Are Black Holes Mathematically Impossible?

Black holes have long been a mystery that scientists have tried to unravel, and now one scientist claims that this phenomenon is mathematically impossible - and she has the data to prove it.

When a massive star collapses under its own gravity to a single point in space called a singularity, it forms a black hole - the ultimate unknown. A void so dense and dark that not even light can escape it. But this fascinating object can never come into being in the first place, at least, according to Laura Mersini-Houghton, a physics professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the College of Arts and Scientists.

"I'm still not over the shock," Mersini-Houghton said in a statement. "We've been studying this problem for a more than 50 years and this solution gives us a lot to think about."

It's true - if correct, her research could force physicists to not only reimagine the fabric of space-time, but also scrap their previous theories of how the Universe began.

Two conflicting theories have long caused many a debate about the existence of black holes. Albert Einstein's theory of gravity predicts the formation of black holes while a fundamental law of quantum theory states that no information from the Universe can ever disappear.

Mersini-Houghton combined these two ideologies to come up with an entirely new scenario. She claims that as a star dies, it releases a type of radiation known as Hawking radiation - predicted by Professor Stephen Hawking. However, her new work shows that during this process the star also sheds mass, so much so that it no longer has the density to become a black hole.

Before the black hole can even form, she said, the dying star swells and explodes.

"Physicists have been trying to merge these two theories - Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum mechanics - for decades, but this scenario brings these two theories together, into harmony," said Mersini-Houghton. "And that's a big deal."

One day scientists may finally find physical proof as to whether or not black holes exist in the Universe. But for now, Mersini-Houghton says the proof is in the math.

Mersini-Houghton collaborated on her work with Harald Peiffer, an expert on numerical relativity at the University of Toronto. The paper was recently submitted to ArXiv, an online repository of physics papers that is not peer-reviewed.