Submission + - How to Destroy a Black Hole (technologyreview.com)
eldavojohn writes: Physics (and especially astrophysics) is well known for pushing the boundaries of what is possible and a new paper discussing how to destroy a black hole proves there's still a lot head hurting to discover. How do they do it? Well, it's pretty simple. From the paper, "In general relativity, the mathematical condition for the existence of a black hole with an event horizon is simple. It is given by the following inequality: M^2 > (J/M)^2 + Q^2, where M is the mass of the black hole, J is its angular momentum and Q is its charge." The paper looks at what would happen if we evened that inequality out by throwing angular momentum and/or charge at the black hole. When that happens, the event horizon disappears. When the event horizon disappears, light escapes. When light escapes, it's no longer a black hole and now when you gaze at it ... nobody knows what you'd see. Pure infinity? One thing's for sure, since we got nothing in our physics toolboxes to handle the math on this proposed scenario it would most certainly reveal new laws of physics through observation if we could accomplish it. Unfortunately we're nowhere near packing up a bunch of angular momentum and charge and heading over to the nearest black hole to find out. It is, however, refreshing to see that physics is yet an ocean still brimming full with unseen wonders. You can find all the Greek on arxiv in prepublication.
