History of the black holes

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This black holes article covers the historical part of the discovery and understanding of black holes .

18th century: Newtonian ideas of the black hole

The history of black holes is directly related to the question of whether light has mass or, in other words, whether light, like a particle of matter , can be influenced by gravity . In the 17th century the nature of light was controversial. According to Newton , it is particulate , while in Huygens it is undulating and without mass. Since both the finite speed of light and the concept of escape speed (the speed limit at which an object detaches itself from a body's gravity) are known, the idea of ​​particle-like light (possibly endowed with a mass) leads to a body that is so massive that the escape speed is faster than the speed of light. In this context, black holes can be viewed as a typical example of a paradox where a theory reaches its limits.

In 1783, the Reverend John Michell , an English geologist and amateur astronomer , explained in an article sent to the Royal Society the concept of a body so massive that even light cannot escape. Then he writes in his article:

If the half-diameter of a sphere of the same density of the sun exceeded that of the sun by a ratio of 500 to 1, a body falling towards it from an infinite height would have reached a greater speed on its surface than light, and consequently, assumed light if attracted to other bodies by the same force in proportion to its inertia, any light emitted by such a body would be caused to return to it by its own gravity.

He explained that although these bodies are invisible, they must produce detectable gravitational effects:

If another luminous body turns around them from the movements of these rotating bodies, we could perhaps still infer the existence of the central body with a certain probability; this could also give us an indication of some of the irregularities in the rotating bodies that could not be easily explained by any other hypothesis.

Michell's very abstract thesis received no response at the time.

It was not until 1796 that the mathematician, philosopher and astronomer Marquis Pierre-Simon de Laplace , who was enthusiastic about celestial mechanics and gravitation , rediscovered this idea. In his book Exposition du System du Monde he wrote:

A shining star of the same density as Earth, with a diameter of 250 times that of the Sun, would not radiate any of its rays to us due to its gravitational pull. It is therefore possible that the largest luminous bodies in the universe are invisible because of this cause.

He presented his dissertation to the audience of the Academy of Sciences , but the physicists remained skeptical about the existence of such an object. Thus the concept of the black hole was born, but Laplace's mathematical demonstration seemed too fanciful to astronomers. In addition, the experiments of Young and Fresnel led physicists to reject the particle nature of light in the first half of the 19th century. Laplace stops taking this notion of the black hole from the third edition of his book Exposition du system du Monde .

The concept of the black hole went dark for more than a century . It did not reappear until the 20th century when Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity .

First half of the 20th century: emergence of the idea of ​​the black hole in general relativity

In 1915 Albert Einstein published a new theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity . In this theory, gravity is identified with properties of space, the structure of which is changed by the presence of matter. Space is no longer an absolute unit, but a flexible structure that is deformed by matter. The passage of time is also influenced by the presence of matter.

The complexity of the equations of general relativity was so high that Einstein himself was skeptical of finding exact solutions. A few months after the publication of his theory, however, the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild found a solution for this equation, which describes the external gravitational field of a spherically symmetrical mass distribution. However, this solution can also be extended (at least formally) in the absence of matter. The result is a gravitational field that behaves similarly to that of Newton's gravitation , but in the center of the matter distribution there was a so-called gravitational singularity in which the gravitational field becomes infinite. This configuration, now known to describe a black hole, was viewed by Einstein as non-physical . It also included an area around the gravitational singularity, in which certain quantities describing the gravitational field were no longer defined (the space-time coordinates became physically incoherent under the Schwarzschild radius ). In 1921, the physicists Paul Painlevé and Allvar Gullstrand independently gave a new interpretation of this region, the so-called Painlevé-Gullstrand metric: " It is an event horizon from which it is not possible to leave the interior once we have entered it . "

In the late 1920s, the Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar showed that beyond a certain mass (since then called the Chandrasekhar limit ) an astrophysical object in which all nuclear reactions have ceased (a white dwarf ) collapses under its own gravity because there is no force of action can counteract its own gravity more. The result of this collapse is not exactly described by Chandrasekhar, but it corresponds to a black hole. Arthur Eddington , convinced that something will inevitably stop this collapse, disagrees with Chandrasekhar's arguments during a controversy that has remained famous (see Maximum White Dwarf Mass and the Eddington Controversy ). In fact, we now know that the collapse of a white dwarf produces a Type Ia supernova , but Chandrasekhar's reasoning applies to a neutron star whose existence was not proven at the time.

After Fritz Zwicky had predicted the existence of neutron stars, Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland Snyder calculated in 1939 that there is a maximum mass of neutron stars above which they collapse under the influence of their own gravity. In the same year Albert Einstein published an article in which he showed that the "Schwarzschild singularity" had no physical meaning for him. He writes: " The main result of this article is a clear understanding of why" Schwarzschild singularities "do not exist in physical reality. " These considerations were later refuted in the late 1960s by a work that borrowed the names of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose are closely related to the singularity theorem .

The physical meaning of the Schwarzschild radius and the inner zone could be confirmed with the discovery of other exact solutions ( Lemaître-Metrik 1938, Kruskal-Szekeres-Metrik 1960) of Einstein's equations; but it was David Finkelstein who in 1958 explained the physicality of this area with the Eddington-Finkelstein metric .

Second half of the 20th century: The theory of the black hole is taking shape

Interest in black holes increased again in the late 1950s during the so-called golden age of general relativity .

The New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution in 1963 that describes a rotating black hole (known as the Kerr metric ), the effect of which is to make the surrounding space rotate with it.

The discovery of pulsars (observable form of neutron stars) in 1967 and the first candidate for a black hole ( Cygnus X-1 ) in 1971 brought black holes into astronomy. The term "black hole" was proposed in 1967 by John Wheeler . The term "Black Star" (used in one of the first episodes of the Star Trek series ) was also used at the time. In some countries the term is only slowly gaining acceptance. In France, the term "black hole" is not met with much enthusiasm because of its sexual connotation. The English term ultimately goes down in history and is literally translated into all languages.

Since the late 20th century, observations of astrophysical systems have been accumulating that are believed to contain a black hole. Several microquasars have been discovered in our galaxy : SS 433 , GRS 1915 + 105 , GRO J1655-40 , 1A 0620-00 etc. So far, 20 binary systems are known that contain a stellar black hole. Their existence is derived mainly thanks to the possibility of determining the masses of the two components in a binary star . If one of these masses exceeds the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit , which defines the maximum mass of a neutron star while the object is invisible, it is considered a black hole.

Early 21st Century: Detection of Black Holes

Gravitational waves were observed for the first time in 2015 with the LIGO and Virgo detectors : GW150914 . The observed signals are consistent with calculations made by computers from Einstein's field equations for cases of binary black holes.

Important data

Portrait of Ole Rømer by Jacob Coning (around 1700).
Portrait of Isaac Newton by Godfrey Kneller (1689).

17th century

  • 1676: Ole Rømer shows for the first time that light propagates at finite speed.

18th century

  • 1728: Publication of the Treatise on the System of the World in London, English edition of the Principia by Isaac Newton , in which the thought experiment known as Newton's canon appears for the first time , in which the speeds are emphasized, limits that are now known as the minimum orbital speed and escape speed are known [6].
  • 1783: As part of the corpuscular theory , John Michell gives the first indication of a Newtonian black hole (using Newton's laws of gravity ). However, Michell's 1784 intervention before the audience at the Royal Society of Cambridge, abstract and very theoretical, went unanswered.
  • 1794–1796: Pierre-Simon de Laplace , independently of Michell, suggests the concept of the dark star , which appears in the first two editions of his Exposition du System du Monde .

19th century

  • 1810: In an 1810 communication to the Academy of Sciences that was not published until 1853, François Arago mentions the impossibility of light to escape a large star.
  • 1854: Posthumous publication of the first volume of Popular Astronomy by François Arago, in which the term black hole is used to describe the ring nebula in the lyre .
  • 1868: In Captain Grant's Children , Jules Verne uses the expression black hole to describe a region of the southern sky that is particularly starless. In the English edition of 1876 trou noir is translated as black hole .

1910s

1920s

  • 1923: George Birkhoff proves that the Schwarzschild metric is an exact solution of the field equation.
  • 1924: Arthur Eddington proposes a coordinate system known today as Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates, which represents the singularity in von Schwarzschild's metric as a coordinate singularity .

1930s

1950s

1960s

  • 1960: Martin Kruskal rediscovers the results of John Synge.
  • 1963: Roy Kerr discovers a solution to Einstein's equations to describe the holes of rotation: Kerr's rotating black holes .
  • 1964: American journalist Ann E. Ewing uses the term black hole in a report of a meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science published in Science News Letter of January 18, 1964.
  • 1965: Ezra Ted Newman discovers a solution to describe black holes in rotation and with non-zero electrical charge.
  • 1965–1970: Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking use the general theory of relativity to show that there must be a singularity of infinite density and a curvature of infinite space-time in a black hole. Other researchers have suggested that such a phenomenon is impossible, which means that unknown effects occur before a black hole forms, hence its existence is hypothetical.
  • 1966: Jakow Seldowitsch and Igor Novikow have the idea of ​​looking for black holes in binary star systems .

1970s

  • 1975: Chandrasekhar and Stephen Detweiler develop a mathematical description of the perturbations of black holes, called quasi-normal modes.

1990s

2000s

  • 2002: The INTEGRAL space telescope, launched in October, monitors the gamma-ray range in search of large black holes.
  • 2004: Stephen Hawking admits he believes he was wrong about the black holes information paradox: after an immeasurably long time, the black holes finally release the information they were trapping.
  • 2009: Detection of HLX-1 in the galaxy ESO 243-49 , which is considered to be the central black hole.

2010s

  • 2014: Stephen Hawking proposes redefining the black hole by replacing the absolute horizon, which is the event horizon, with an apparent horizon.
  • 2015: First detection of black holes through their gravitational waves (GW150914).
  • 2019: For the first time, a black hole is photographed in the center of the giant galaxy M87 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Michell: VII. On the means of discovering the distance, magnitude, & c. of the fixed stars, in consequence of the diminution of the velocity of their light, in case such a diminution should be found to take place in any of them, and such other data should be procured from observations, as would be farther necessary for that purpose. By the Rev. John Michell, BDFRS In a letter to Henry Cavendish, Esq. FRS and AS . In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London . tape 74 , January 1, 1784, p. 35-57 , doi : 10.1098 / rstl.1784.0008 .
  2. ↑ Pierre-Simon Laplace: Exposition du système du monde. Cercle-Social, Paris 1796. ( digitized on Gallica )
  3. ↑ Landau, LD, and EM Lifschitz. "Classical Field Theory (Textbook of Theoretical Physics), Vol. II." (1989) §100
  4. ^ JR Oppenheimer, H. Snyder: On Continued Gravitational Contraction . In: General Theory of Relativity . Elsevier, 1973, ISBN 978-0-08-017639-0 , pp. 308-317 , doi : 10.1016 / b978-0-08-017639-0.50016-9 .
  5. ↑ Albert Einstein: On a Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses . In: The Annals of Mathematics . tape 40 , no. October 4 , 1939, ISSN  0003-486X , p. 922 , doi : 10.2307 / 1968902 ( semanticscholar.org [PDF; accessed December 30, 2019]).
  6. ^ Lev Davidovič Landau, Evgenij M. Lifšic: Textbook of theoretical physics / by LD Landau; EM Lifschitz. In German language ed. by Gerhard Heber; Vol. 2: Classical field theory . 12., revised. Aufl. Akad.-Verl., Berlin 1992, ISBN 978-3-05-501550-2 , XII. § 102 "The gravitational collapse of spherically symmetrical bodies" ( tib.eu [accessed on January 5, 2020]).
  7. ^ Roy P. Kerr: Gravitational Field of a Spinning Mass as an Example of Algebraically Special Metrics . In: Physical Review Letters . tape 11 , no. 5 , September 1, 1963, ISSN  0031-9007 , p. 237-238 , doi : 10.1103 / physrevlett.11.237 .
  8. ^ Vitor Cardoso, Paolo Pani: Testing the nature of dark compact objects: a status report . In: Living Reviews in Relativity . tape 22 , no. 1 , July 8, 2019, ISSN  2367-3613 , doi : 10.1007 / s41114-019-0020-4 .
  9. ↑ MICHELL, John, FRS: On the means of discovering the distance, magnitude, & c. of the fixed stars ... Read at the Royal Society, Nov. 27, 1783. Printed by J. Nichols, 1784, OCLC 951218080 .
  10. ↑ Pierre Simon Laplace: EXPOSURE YOU SYSTÊME DU MONDE . In: Exposition du systeme du monde . 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 978-0-511-69333-5 , pp. 1 .
  11. ↑ Arago, François. "Mémoire sur la vitesse de la lumière, lu à la première classe de l'Institut, le 10 December 1810." Académie des sciences (Paris). Comptes rendus 36 (1853): 38-49.
  12. ^ François Arago (Jean-Augustin Barral (ed.)), Popular Astronomy: Posthumous Work, vol. 1, Paris and Leipzig, Gide and TO Weigel, 1854 (announcement BnF no FRBNF30024347), p. 509: “William Herschel classified a nebula among the curiosities of the firmament, which is entered in the old catalog of the knowledge of the time under No. 57. To be fair, we hasten to add that Messier and Méchain with their dim glasses neither saw a star in the nebula nor recognized its true shape. This nebula (Fig. 118) is a somewhat elliptical star ring at the bottom. It lies between β and γ of the lyre; it was discovered by Darquier in Toulouse in 1779. We see a black tower in the middle, or at least dimly lit. The two axes have a ratio of 83 to 100. The dark hole takes up about half the diameter of the nebula. "
  13. ^ Pierre Laszlo, Brève préhistoire littéraire du trou noir, Alliage , No. 66, April 2010, 79-83
  14. ↑ Jules Verne, Les Enfants du capitaine Grant (1868), le trou noir de Paganel et le point en mer , 1876, p. 290
  15. ^ Jules Verne: A voyage round the world. 1876, p. 290 , accessed January 5, 2020 .
  16. ^ Albert Einstein, The field equations of gravitation , session reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin , 1915, p. 844-847
  17. ↑ Karl Schwarzschild, On the gravitational field of a mass point according to Einstein's theory, session reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, vol. 7, 1916, p. 189-196
  18. ↑ H. Reissner: About the self-gravity of the electric field according to Einstein's theory . In: Annals of Physics . tape 355 , no. 9 , 1916, pp. 106-120 , doi : 10.1002 / andp.19163550905 .
  19. ^ Gunnar Nordström, On the Energy of the Gravitational Field in Einstein's Theory, negotiation. of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdel. Natuurk., Vol. 26, 1918, p. 1201-1208
  20. ^ Johannes Droste, "The field of a single center in Einstein's theory of gravitation, and the motion of a particle in that field", Proceedings of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science, vol. 19, no 1, 1917, p. 197-215
  21. ↑ Eisenstaedt, Jean, 1940-, Kox, Anne J .: Studies in the history of general relativity: based on the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on the History of General Relativity, Luminy, France, 1988 . Birkhäuser, Boston 1992, ISBN 0-8176-3479-7 .
  22. ↑ George D. Birkhoff, Relativity and Modern Physics, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1923
  23. ^ AS Eddington: A Comparison of Whitehead's and Einstein's Formulæ . In: Nature . tape 113 , no. 2832 , February 1924, ISSN  1476-4687 , p. 192-192 , doi : 10.1038 / 113192a0 .
  24. ↑ S. Chandrasekhar: XLVIII.The density of white dwarf stars . In: The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science . tape 11 , no. 70 , February 1931, ISSN  1941-5982 , pp. 592-596 , doi : 10.1080 / 14786443109461710 .
  25. ↑ S. Chandrasekhar: The Maximum Mass of Ideal White Dwarfs . In: The Astrophysical Journal . tape 74 , July 1931, ISSN  0004-637X , p. 81 , doi : 10.1086 / 143324 .
  26. ^ Georges Lemaître: L'Univers en expansion . In: ASSB . tape 53 , 1933, pp. 51 , bibcode : 1933ASSB ... 53 ... 51L .
  27. ^ JR Oppenheimer, H. Snyder: On Continued Gravitational Contraction . In: Physical Review . tape 56 , no. 5 , September 1, 1939, ISSN  0031-899X , p. 455-459 , doi : 10.1103 / physrev.56.455 .
  28. ^ Richard C. Tolman: Static Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations for Spheres of Fluid . In: Physical Review . tape 55 , no. 4 , February 15, 1939, ISSN  0031-899X , p. 364-373 , doi : 10.1103 / physrev.55.364 .
  29. ↑ JR Oppenheimer, GM Volkoff: On Massive Neutron Cores . In: Physical Review . tape 55 , no. 4 , February 15, 1939, ISSN  0031-899X , p. 374-381 , doi : 10.1103 / physrev.55.374 .
  30. ↑ Albert Einstein: On a Stationary System With Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses . In: The Annals of Mathematics . tape 40 , no. October 4 , 1939, ISSN  0003-486X , p. 922 , doi : 10.2307 / 1968902 .
  31. ^ Synge, John Lighton .: The gravitational field of a particle . 1950, OCLC 65137863 .
  32. ^ David Finkelstein: Past-Future Asymmetry of the Gravitational Field of a Point Particle . In: Physical Review . tape 110 , no. 4 , May 15, 1958, p. 965-967 , doi : 10.1103 / PhysRev.110.965 .
  33. ^ MD Kruskal: Maximal Extension of Schwarzschild Metric . In: Physical Review . tape 119 , no. 5 , September 1, 1960, ISSN  0031-899X , p. 1743-1745 , doi : 10.1103 / physrev.119.1743 .
  34. ^ Roy P. Kerr: Gravitational Field of a Spinning Mass as an Example of Algebraically Special Metrics . In: Physical Review Letters . tape 11 , no. 5 , September 1, 1963, ISSN  0031-9007 , p. 237-238 , doi : 10.1103 / physrevlett.11.237 .
  35. ↑ Emma Brown, Ann E. Ewing dies: science journalist turned nation's eyes to black holes, The Washington Post , 1.8. 2010 https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/31/AR2010073102772.html
  36. ^ ET Newman, AI Janis: Note on the Kerr Spinning Particle Metric . In: Journal of Mathematical Physics . tape 6 , no. 6 , June 1965, ISSN  0022-2488 , p. 915-917 , doi : 10.1063 / 1.1704350 .
  37. ↑ Penrose, R. "Gravitational collapse: The role of general relativity." Riv. Nuovo Cim. 1 (1969): 1141-1165
  38. ^ S. Hawking: Gravitationally Collapsed Objects of Very Low Mass . In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 152 , no. 1 , April 1, 1971, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 75-78 , doi : 10.1093 / mnras / 152.1.75 .
  39. ^ D. Lynden-Bell, MJ Rees: On Quasars, Dust and the Galactic Center . In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 152 , no. 4 , July 1, 1971, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 461-475 , doi : 10.1093 / mnras / 152.4.461 .
  40. ↑ see also Fulvio Melia, Heino Falcke: The Supermassive Black Hole at the Galactic Center . In: Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics . tape 39 , no. 1 , September 2001, ISSN  0066-4146 , p. 309-352 , doi : 10.1146 / annurev.astro.39.1.309 .
  41. ^ S. Chandrasekhar, S. Detweiler: The Quasi-Normal Modes of the Schwarzschild Black Hole . In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences . tape 344 , no. 1639 , 1975, ISSN  0080-4630 , pp. 441-452 .
  42. ^ Access: Hawking changes his mind about black holes: Nature News. December 14, 2007, accessed January 5, 2020 .
  43. ^ Black Hole Came from a Shredded Galaxy. October 2, 2013, accessed January 5, 2020 .
  44. ↑ Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf, Joseph Polchinski, James Sully: Black holes: complementarity or firewalls? In: Journal of High Energy Physics . tape 2013 , no. 2 , February 11, 2013, ISSN  1029-8479 , p. 62 , doi : 10.1007 / JHEP02 (2013) 062 .
  45. ^ SW Hawking: Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes . In: [gr-qc, physics: hep-th] . January 22, 2014, arxiv : 1401.5761 .
  46. ↑ Zeeya Merali: Stephen Hawking: 'There are no black holes' . In: Nature . January 24, 2014, ISSN  1476-4687 , doi : 10.1038 / nature.2014.14583 .
  47. ↑ Futura: Fin des trous noirs selon Hawking: l'avis de Jean-Pierre Luminet. Retrieved January 5, 2020 (French).
  48. ↑ La première photo d'un trou noir publiée par un consortium scientifique international . April 10, 2019 ( lemonde.fr [accessed January 5, 2020]).
  49. ↑ information@eso.org: The first picture of a black hole. Retrieved January 5, 2020 .