Black hole: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:48, 20 January 2005

Revision as of 02:10, 21 January 2005

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In [[1939]] [[Robert Oppenheimer]] and H. Snyder predicted that massive stars could undergo a dramatic [[gravitational collapse]]. Black holes could in principle be formed in nature. Such objects for a while were called '''frozen stars''' since the collapse would be observed to rapidly slow down and become heavily reddened near the Schwarzschild radius. However, these hypothetical objects were not the topic of much theoretical interest until the late [[1960s]].

Interest in collapsed objects was rekindled in [[1967]] with the discovery of [[pulsar]]s. Shortly thereafter, the use of the expression "black hole" was coined by theoretical physicist [[John Wheeler]] [http://www.truephysics.com/timeline/timeline1961_1980.html]. Prior to that time, the term ''black star'' was used occasionally. The term appears in an early episode of [[Star Trek]], and was still used occasionally after 1967. This is because some people found the term "black hole" obscene when translated into [[French language|French]] or [[Russian (usagelanguage)|Russian]], for example.

==Qualitative physics==