Hawking's Brief Answers to the Big Questions: Black Hole Interiors

Summary: Black hole interiors emerge fifth in 10 questions that theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking examines in Brief Answers to the Big Questions.

binary system GRO 1655-40 comprises a star and a black hole; artist's representation of GRO 1655-40, with black hole pulling gas away from the star, by science illustrator Melissa Weiss: NASA/CXC (Chandra X-Ray Center/M. Weiss, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Black hole interiors approach the halfway mark as fifth of 10 answered questions in the posthumous publication Oct. 15, 2018, of the last work by a world-renowned mathematics professor and theoretical physicist.

Chapter 5's "What Is Inside a Black Hole?" blends black hole interiors into Stephen Hawking's (Jan. 8, 1942-March 14, 2018) Brief Answers to the Big Questions. Albert Einstein's (March 14, 1879-April 18, 1955) theory of general relativity in 1915 concerns time, space and gravity, only electric force with ever-attractive and long-range consequences. John Michell (Dec. 25, 1724-April 21, 1793) before, and John Wheeler (July 9, 1911-April 13, 2008) after, the Einstein equations discerned dark stars and black holes.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Oct. 19, 1910-Aug. 21, 1995) and Lev Landau (Jan. 22, 1908-April 1, 1968) respectively exempted white dwarfs and neutron stars from fuel-exhausted gravitational collapse.

Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904-Feb. 18, 1967), Hartland Snyder (Feb. 24, 1913-May 22, 1962) and George Volkoff (Feb. 23, 1914-April 24, 2000) featured more massive stars.

Thermal pressure from hydrogen conversion into helium goes against gravitational collapse in stellar masses greater than neutron stars and white dwarfs until they go through fuel. Oppenheimer, Snyder and Volkoff, and Roger Penrose heralded respectively "uniform spherically systematic symmetric" and non-spherical, non-uniform huge stars gravity-honed into compact, fuel-exhausted, infinitely dense, single-pointed singularities. Identification of quasi-stellar objects, quasar 3C273 in 1963, indicated gravitational energy releases from gravitational collapse into singularities whose information-gathering inspection the Penrose cosmic censorship conjecture inhibits.

Even gravitational pull from huger, not uneven pull from smaller, black hole interiors never jeopardizes journeys across entryway event horizons where gravity jams light back inside.

Additional in-falling matter and radiation and colliding, merging black holes keep increasing event horizon surface areas, beyond the sum of pre-merger areas in the latter's case.

Jacob Bekenstein in 1972 and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Sept. 14, 2015, list three stationary-state black hole parameters: angular momentum (spin); electric charge; mass. Event horizon area properties manifest the first and second laws of thermodynamics about entropy (disorder) increasing with time and proportional changes in system energy and entropy. The Uncertainty  Principle negates simultaneously noting particle position, size and speed; nets long-wavelength lightweights and short-wavelength heavyweights; nurtures black holes from objects heavier than salt grains.

Thermal radiation emissions from some decoupled virtual antiparticles and particles outrunning super-strong gravity occasions space-distorted, time-distorted black hole interiors with decreased masses and sizes into oblivion.

Thermal radiation emissions preserve nothing about black hole interiors even though scientifically deterministic laws present an evolving universe of non-created, non-destroyed, transferred, transformed energy, information, matter.

Flat-looking space-time away from curved, distorted, warped black hole interiors queues up supertranslation charges of uncurved, undistorted, unwarped space and time respectively conserving momentum and energy. Sasha Haco, Hawking, Malcolm Perry and Andrew Strominger regard charge, mass and momentum properties and super-rotation and supertranslation charges as retrievable information about black hole interiors. Their calculations since 2016 suggest all black hole entropy-related information from super-rotation (spinning) charges and some information about black hole interiors from super-translation (non-spin movement) charges.

Black holes transmit charge, mass and spin information even as surface storage areas on entryway event horizons teem with information thereby unlost about black hole interiors.

Ongoing revisions of light-year distances place black holes A 0620-00 and GRO 1655-40 closer to the sun than previous calculations; Stephen Hawking's voice has been beaming since June 15, 2018, to A 0620-00, currently considered as the nearest known black hole, with arrival at A 0620-00's event horizon slated for around the year 5475; artist's impression of GRO 1655-40 by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics computer animator/video producer April J. Hobart: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

binary system GRO 1655-40 comprises a star and a black hole; artist's representation of GRO 1655-40, with black hole pulling gas away from the star, by science illustrator Melissa Weiss: NASA/CXC (Chandra X-Ray Center/M. Weiss, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Illustration_of_a_Stellar-Mass_Black_Hole.jpg

Ongoing revisions of light-year distances place black holes A 0620-00 and GRO 1655-40 closer to the sun than previous calculations; Stephen Hawking's voice has been beaming since June 15, 2018, to A 0620-00, currently considered as the nearest known black hole, with arrival at A 0620-00's event horizon slated for around the year 5475; artist's impression of GRO 1655-40 by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics computer animator/video producer April J. Hobart: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GRO_J1655-40.jpg

For further information:

Foellmi, Cédric. 2009. "What Is the Closest Black Hole to the Sun?" New Astronomy, vol. 14, issue 8 (November): 674-691.
Available via Semantic Scholar @ https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/73d5/2dfbf6be1c9aba2164e9875be2f5e46b52e2.pdf

Hawking, Stephen. 1994. Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. New York NY: Bantam Books.

Hawking, Stephen. 2018. "[Chapter] 5: What Is Inside a Black Hole?" Brief Answers to the Big Questions. New York NY: Bantam Books.

Marriner, Derdriu. 18 October 2018. "Hawking's Brief Answers to the Big Questions: Scientific Literacy." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/10/hawkings-brief-answers-to-big-questions.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 25 October 2018. "Brief Answers to Big Questions: Divine Creation, Scientific Creation?" Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/10/brief-answers-to-big-questions-divine.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 1 November 2018. "Cosmological Beginnings in Hawking's Brief Answers to Big Questions." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/11/cosmological-beginnings-in-hawkings.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 8 November 2018. "Intelligent Life in Stephen Hawking's Brief Answers to Big Questions." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/11/intelligent-life-in-stephen-hawkings.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 15 November 2018. "Hawking's Brief Answers to the Big Questions: Predictable Futures?" Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/11/hawkings-brief-answers-to-big-questions.html