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Stephen Hawking Was Wrong—Extremal Black Holes Are Possible
For decades, a black hole that has as much spin or charge as it can given it mass was considered mathematically impossible. A new proof reveals otherwise.
“They have nice symmetries that make it easier to calculate things,” said Gaurav Khanna of the University of Rhode Island, and this allows physicists to test theories about the mysterious relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity. To support their claim, the trio argued that any process that would allow a black hole’s charge or spin to reach the extremal limit could also potentially result in its event horizon disappearing altogether. Dafermos recognized that his former students had uncovered a counterexample to Bardeen, Carter, and Hawking’s third law: They’d shown that they could indeed change a typical black hole into an extremal one within a finite stretch of time.
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