How To Destroy a Black Hole

[Ian David]

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 11, @12:14PM
from the put-it-in-a-michael-bay-movie dept.

KentuckyFC writes

"The critical concept that makes a black hole black is the event horizon: a theoretical boundary in space through which light and other objects can pass in one direction but not the other. Since light cannot escape the event horizon, it must be black.

The event horizon is a nuisance to astrophysicists because it hides the interesting new physics that must go on inside a black hole. What they would like is a way to get rid of the event horizon so that they can see what goes on behind it.

It turns out that just such a thing may be possible, say physicists. According to the mathematics of general relativity, the event horizon should disappear if a black hole were fed enough charge and angular momentum relative to its mass. However the calculations are so fiendish (PDF) that nobody knows whether the black hole would shed this extra angular momentum and charge before it could settle into a stable 'naked' state. However, the possibility that the event horizon could be destroyed raises the question of what astrophysicists would see behind this veil.

According to some, black holes are regions of spacetime with infinite curvature called singularities. Many believe that 'naked' singularities cannot exist in nature. And yet there are enough question marks to suggest that this mystery is far from settled."

More:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/06/11/1533241/How-To-Destroy-a-Black-Hole?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2FslashdotScience+%28Slashdot%3A+Science%29&utm_content=Twitter

Hat-tip to: http://twitter.com/michaelowenhill/status/15964323380

[The Doctor.]

1. Wow, that's cool. Especially the Maximillian pic!

Unfortunately, that much charge and momentum/mass would likely rip it from the otherwise inescapable grip of the Hubble Constant. For the observer, it would appear to simply wink out of existence, possibly leaving a portion of time and space all twisted up in its apparent 'exit'.

Or maybe it would rain daisies in space... there's no way to be sure.

[roguevalley]

2. my guess is that they will see BP's feed of our own personal

earthbound black hole.