Aspects of black holes
Here is just a short draft of a few remarks about black holes.
Black holes were one of my favorite topics of interest in my free time in high school :
just after I found the equations for the
expansion of the universe (Friedmann equations) in my own calculations,
I also managed, by the same tools, to find equations for black holes: first the
Schwarzchild metric (spherically symmetric, no charge) and then the
Reissner–Nordström metric (spherically symmetric, nonzero electric
charge). So while I do not figure out well the rotating black hole (which would be harder
to calculate by lack of symmetries), I can speak with confidence of the spherically symmetrical
ones, and I think that with a little bit of work, anyone who followed that simple reasoning which
gave the Friedmann equations can manage apply the same reasoning to do these
calculations of the black hole as well.
Of course, for the electrically charged case, one needs to
know the energy-momentum tensor of an electric field, which can be shortly described
as follows. This field splits the 4 dimensions of space-time into a pair of two orthogonal 2D
planes, each of which keeps its rotational symmetry. One is formed of the space-like
"direction of the field" (the vertical direction z, for a charged spherically symmetric black hole)
together with time; along it, is negative pressure together with positive energy
density, with the same amount in order for this to be invariant by "rotation" (boost). Along the other plane (x,y),
that is the pure space-like plane orthogonal to the field, is positive pressure, which in any of its direction is
the exact opposite to the negative pressure along the field. The value of this pressure in each direction
is, essentially, half the square of the intensity of the field.
The horizon
To understand what happens near the horizon, a special picture of the (vertical space)-time plane
is needed. Let us denote (z,t) the relevant local coordinates system near the horizon, with which Special
Relativity is approximately valid. In this map we shall give the following 2 fields:
- The altitude field r that is the radial coordinate, though it is not a radius in any
meaningful sense. The definition of this quantity is that, following spherical symmetry,
in each sphere of constant altitude r at some fixed time, the geodesics have length
2πr.
- Absolute time T, defined as follows: an event of bouncing back a vertical light beam,
is said to happen at time T if T is the middle time between emission and reception
of this beam by a "steady" observer far away from the black hole and at rest with respect to it. Of course,
this definition only works above the horizon.
Now (r, T) is obtained from (z,t) as the analogue, in space-time geometry,
of a polar coordinate system:
as long as r is close to the "altitude of the horizon"
rs the following formulas approximately hold
- r−rs is proportional to the squared radial coordinate
z2−(ct)2
- T is proportional to the angular
coordinate artanh(ct/z)
which can also be written
(1/2).ln((z+ct)/(z−ct))
As measured by these coordinates, space-time around the horizon is divided into the following zones:
- The zone (-z<ct<z) is the one "outside the black hole".
- The zone (-ct < z < ct, thus r < rs)
is the one "inside the black hole".
- The half-line (0<z=ct, thus T = + infinity) is the horizon.
- The zone (z+ct<0) does not actually exist
- Its border, (z+ct=0) concentrates the history of the formation of the black hole
and whatever subsequently fell into it long ago.
So, the horizon is crossed without noticing, as a virtual wave plane coming at the speed of light.
Inside the charged black hole
In the Schwarzchild black hole, things end by a singularity, but in the Reissner–Nordström black hole the end
is different : instead of a singularity, it is another horizon with a smaller value of r (which
approaches 0 when the charge of the black hole approaches 0), and other values
of the proportionality coefficients.
It needs a change of coordinates that works the same as in the above case of horizon, but with a different
list of zones. Only the zone (ct<z<-ct) actually exists (so from any event there, there
is a limit of available time before the end). It ends by its 2 borders, that are the internal "horizons".
While the external horizon is naturally empty and crossed without noticing, each of both internal horizons
are ends of the story, as they are walls of infinite energy.
- The horizon of the past, is an infinite physical concentration of a bit of the past history of the
the black hole, from its creation, with all things that fell into it in between.
This wall is coming "from the bottom" (the same way as the
external horizon); it is normally the one smashing first for objects which naturally fell into the
black hole, as they are "moving to the botton" (the "speed" is described by the decrease
T which inside the black hole is no more a time coordinate but a vertical coordinate,
that keeps endlessly decreasing from the +infinity of the external horizon to the -infinity of
the internal horizon).
- The horizon of the future is the one coming "from the top", and concentrates
the history of all what is going to fall into the black hole "long after" the considered object.
Only a strong boost upwards in between can reverse the decrease of T
so that the horizon of the future is met first.
Orbits
I also calculated the orbits of particles around Schwarzchild black holes, but I forgot the details.
They are not exactly given formulas but, thanks to the use of conserved quantities (energy and angular momentum) and
a change of variables (taking 1/r as new variable and taking the angular coordinate in guise of time if I remember well),
reduced to a kind of well-known,
rather simple differential equation: an equation of the form (dx/dt)2 =
(polynomial of degree 3 in x), the solutions of which have a known name in the mathematics literature, but I forgot which
(on the way I noticed that the case of degree 4 polynomials is reducible to the case of degree 3 by an homographic
transformation which sends one of the roots to infinity...).
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