A French study solves a 60-year-old problem

Are black holes stable? If this question seems trivial, it’s actually important to the balance of the universe (and it is). According to Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity black holes are very real today. But there are still questions surrounding these dark stars.

Kerr black holes, discovered by the eponymous mathematician in 1963, are particularly interesting to study. In contrast to “classic” black holes called Schwarzschild black holes, Kerr black holes have a kinetic force (they move by themselves) as well as an electromagnetic charge.

Otherwise black holes

Two very rare arrangements for black holes, but they have raised questions for astrophysicists for half a century. This motion and this electromagnetic force are said to be modulated by events around the black hole, so in short it is not constant. For researchers, the whole point is to know whether an activity (whatever it is) is capable of perturbing the black hole, or whether the latter will “absorb” energy and return to its previous state.

That’s certainly true for Sorbonne University researcher Jeremy Scheftal. In a three-article collection of over 2000 pages of information and research, he describes the “mathematical proof” of his discovery. This research work was immediately welcomed by the scientific community.

A study that was praised by the scientific community

To Demetrios Christodoulou, a mathematician at the Polytechnic School of Zurich: ” This result was indeed an important step in the development of the mathematics of general relativityOther researchers, such as Shing-Tung Yao, a professor at the prestigious Harvard University in the US, welcomed the work of Seftel and his team.

Because of this problem, many astrophysicists have rubbed shoulders without success for years. So its determination is a minor achievement in the scientific world. So far the equations we have had for the dynamics of black holes have been for fixed stars.

Proof by contradiction

To succeed in proving that Kerr’s black holes were fixed, Jeremy Schefdel had the idea of ​​using “proof by contradiction”. In such cases this scientific procedure is constantly used. Szeftel sought to discover the conditions that make a black hole unstable, as we experience it today.

But despite hundreds of experiments in more extreme configurations, the equations Kerr wrote in 1963 proved the black hole’s stability. But not all work is done for Szeftel and his team. He actually succeeded in proving that slowly rotating black holes are stable, but others are not.

So he should go to work in the next few days to prove that fast-spinning black holes are stable. If this is not the case, then the whole model of the physics of stars must be reviewed and a lot of research must be started from scratch.