Can Black Holes Be Destroyed?#

Black holes are known for destroying everything they encounter, but could they themselves be destroyed? Let’s push the boundaries of physics, maybe even break the universe a little bit, and try it out.

Imagine we’ve got a tiny black hole in the Kurzgesagt Labs. This one has about the mass of our moon. Now, how can we get rid of it?

Attempt 1: Nuke It#

Big explosions usually break stuff, right? So, let’s try unleashing the world’s entire nuclear arsenal around our little black hole. Boom!

What Happens: Black holes just swallow whatever crosses their event horizon – that’s matter and energy. Remember E = mc²? All that energy from the explosions entering the black hole increases its mass. Since a black hole’s size is linked to its mass, nuking our tiny black hole just makes it bigger and more massive! Didn’t work.

Attempt 2: Antimatter#

Okay, what about antimatter? Matter and antimatter utterly destroy each other when they meet. What if we throw a moon’s worth of antimatter at our black hole?

What Happens: This is where black holes get weird. When anything enters a black hole, the black hole completely deletes its past identity. It doesn’t matter if it was made of matter or antimatter, a star or a banana. Black holes only care about gravity, which only depends on the total mass-energy of the object.

And here’s the kicker: a particle has the same mass as its corresponding antiparticle. So, throwing an “anti-moon” has the exact same effect as throwing a regular moon. The black hole just gets more massive. Still not destroyed.

Black Holes: Simple Like Particles?#

This ability of black holes to “delete identity” is pretty fascinating. Despite their massive size and power, black holes are actually, in a way, quite similar to elementary particles.

Think about an elementary particle, like an electron. It’s incredibly simple, described fully by just three numbers: its mass, spin (rotation), and charge.

Amazingly, the same is true for black holes! Once a black hole forms, it doesn’t matter how it formed (collapsed star, anti-star, banana). It will always be fully described by just those three numbers:

• Mass
• Spin (Can rotate)
• Electric Charge (Can carry a charge)

Nothing else matters once it’s inside.

Attempt 3: Anti Black Hole#

If a black hole is basically a weird, giant particle, could we destroy it with an anti black hole? Like particles and antiparticles annihilating?

Based on the particle analogy, an anti black hole should have the same mass as a regular black hole but the opposite electric charge. What if we made them collide?

What Happens: Sadly, the charge would just add up and cancel out. So, after the collision, you wouldn’t get annihilation. You’d just get a new black hole that’s twice as massive and has no net charge. Another failed attempt.

Attempt 4: Destroy the Event Horizon#

We know black holes can have spin and charge, but there are limits to how much! If a black hole’s spin or charge becomes too large relative to its mass, something truly bizarre is predicted to happen: the event horizon will dissolve.

Understanding the Event Horizon & Singularity:

• We usually picture a black hole as hiding a singularity inside. This is like an infinitely squished point of mass where gravity is so strong nothing can escape.
• This is why a black hole looks like a “black sphere of nothingness.”
• The event horizon is the boundary of this ultimate prison. Cross it, and you are stuck forever.

How Spin & Charge Affect the Horizon:

• When a black hole spins, it kind of creates an effect that tries to push things away from it, like a spinning washing machine. Gravity normally wins this fight easily.
• BUT, if the rotation gets too fast, this repulsive effect wins, and the event horizon disappears! Things nearby wouldn’t be trapped forever anymore.
• The same thing happens with electric charge. Make the charge too large, and the “ironclad jail” of the event horizon breaks open.

If we could make the event horizon dissolve, the singularity would still be there. Objects would still fall towards it naturally, and if you hit it, you’d still die horribly and quickly. However, the area around the singularity wouldn’t be an inescapable prison anymore! You could get close and come back out.

This should count as destroying the black hole! Can we actually do it?

The Overfeeding Strategy#

To destroy the event horizon, all we’d need to do is somehow overcharge or over-spin the black hole relative to its mass. We could try throwing things at it that have a small mass but a lot of electric charge or a lot of angular momentum (spin). The idea is to increase the charge or spin faster than the mass until the black hole reaches the breaking point.

The Challenge: Whether this is actually possible is a hot topic among physicists.

• Take a charged black hole. If you try to feed it more of the same charge (like feeding a negatively charged black hole lots of electrons), those charges repel each other.
• The more charge you add, the stronger the electrostatic repulsion becomes.
• Eventually, if you reach the theoretical upper limit for charge, the repulsion becomes so strong that it physically won’t let any more charged particles come in. The black hole essentially refuses to be overfed.
• The same principle applies to adding spin; there’s a limit where it won’t gobble more angular momentum.

A Possible Loophole? Some scientists have found what looks like a loophole in the math. It might be possible, if you throw in just the right amount of matter exactly at the moment the black hole reaches its limit, to briefly push it over. Most scientists are skeptical, but it’s an intriguing idea!

Let’s pretend we succeed and break the event horizon.

The Problem: A Naked Singularity#

There’s a huge catch to destroying the event horizon: it would leave behind a “naked singularity”. This is a singularity that isn’t hidden away by an event horizon. And this poses a massive problem – it could mean the end of physics as we know it.

The “Future” of the Singularity: Here’s a big, secret about black holes that isn’t widely known: the singularity isn’t really “at the center” in a spatial sense. It’s in the future of anything that crosses the event horizon.

Black holes twist space and time so much that at the horizon, space and time actually switch roles. Once you’re inside, falling towards the center isn’t just moving through space; it’s moving inevitably forward in time towards the singularity. That’s why you can’t escape – stopping your fall and turning back would be as impossible as stopping time and traveling into the past.

So, the singularity is in your future, not just in front of you. And just like you can’t see your own future or interact with it until it arrives, you won’t see the singularity until you hit it. You’ll only “experience” it when you get there, like your next birthday arriving. Singularities that are hidden away like this aren’t a problem for the rest of the universe because we can’t see them or interact with them.

The Danger of a Naked Singularity: A naked singularity, however, would be “in front of us,” visible and potentially interacting with the universe. What would we see or experience? The whole point is: it’s impossible to know.

• A singularity is a place of infinite gravity, where spacetime bending is so extreme the fabric of spacetime is literally broken.
• Space and time, the very things that define “where” and “when,” no longer exist there.
• This means you cannot predict anything that might happen near one, because predictions rely on location and time.
• We have an unpredictable thing with infinite gravity, and therefore, effectively infinite energy.
• This could mean anything could pop out of it for no reason – from a pile of bananas to lost socks or even a whole solar system.
• Predictability, causality, and the fundamental rules of physics as we understand them would break down.

Scientists think singularities should exist based on how gravity works (gravitational collapse under certain conditions seems to lead to them). But they also strongly suspect that nature forbids the formation of naked singularities. Something must always force an event horizon to form around them, creating that prison to prevent their chaotic nature from spreading and “infecting” the rest of the universe.

So, while black holes are often seen as cosmic monsters, they might actually be the heroes that keep us safe from the absolute madness of naked singularities!

If we destroy the event horizon, we might just destroy the fundamental rules of the universe itself. You know what? Let’s not do that.

The Safe Option: Wait it Out#

As far as we currently know, there’s only one safe method to destroy a black hole: Wait.

All black holes emit tiny particles over time – a process called Hawking radiation. This causes them to slowly but surely lose mass until they eventually “evaporate” completely. When they’re gone, there’s no event horizon and no naked singularity left behind.

The Catch: The time it takes for a black hole to fully evaporate depends on its mass. For our tiny moon-mass black hole, this process would take an estimated 10⁴⁴ years. That’s 10 billion trillion trillion times longer than the universe has existed so far!

So, is it possible to destroy a black hole? Yes! We just have to wait… a really, really long time.

Explore Fascinating Things Right Now#

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