Introducing Black Holes: Event Horizons and Singularities
Introducing Black Holes: Event Horizons and Singularities
This introductory chapter provides a background of black holes. The term “black hole” is not defined in a technical way and is used in different contexts to mean different things. The phrase itself was popularized by the physicist John Archibald Wheeler to replace the cumbersome description “gravitationally completely collapsed object.” However, black holes are not just useful metaphors or remarkable constructs of theoretical physics; they actually exist. Over the past few decades, black holes have moved from theoretical exotica to a well-known and carefully studied class of astronomical objects. Extensive data archives reveal the properties of systems containing black holes, and many details of their behavior are known. In the current astronomical literature, the seemingly bizarre properties of black holes are now taken for granted and are used as a basis for understanding a wide variety of phenomena.
Keywords: black holes, John Archibald Wheeler, theoretical physics, astronomical objects, astronomical literature, event horizons, singularities
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
