The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to black holes:
Contents
- What type of thing is a black hole
- Types of black holes
- Types of black holes by size
- Specific black holes
- Black hole exploration
- Formation of black holes
- Properties of black holes
- History of black holes
- Models of black holes
- Issues pertaining to black holes
- Black hole metrics
- Astronomical objects including a black hole
- Persons influential in black hole research
- References
Black hole – mathematically defined region of spacetime exhibiting such a strong gravitational pull that no particle or electromagnetic radiation can escape from it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon. Although crossing the event horizon has enormous effect on the fate of the object crossing it, it appears to have no locally detectable features. In many ways a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is on the order of billionths of a kelvin for black holes of stellar mass, making it essentially impossible to observe.
What type of thing is a black hole?
A black hole can be described as all of the following:
Types of black holes
Types of black holes, by size
Specific black holes
Black hole exploration
Formation of black holes
Properties of black holes
History of black holes
History of black holes