Nonsingular Black Hole Models - Alternative Black Hole Models

Alternative Black Hole Models

Nonsingular black hole models have been proposed since theoretical problems with black holes were first realized. Today some of the most viable candidates for the end result of the collapse of a star with mass well above the Chandrasekhar limit include the gravastar and the dark energy star.

While black holes were a well-established part of mainstream physics for most of the end of the 20th century, alternative models received new attention when models proposed by George Chapline and later by Lawrence Krauss, Dejan Stojkovic, and Tanmay Vachaspati of Case Western Reserve University showed in several separate models that black hole horizons could not form.

Such research has attracted much media attention, as black holes have long captured the imagination of both scientists and the public for both their innate simplicity and mysteriousness. The recent theoretical results have therefore undergone much scrutiny and most of them are now ruled out by theoretical studies. For example several alternative black hole models were shown to be unstable in extremely fast rotation, which, by conservation of angular momentum, would be a not unusual physical scenario for a collapsed star (see pulsar). Nevertheless the existence of a stable model of a nonsingular black hole is still an open question.