Avoiding the black hole singularity (new paper)

[Martin]

this came out today

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0503041

A black hole mass threshold from non-singular quantum gravitational collapse

Martin Bojowald, Rituparno Goswami, Roy Maartens, Parampreet Singh

4 pages, 3 figures

 

"Quantum gravity is expected to remove the classical singularity that arises as the end-state of gravitational collapse. To investigate this, we work with a simple toy model of a collapsing homogeneous scalar field. We show that non-perturbative semi-classical effects of Loop Quantum Gravity cause a bounce and remove the classical black hole singularity. Furthermore, we find a critical threshold scale, below which no horizon forms -- quantum gravity may exclude very small astrophysical black holes."

 

Bojowald is the main guy in Loop Quantum Cosmology

 

IIRC Roy Maartens used to do string research but seems to have moved over to Loop in this case.

 

Idea of a minimum possible size for black holes is interesting.

 

this paper may start a series of LQG research along this line