Black holes have arguably been my favorite food for thought in the past decade or so. However, there is one glaring issue with them that has been bugging me lately.

Einstein described in significant detail everything that should, in theory, happen in a black hole. The only thing he admitted to having no clue about is also the reason why black holes might not even exist - the singularity.

That point of infinite density and absurd amounts of mass that sits in the geometric center of the black hole is allowed to exist within the confines of Einstein's theory of general relativity, but there is one other major worldview on modern-day physics that would disagree with Einstein - quantum mechanics.

If the world as we know it does indeed abide by the rules of quantum mechanics, a singularity should not be possible at all. This introduces the idea of the so-called "dark star" - currently the only alternative to a black hole that makes any sense in a universe governed by the unwavering laws of quantum mechanics.

Technically, the only reason physicists believe black holes exist is that "nothing else can do what this dark spot in the universe does". It doesn't take a theoretical physics Ph.D. to reach the conclusion that such reasoning is far from convincing or built on anything resembling a remotely solid foundation. Well, a dark star can exist both in general relativity and quantum mechanics, and it has pretty much the same characteristics as a black hole, minus the magic happening in the middle.

A dark star would be born from a massive regular star that has collapsed in on itself because its inner balance has been disrupted. The intense gravity squeezes all of its matter tightly until it "extinguishes" it - no visible light comes out of it at all, and its surface temperature drops drastically.

However, this doesn't mean that no light at all comes out of it. In fact, photons are most likely streaming out of it in all directions, but because of the extreme conditions around an object so massive and dense, this light gets redshifted to an extreme degree. The photons' wavelength becomes so long that it can, in fact, span the entire galaxy, making it virtually undetectable by any detector smaller than the galaxy. In a sense, this photon becomes invisible to us, but it is there.

If black holes are in fact dark stars, this solves one of the hairiest problems in the hitherto accepted view on those mysterious objects - there is no need for an ineffable singularity in the center to achieve the same physical properties. Stars can still orbit a dark star, and it can still aggregate an accretion disk of superheated matter that emits light in a variety of wavelengths, including x-rays.

A lot more research and data is needed before we have anything close to an answer to all these questions. The bottom line is that we're still so early in our cosmic exploration, barely at the foothill of this towering mountain of knowledge about the universe. We just don't know and can only guess. But so far, the tantalizing mystery of a black hole seems rather implausible when measured against a much more grounded explanation, such as a dark star.

If you're interested in this topic, you can check out this fantastic episode of the podcast "Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe" where Daniel Whiteson, a brilliant particle physicist, goes into this subject in excellent depth.

The more we learn about the Universe, the more we expand our awareness of how little we actually know. Be well, friends.

Black holes have long fascinated me as well. I am not going to pretend to be smart or well-educated enought o discuss the physics involved but the subject is indeed amazing to think about. Outside of the (great and funny as heck) movie and the Grateful Dead-est of Dead songs (which I never got to see live ) the dark star concept is new to me. That podcast is also one of my favorites but I have not listened to that episode, I will have to check it out. Thanks for the heads up maybe I'll check it out tonight!

Yup, dark stars are a very new concept for me as well, but quite fascinating. Seems like there's not much research put into that direction yet because of how prevalent the assumption about black holes existing has been in the past. I reckon you'll enjoy this episode a lot.

Also, in case you haven't seen one of Kurzgesagt's latest videos, I strongly recommend you take a look - The Largest Black Hole in the Universe - Size Comparison

I tear up just trying to assimilate the ineffable scale of the cosmos.

This is a fascinating subject to which I have also followed over the years. I have a rudimentary understanding of black holes and quantum mechanics. I do wish my brain were a little bigger at times when researching this topic, it all to easily leads me into feeling of I got the dumb. Please allow my amateur commentary on something I enjoy thinking about but certainly do not understand well. I am learning.

The black hole information paradox was something that Stephen Hawking was working on shortly before his death and he contributed much to the theory. He stated that information was kept intact due to what is now called 'Hawking Radiation'. It was long thought that nothing escaped a black hole once it traveled past the event horizon. Hawking Radiation shows that energy is escaping from these black holes creating 'hairs' of energy. The black holes over times will lose all there mass.

Below please find a list of postulated solutions to the black hole information paradox. Below that please enjoy a video I found interesting regarding black holes.

It's quite remarkable that even in the eighteenth century these phenomena where already being suggested to exist. By some guy called john michell. Who, i suppose, was a time traveller.
He basically invented a method using sticks and stones to calculate the earths mass as well.

I have my own beliefs that black holes are portals, the only part I'm not sure of is whether they lead to a different universe or a parallel copy of our own and whether they are 2 way or a 1 way ticket.

I know this belief goes against what scientists, physicists, etc... "know" or theorize about black holes and in the realm of Sci-Fi but just a little over 100 years ago airplanes were science fiction and this morning I read about PFV's (I had seen some before but didn't know they don't require any kind of license, that's nuts.) There is a lot of exciting things happening right now. Between the research being done with the LHC and the effort of numerous physicists more information on 'dark energy' is imminent and it's the key to lightspeed and beyond to interplanetary/universal travel. I am absolutely fascinated with space/time and have done 'time bending' exercises in the past.

60 years ago space travel was science fiction and 20 years ago my 266mhz 128mb ram PC with a fireball 2gb and a Bigfoot 8gb hardrive recorded my first album on Windows 98, now a phone with a micro SD has 20x the processing power and up to 100x the storage. I believe we will soon find out exactly how black holes work with as much certainty as knowing if you drop a jar off a ladder on earth it will fall. We're right on the edge of everything.

Yeah, I'm somewhat familiar with the information paradox, and it is indeed something very difficult to get a proper grasp on. I had a period in my life, relatively recently too, where I started writing a sci-fi novel. I put it on hold for the time being, because I realized I don't have what it takes to build truly relatable and believable characters yet. However, one of the ideas I wanted to embed in the story was about a hyper-advanced Kardashev type II civilization that has managed to get close enough to a black hole near one of their populated systems. They devised a way to collect the Hawking radiation coming out of the black hole, channel it into various forms of energy, and funnel it through their technology through which this energy turns into decipherable information, giving access to unbelievable amounts of data about the universe. Maybe one day I will develop this novel fully, but until then, I'm left marveling at the cosmos and its secrets.


Oh absolutely, I'm certain there have been people that have traveled through time, whether realizing it or not. History just shows some cases, like the one you described, which are hard to explain with any rationality or logic.

I've always been most fascinated with Einstein. The importance of things this man accurately predicted is absolutely mind-boggling, considering how much was known at the time of these predictions. I like to imagine people like him are either time travelers or touched by some higher intelligence, given the gift of instinct and foresight, in order to propel humanity in a very specific direction for a reason that we, as the main actors in this unbelievable sci-fi that is our existence, will most likely never come close to understanding.


That's not a belief only you hold, for sure. Here's a fantastic PBS Spacetime video that talks about this at length. I reckon you'll find it interesting if you haven't seen it already.

There has been an enormous amount of discussions on the multiverse hypothesis. In reality, we will most likely never know whether or not there are multiple universes, but it's definitely exciting to think about it.