Black Holes

Ruth Gregory
Durham Centre for Particle Theory
 Who am I?
• I did my A levels back in the 80’s: Physics,
Chemistry and Maths.
• Then went to Cambridge, degree in Maths and
PhD in Theoretical Physics
• Spent 5 years as a researcher in Chicago
• Back to the UK as a fellow, now a Professor
• Research in gravity, cosmology and extra
dimensions
• One child (son) in pre-GCSE year
 Outline
• What is a black hole?
• How can we see them?
• Hawking radiation
• Extra dimensions and mini black holes
 What is a black hole?
CLASSICAL QUANTUM

So much mass that escape velocity exceeds the speed of light

 Newton’s Law

Inverse square law of gravity

Gives escape velocity 1 m v2 = GMm

2 r
Get v=c if r = 2GM/c2 Event horizon
How big is a black hole?

The solar system has a

range of different sized
objects.

The sun is just a little too

small to form a black hole,
but suppose we squashed it -
how big would that black
hole be?
 Solar event horizon

r = 2GM/c2

G = 6.67 x 10 -11
M = 2 x 10 30 Kg
c = 3 x 10 8 ms-1

r = 3 km

Stellar mass black hole .

 Einstein’s Relativity:
Modern physics owes its roots to Einstein, who revolutionized
the way we think of space and time (as well as giving us
quantum mechanics). Instead of two separate and absolute
quantities, space and time are part of the same canvas:
spacetime.

In Special Relativity,
spacetime is flat, but
in General relativity
it is curved.
Einstein’s theory of General Relativity relates matter to
curvature, and since curvature is about things not being
straight, it tells us that matter effects motion : GRAVITY.

The fundamental observable of

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a re n e e d e d t o s e e t h is p ic t u re .
spacetime gravity is distance, so we
write things in terms of the spacetime
metric:
s)2 = f2(x,y) [ (x)2 + (y)2 ]

This example alters Pythagoras,

but what if we apply this to
stars?
 Gravitational redshift
The first thing Einstein tells us is that time is slowed in
a gravitational field.

E = h GM/r)

As r gets bigger, the gravitational

term becomes smaller and so 
gets smaller to compensate. This
means light is redshifted

But the photon frequency counts ticks of the clock, so time is s l o w e d d o w n

 Schwarzschild
Newtonian physics also gives us redshift, but it is Einstein’s
perspective that tells us time is slowing down. It also tells us
space warps around any massive object.

The spacetime around a star or planet or black hole is known

as the SCHWARZSCHILD SOLUTION.

The distance from the planet or star is stretched by the same

amount as time is shrunk. What does this mean in practice?
 Tidal Forces
Tidal forces arise because gravitational acceleration is not
constant, but falls off as you move away from the star or
black hole. So a falling object will be accelerated faster
closer to the black hole.

This tidal acceleration

goes like GM Qu ic kTim e ﾪa n d a
r3 GIF d e c o m p re s s o r
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 Spaghettification!

For objects close to a

black hole, this is proportional
to the inverse square of the
event horizon radius.

An astronaut falling into the

black hole will be stretched out
like a piece of spaghetti!
 Orbiting a
black hole

.2
r = 2GM L2 + 2GML2 Can see the shape
r r2 c 2 r3 of orbits by plotting
this RHS as V( r )

Standard General
gravitational Centrifugal repulsion relativistic
attraction attraction
 Some orbits and their potentials

By altering angular momentum, can get stable orbits at

different radii. A stable circular orbit lies at a minimum of V.
At r=6GM/c2 the minimum becomes a point of inflection. This
is the innermost stable orbit and can be observed.
 Accretion disc
Most black holes are in a binary system, i.e. where there is a
companion star. This star can then literally get sucked apart by
the black hole.

Cygnus X1:
 Observing accretion discs
This makes accretion
discs very violent
environments, with gases
being heated up to very
high temperatures. These
radiate in the X-ray band
at a temperature related to
the orbital radius.

So we can measure the innermost stable orbit!

 The impossible Planet?
From the picture, the black hole subtends an angle of 1˚ in the sky

r = tan 1o ≈ 1
r d 50

GM ≈ c2 x 10-5 ≈ 105 m s-2 m-1

d d3 r2
for a stellar mass black hole
Fairly impossible!
But for a galactic super black hole, r ≈ 1010 m, and the tidal forces
are 10-8 m s-2 m-1, which is similar to that on earth.
 Milky Way Black Hole
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YUV4 2 0 c o d e c d e c o m p re s s o r
a re n e e d e d t o s e e t h is p ic t u re .
How else might we see a black hole?
Although X-ray observations give us
the most concrete evidence of black
holes, the most spectacular
confirmation is that of stellar motion at
our galactic core. This houses a black
hole of 3 million solar masses! We see
it by the rapid motion of stars orbiting
around a black empty space.
 Hawking Radiation
Back in the early 1970’s it was realised that if a black hole
was truly black, then it had to carry entropy. Entropy measures
disorder, and it always increases in any physical process.

But if a black hole was a thermodynamic object, then surely it

had to be a black body: it had to radiate.

Bekenstein put forward values of entropy and temperature

needed to make thermodynamics work, Hawking showed how
to do this using quantum field theory.
 Heisenberg Uncertainty
A unique feature of Quantum Mechanics is the uncertainty
principle, which tells us we cannot precisely simultaneously
measure position and velocity, or time and energy. This means
that empty space is not really empty, but has lots of particles
and anti-particles continually pair creating and annihilating.

E t ≤h/2
e+
x x t ≤ h ≈ 10 -21 s
4mec2
e
 Pair creation in curved space
Near the event horizon, it
is possible that one of the
particles gets drawn into
the black hole, while the
other escapes. The particle
which has been captured
has negative energy with
respect to an observer at
infinity, and so the black
hole loses mass.
The black hole appears to be emitting particles, and a full calculation
shows this emission is thermal: the black hole is radiating.
 Black holes aren’t black!
A black hole is a true black body, and radiates at the
Hawking temperature:

TH = h c3
8GMkB

So a solar mass black hole has a temperature of about 60

nK!
But very small black holes have high temperatures, and
evaporate very quickly. Can these be formed?
 LHC
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva is being run in
right now. This will collide protons at huge energies, and will
test our theories of fundamental particles. But it will also be
able to look for mini black holes…..

Atlas detector at LHC:

look carefully for the
experimenter!
 Mini Black Holes
Typically, black holes have to form
when matter is highly concentrated, to
within its Schwarzschild radius. But
what if we can change this equation?

Braneworlds and extra dimensions

change the balance by making gravity
stronger. We only think it is weak
because we are trapped in four
spacetime dimensions.
 Why extra Dimensions?
Like Einstein we seem
obsessed with finding a “unified”
description of nature.

The Standard Model works well

for particle physics, but Gravity
seems stubbornly classical.

AE: “God does not play at dice”

NB: “Stop telling God what to do!”
 Quantum Forces
The other major development of last century was
Quantum Physics (again pioneered by Einstein) which
explains all the small-scale forces of nature, and can
include electromagnetism:

• Weak Nuclear Force (allows nucleons to interact

with electrons, also explains radioactivity)
• Strong Nuclear Force (keeps nuclei together)
• Electromagnetism
 String Theory
Replaces particles by strings:

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..and can explain

gravity in the same
breath as quantum
theory…

But needs TEN dimensions!

Time and relative dimensions in space?
What does 10 dimensions mean?

We are used to 3 space and 1 time dimension, but there is no

reason to have only 4 dimensions, other than that is what we see.
We are allowed to have more dimensions, if we can find a way to
hide them. A bit like the TARDIS!!

• Make them small (Kaluza-Klein)

• Glue ourselves to a sheet (braneworld)

 There’s a black hole in my lab!!

Because braneworlds make gravity stronger, black holes

form more easily! But we would have seen signals in
supernova if they were going to form at LHC.
 Summary
 Black holes are fun objects to study in Einstein’s GR
 They are so compact and heavy, they literally tear space apart
 We have good evidence for black holes from X-ray observations
 …and also from orbiting stars at our own galactic core.
 Black holes can also radiate, and evaporate!
 Maybe mini-black holes can form in the lab