The most remarkable
result was the so-called Hawking radiation effect deduced by Stephen
Hawking in 1975. The event horizon causes the black hole to produce
a very slow and dim radiation outflow, which is the evaporation of the
black hole itself.
58 Black Holes

Eventually, the entire black hole will evaporate, but for normal black
holes with masses of the order of a few solar masses, this effect is ex-
traordinarily slow and not really observable. In any case, this result
made apparent the very intriguing possibilities that quantum gravity
might offer.
Observational Evidence
By its very definition, a black hole can never be seen directly, as it emits
no light. So a direct verification of the existence of a black hole is not
possible. As such, no light from its surface, which is the event horizon,
can ever escape and reach a faraway observer.
The black hole, however, has an exceptionally strong gravitational
field that affects its surroundings with observational implications. For
example, in real astrophysical situations, matter around a black hole
will fall into it. As falling matter from the accretion disk (see Fig. 3.5)
surrounding a black hole nears the black hole surface, which is the
event horizon, it will move with greater and greater speeds and will heat

0.1 lightyears Shock

Relativistic jet

Supermassive black hole

Accretion disk

Opaque torus
(inner regions)

Figure 3.5 An accretion disk of incoming and in-falling mat-

ter around a typical black hole. Adapted from Wikimedia Commons
(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galaxies_AGN_Inner-Structure-
of.jpg).
 Black Hole Physics 59

up enormously. Such very hot matter will emit powerful X-rays which
provide a typical characteristic signature of a black hole’s existence in
the Universe.
Using this phenomenon, many X-ray telescopes today look for the
X-ray glows from the accretion disks surrounding compact objects be-
lieved to be black holes. One such most promising candidate is the
object Cygnus X-1, which has been under observational focus now for
quite some time.

Figure 3.6 We observe powerful jets emerging from the central regions
of galaxies. Black holes are thought to provide an explanation for this
phenomenon.
60 Black Holes

Astrophysical Applications
Black holes have been widely used to model very-high-energy astro-
physical phenomena observed in the Universe. These include powerful
jets emitted from galactic centers, quasars and gamma-ray bursts, and
other such phenomena. We mentioned earlier, for example, how Kerr
black holes could explain galactic jets (Fig. 3.6).
It is clear that no other usual forces can explain such extreme en-
ergy events in the Cosmos. Therefore, black holes, being very natural
consequences of general relativity, offer a somewhat natural alternative
in this direction. The field is developing rapidly, with many observa-
tional missions and powerful computers for simulations having become
available in recent years.