Alternatives to black holes are scarce and strange

doi:10.1126/science.371.6525.118

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.371.6525.118
	Alternatives to black holes are scarce and strange
	Adrian Cho
	2021-01-08
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	General relativity doesn't leave lots of wiggle room for new ideas, theorists say. At one time, many physicists resisted the notion of a black hole, a ghostly, self-sustaining gravitational field so intense that not even light can escape. Now, theorists have few alternatives to these creepy holes in the universe. Any alternative to a black hole must be some dark, dense material orb that's slightly bigger than a black hole of the same mass. (Were the thing smaller, its own gravity would create a black hole around it.) Observers might detect the orb's surface by spotting matter crashing onto it and heating up. Or they might deduce the greater size of the object as it swirls around a companion and tears into it before merging. One hypothetical possibility is a gravastar: a thin material shell filled with dark energy, the mysterious space-stretching stuff that appears to be accelerating the expansion of the universe. A gravastar would have a solid surface rather than an event horizon, the point of no return that is the defining feature of a black hole. It satisfies the mathematical requirements of Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity, says Carlos Palenzuela Luque, a gravitational theorist at the University of the Balearic Islands. However, nobody knows how a gravastar could ever form, he says. Easier to produce might be a boson star, which would consist of exotic, massive Higgs bosons or nearly massless hypothetical particles called axions. Higgs bosons or axions could crowd into a single quantum wave, yielding a density approaching that of a black hole. However, Palenzuela Luque notes, boson stars would likely have masses in a narrow range, whereas a black hole can have any mass. Observed masses vary by factors of billions. Black hole alternatives “is an area that's maybe undertheorized,” says Sean Carroll, a theorist at the California Institute of Technology. But that would surely change if observations showed the current description of black holes isn't quite right. “When we have something to guide our search, we will be able to say something new,” Palenzuela Luque says. “Right now, everything is so speculative.”
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/310425
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Adrian Cho. Alternatives to black holes are scarce and strange[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Adrian Cho.(2021).Alternatives to black holes are scarce and strange.Science.
MLA	Adrian Cho."Alternatives to black holes are scarce and strange".Science (2021).