Do black holes have singularities? and if they do can a singularity go faster than light?

Question

Do black holes have singularities? and if they do can a singularity go faster than light?

Answer 1

Black holes sort of have a singularity. But first you have to understand what a singularity actually is. It's not a physical object. It is a mathematical construct. When you are doing a calculation and impossible infinities start showing up it's because you are entering values into the equation that are either incomplete or incorrect. That is what a "singularity" is. It's a gap in our knowledge. So yes everything beyond the event horizon of a black hole is a "singularity" because we have no idea what's going on in there. But, is there a "singularity" down in there somewhere? No, because no such thing exists. Can a singularity go faster than light? Hopefully now that you understand what a "singularity" actually is you realize that question makes no sense.

Answer 2

A "singularity" is a mathematical thing that belongs to the domain of a function. It can be a point, a line, a circle, a figure of some sort, a plane, a volume, etc.



Most often, unless you have a degenerate function, a singularity's dimension is at least one less than the space in which it exists.



A "black hole" is an object with an escape speed greater than the speed of light. In normal physics, we cannot know what the nature of that object is, only its basic characterisitics (mass, maximum radius, rotation, charge).



In astronomy, it is normally represented by its event horizon (with a finite radius as seen from the outside) because nothing from inside the event horizon can be perceived. Light photons can not escape from inside, even if they are moving at the speed of light, because from any point inside the event horizon, the escape speed is greater than the speed of light.



For "small" black hole, the required density is so high that we can't even imagine what the "thing" might be. We know only that it cannot be ordinary matter.



When cosmologists (people who apply mathematics to the behaviour of space itself, as if space were an object) try to solve the functions that describe the behaviour of space, they hit a singularity whenever conditions exist that would represent a black hole, in the real world.



A singularity is the place, in the "input" of the equations, where the output grows without bound (what ordinary people call "infinity")



For a "small", non-rotating, non-charge black hole, this mathematical singularity has the shape of a point.

However, we do not see how a non-rotating object that massive and that small could be non-rotating in our universe (especially since there is no real "rest" reference against which to measure non-rotation).



For a rotating, non-charge black hole, the singularity has the form of a circle.

And so on for other types of black holes.



This mathematical singularity may have nothing to do with the actual shape of "whatever is inside", but we do not know, because we do not know how things work inside the event horizon.



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Newton showed that for orbital calculations (objects in orbit around Earth), we can mathematically consider Earth's mass as being in one single point (Earth's centre). And it works. However, this does NOT mean that Earth is a single point. It is a sphere with a volume, and mass spread out everywhere in that volume.



The singularity in a black hole is the same thing: a mathematical trick to make calculations easier.

Answer 3

I don't believe that you quite understand what a singularity is. A singularity is a region in which space-time possesses an infinite curvature and has infinite quantities wherever measured. A singularity does not travel anywhere. In fact, theoretically, time stops at a singularity, and thus nothing occurs there.

Answer 4

At first, it was suspected that the strange features of the black hole solutions were pathological artifacts from the symmetry conditions imposed, and that the singularities would not appear in generic situations. This view was held in particular by Vladimir Belinsky, Isaak Khalatnikov, and Evgeny Lifshitz, who tried to prove that no singularities appear in generic solutions. However, in the late 1960s Roger Penrose[29] and Stephen Hawking used global techniques to prove that singularities appear generically.[30]These solutions have so-called naked singularities that can be observed from the outside, and hence are deemed unphysical. The cosmic censorship hypothesis rules out the formation of such singularities, when they are created through the gravitational collapse of realistic matter.[2] This is supported by numerical simulations.[41]The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory.[63] This breakdown, however, is expected; it occurs in a situation where quantum effects should describe these actions, due to the extremely high density and therefore particle interactions. To date, it has not been possible to combine quantum and gravitational effects into a single theory, although there exist attempts to formulate such a theory of quantum gravity. It is generally expected that such a theory will not feature any singularities.Once an event horizon forms, Penrose proved that a singularity will form somewhere inside it.[29] Shortly afterwards, Hawking showed that many cosmological solutions describing the Big Bang have singularities without scalar fields or other exotic matter (see Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems). The Kerr solution, the no-hair theorem and the laws of black hole thermodynamics showed that the physical properties of black holes were simple and comprehensible, making them respectable subjects for research.[72] The primary formation process for black holes is expected to be the gravitational collapse of heavy objects such as stars, but there are also more exotic processes that can lead to the production of black holes.The evidence for stellar and supermassive black holes implies that in order for black holes not to form, general relativity must fail as a theory of gravity, perhaps due to the onset of quantum mechanical corrections. A much anticipated feature of a theory of quantum gravity is that it will not feature singularities or event horizons (and thus no black holes).[118] In 2002,[119] much attention has been drawn by the fuzzball model in string theory. Based on calculations in specific situations in string theory, the proposal suggests that generically the individual states of a black hole solution do not have an event horizon or singularity, but that for a classical/semi-classical observer the statistical average of such states does appear just like an ordinary black hole in general relativity.

Answer 5

No, a Black Hole is a stellar core of degenerate matter that is in the process of collapsing towards becoming a singularity. It has frozen in time (from our point of view) due to the concentrated gravity field.

The event horizon around it is the line in space where time dilation tends to infinity. Nothing ever crosses the event horizon.



The mass of the collapsing core is still there, you could apply a charge to a black hole and move it with magnets or an electromagnetic field but it still follows the laws of relativity. Nothing with mass can reach light speed.

Answer 6

A singularity is a point of infinite density in classical physics, which leads many to believe that there is something missing from classic physics, since infinities are generally avoided as an indication of an incorrect solution. Likely there is some quantum mechanical effect involved to prevent an infinity from occurring, which would also mean there is something missing from our understanding of quantum physics. In any case, the speed of light cannot be violated in either classic or quantum physics.

Answer 7

yes thats when you turn into atoms