Black Holes May Not Be Black Holes at All. They May Actually Be Fuzzballs.

Popular Mechanics ^ | DEC 7, 2020 | Caroline Delbert

[nickcarraway]

String theorists are making the case for flipping physics on its head.

What if string theorists have been right all along, and black holes are just balls of yarn? These celestial rat kings, scientists say, represent a place where a huge bunch of fundamental strings have tangled together and can’t be extricated.

This sounds far out, but we don’t understand a great deal about how black holes work to begin with. Positing a tangled string idea instead doesn’t even require much more of an ideological buy-in.

Space.com’s Paul Sutter explains the big mental “tangle” with black holes:

“Black holes appear in Einstein's theory of general relativity, and by all rights they simply shouldn't exist. [I]f a clump of matter crunches down into a tiny enough volume, then gravity can become overwhelmingly strong. Once a certain critical threshold is reached, the clump of matter just squeezes and squeezes, compressing down into an infinitely tiny point. Of course, there's no such thing as an infinitely tiny point, so this picture seems wrong. But in the mid-20th century astronomers began to find objects that looked like black holes, acted like black holes and probably smelled like black holes too.” 👀 👀 👀

For decades, scientists thought what went into a black hole stayed there and didn’t go anywhere else—itself a scientific pickle. Now, new research shows aging black holes cough the information back out, which has made the picture more complicated, not less.

This, Sutter explains, is why the time was right for string theory to offer a new suggestion.

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String theory has always positioned itself as a theory of everything, meaning a unified mathematical and scientific system that seamlessly flows through all matter at all scales. That sounds like a huge job, because it is—particle physics and quantum physics spend as much time trying to reconcile their differences as they do pushing the boat out with new math and experiments.

Fuzzballs might be separate from black holes, or they might be a subset that’s contained within the field of black holes—scientists aren’t sure. There are different mathematical models that haven’t coalesced into one emerging majority yet. But they come from the same one idea, at least.

“In string theory, black holes are neither black nor holes,” Sutter explains. Instead, they’re like neutron stars, which are well, almost black holes. He continues:

“Inside a neutron star, matter is compressed into its highest density state possible. [I]n a neutron star, atomic camaraderie breaks down and dissolves, leaving behind just neutrons crammed together as tightly as possible. With fuzzballs, the fundamental strings stop working together and simply crowd together, becoming a large, well, ball of strings. A fuzzball.”

Researcher Daniel Mayerson has a new, sweeping survey (updated with the peer-reviewed journal link) of the existing body of knowledge about fuzzballs. Mayerson also suggests next steps for instruments and finer measurements that could reveal evidence for the “fuzzball paradigm,” drawing out a roadmap for the near future.

“The area of fuzzball and microstate geometry phenomenology is a budding new field where many exciting insights and observations lie ready for the picking,” he concludes.

[tet68]

I’ve got black holes under my bed?

Honey, the cat is coughing up a black hole again.

[tet68]

Oh, it’s ok, he’s not a cat he’s a ferkin?

[TnTnTn]

I have some of those fuzz balls under my sofa....lolol

[Pontiac]

[Revel]

Black holes can also be political. The DOJ is a perfect example. You throw in evidence of democrat crimes and that evidence never comes back out.