Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Naked Singularity?

Model the worst case scenario of a large number of electrons, all spin aligned, colliding at a single point to form a black hole.

On further consideration, this probably won't work. Electrostatic repulsion is stronger than gravity. Is there a maximum charge a black hole can have? What happens if you keep dumping electrons into an existing black hole? (Practically, of course, it gets harder and harder as the black hole gets charged, and you face the problem of keeping the positively charged plasma left over away from the black hole. Maybe shoot the plasma away at high speeds to become a cosmic ray.)

1 comment :

Trevor Turton said...

There is a theoretical limit to the amount of charge that a black hole can absorb before losing its modesty, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole

The equation is:
Q^2+(J/M)^2 ≤ M^2
where M is the mass, Q the charge, J the angular momentum, and ^2 means squared.