0

I have asked this question. It was supposed to be a duplicate of this one. In that question it is asked if the uncertainty principle can be applied to an already formed black hole. My question is not about the full-fledged black hole but about the formation. It's not about the Pauli exclusion principle either.

I just read a question about degeneracy pressure and collapsing white dwarfs. When the dwarfs have a certain mass (say that they have become fat dwarfs) the degeneracy pressure will lose the battle with gravity and collapse to a neutron star. Which in its turn, if it has eaten enough, will collapse into a black hole. All the particles constituting the neutron star will end up at a point, theoretically. Won't the uncertainty principle prevent the last stage of this collapse? Won't some kind of "uncertainty pressure" (not degeneracy pressure) appear? How can particles stay together if their uncertainty in momentum approaches infinity? Or will they always stay a distance apart (in time or in space)?

Urb
  • 2,724
Deschele Schilder
  • 1
  • 5
  • 45
  • 105

1 Answers1

2

The point singularity belongs to classical physics, General Relativity. The cosmological model we have now depends on GR for describing it. The Big Bang classically was assumed to start at a point in four dimensional space, when the model first started. Questions like yours, which arose about how could it be a point at the beginning of BB, lead to assume an effective quantum mechanical quantization, waiting on a definitive quantization of gravity.

histuni

Note the fuzzy point at the left, this is the uncertainty quantum mechanics introduced to the original point of the Bang.

In an analogous fashion, what for classical GR is the point singularity of a black hole, a fuzzy region will be introduced if one takes the trouble to make an effective quantum mechanical model of a black hole. We have to wait for a definitive quantization of gravity for a definite answer.

anna v
  • 236,935