Could Black Holes Just Be “Frozen Stars”? New Research Suggests Rethinking
The traditional view of black holesas proposed by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, suggests that they consist of two main features: a singularity and an event horizon. This model faces challenges when combined with quantum mechanics, especially after Stephen Hawking’s discovery of Hawking radiation in the 1970s. According to this theory, black holes emit radiation as a result of quantum effects near their event horizons, causing them to lose mass over time. This raises an important question: if a black hole evaporates completely, what happens to the information about the matter that formed it?
The frozen star concept
New research suggests that black holes may instead be “frozen stars.” These entities would lack singularities or event horizons, but could still mimic the observable features of black holes. Ramy Brustein, a physicist at Ben-Gurion University, leads this innovative theory, suggesting that if frozen stars exist, they may require a fundamental tweak to Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Implications for physics
The frozen star model could resolve important paradoxes in black hole physics, such as the information loss paradox. These objects avoid the problems associated with singularities by not collapsing into infinitely dense points. Researchers believe that testing this theory could provide crucial insights, particularly through gravitational waves produced during cosmic events such as black hole mergers. Identifying features unique to frozen stars could provide the experimental evidence to validate this new model.
Looking ahead
Although the frozen star theory opens up intriguing possibilities, much work remains to be done to clarify their internal structures and distinguish them from other cosmic phenomena such as neutron stars. Brustein emphasizes the potentially revolutionary impact this theory could have if validated using observational data from gravitational wave observatories.
