![]() ![]() Even though, from the outside, the black hole appears to stay a constant size, expanding slightly only when new things fall into it, its interior volume grows bigger and bigger all the time as space stretches toward the center point. (They typically form from the inward gravitational collapse of dead stars.) Einstein’s theory equates the force of gravity with curves in space-time, the four-dimensional fabric of the universe, but gravity becomes so strong in black holes that the space-time fabric bends toward its breaking point-the infinitely dense “singularity” at the black hole’s center.Īccording to general relativity, the inward gravitational collapse never stops. ![]() First discovered a century ago as shocking solutions to the equations of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, they’ve since been detected throughout the universe. In a series of recent papers and talks, the 78-year-old Stanford University professor and his collaborators conjecture that black holes grow in volume because they are steadily increasing in complexity-an idea that, while unproven, is fueling new thinking about the quantum nature of gravity inside black holes.īlack holes are spherical regions of such extreme gravity that not even light can escape. ![]() The problem is that even though these mysterious, invisible spheres appear to stay a constant size as viewed from the outside, their interiors keep growing in volume essentially forever. Leonard Susskind, a pioneer of string theory, the holographic principle and other big physics ideas spanning the past half century, has proposed a solution to an important puzzle about black holes. ![]()
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