{"id":193636,"date":"2024-07-27T04:24:21","date_gmt":"2024-07-27T09:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/black-holes-cant-be-created-by-light"},"modified":"2024-07-27T04:24:21","modified_gmt":"2024-07-27T09:24:21","slug":"black-holes-cant-be-created-by-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/black-holes-cant-be-created-by-light","title":{"rendered":"Black Holes Can\u2019t Be Created by Light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/black-holes-cant-be-created-by-light.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The formation of a black hole from light alone is permitted by general relativity, but a new study says quantum physics rules it out.<\/p>\n<p>Black holes are known to form from large concentrations of mass, such as burned-out stars. But according to general relativity, they can also form from ultra-intense light. Theorists have speculated about this idea for decades. However, calculations by a team of researchers now suggest that light-induced black holes are not possible after all because quantum-mechanical effects cause too much leakage of energy for the collapse to proceed [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v17\/119#c1\" class=\"\">1<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The extreme density of mass produced by a collapsed star can curve spacetime so severely that no light entering the region can escape. The formation of a black hole from light is possible according to general relativity because mass and energy are equivalent, so the energy in an electromagnetic field can also curve spacetime [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v17\/119#c2\" class=\"\">2<\/a>]. Putative electromagnetic black holes have become popularly known as <i><i>kugelblitz<\/i>e<\/i>, German for \u201cball lightning,\u201d following the terminology used by Princeton University physicist John Wheeler in early studies of electromagnetically generated gravitational fields in the 1950s [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v17\/119#c3\" class=\"\">3<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The formation of a black hole from light alone is permitted by general relativity, but a new study says quantum physics rules it out. Black holes are known to form from large concentrations of mass, such as burned-out stars. But according to general relativity, they can also form from ultra-intense light. Theorists have speculated about [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,33,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-cosmology","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}