Towson University | via Phys.Org | 2016 Jun 15
[img3="This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy. The black region in the center represents the black hole's event horizon, where no light can escape the massive object's gravitational grip. The black hole's powerful gravity distorts space around it like a funhouse mirror. Light from background stars is stretched and smeared as the stars skim by the black hole.Scientists at Towson University and the Johns Hopkins University are reporting a new way to peer through the event horizons around black holes and visualize what lies beneath. Their results could rewrite conventional ideas about the internal structure of spinning black holes. Current approaches use special coordinate systems in which this structure appears quite simple, but quantities that depend on an observer's choice of coordinates can give a distorted view of reality, as anyone knows who has compared the size of Greenland and the USA on a map.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)"]http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800 ... ckhole.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]
The new approach focuses exclusively on mathematical quantities known as invariants, which have the same value for any choice of coordinates. Expressed in terms of these quantities, black hole interiors reveal a much more intricate and complicated structure than usually thought, with wild variations in curvature from place to place. ...
But while we now know they exist, we will never be able to look inside them ... since no information can emerge from beyond a black hole's event horizon. Their interiors are, by definition, places that can only be explored mathematically. The new results are thus important in a unique sense. Scientists usually observe first, and then attempt to classify and understand their observations using theory. With black holes this usual course of discovery is reversed: we have a satisfactory theory, but are still groping for the best way to visualize it. ...
A New Way to See Inside Black Holes - R.C. Henry, J.M. Overduin, K. Wilcomb
- arXiv.org > gr-qc > arXiv:1512.02762 > 09 Dec 2016