this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Is that the form matter takes at the center of a black hole? Hmmm, that would make sense but I guess it doesn't necessarily have to, as the gravitational force isn't directly dependent on the density, just the mass.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

To add on, definitely not a "normal" degenerate matter, no. If there's enough mass there to form a black hole, the energy liberated from shrinking exceeds the energy needed to decrease the wavelength of the particles, and continues doing so perpetually. Doing that calculation is why we were so sure black holes must exist in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A black hole is believed to contain a singularity with all of the mass as a single point. So this is well past the point of baryonic matter and in a region where our physics models break down.

If you just take the total mass of a black hole and divide it by the volume of the Schwarzschild radius (aka event horizon) you get a density MUCH greater than a neutron star. This isn’t a useful measure of the black hole density though, since all of the mass is at a single point of presumably infinite density.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Ah, many thanks, it's been quite a while since UP2 and I honestly didn't even have a good grasp on it while I was taking the class