AST201H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 18.3: Angular Momentum, Degenerate Matter, Electric Charge

• School: UTSG
• Department: Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Course: AST201H1
• Professor: Bryan Gaensler

Document Summary

If gravity in stellar corpse becomes so strong, nothing can prevent the corpse from collapsing under its own weight. Collapses, crushing itself out of existence and forms a black hole. So strong that not even light can escape. Boundary is called event horizon: escape velocity equals the speed of light. Tends to be spherical --> velocity depends upon distance to centre (same for every point on horizon) Centres lie within event horizon --> not possible to measure radius. Schwarzschild radius: define radius by how it would be measured if geometry were flat. Collapsing stellar core becomes a black hole at the moment it shrinks to a smaller than its schwarzschild radius --> disappears within own event horizon. Still contains all mass and exerts the same amount of gravity. Any information about object that collapsed into black hole is lost in the inside. Would quickly attract opposite charge to make neutral. Accelerate infalling objects in the direction of rotation.