History of the Schwarzschild Radius
In 1915,
Albert Einstein released his theory of General Relativity, in which he
details his theory on the effect of mass on space-time and how it
relates to
gravity. In short, if space is thought to be a sheet on which objects rest, then objects of greater mass will deform the sheet and sink into it. Other masses will then be drawn toward these deformations in space, in other words they are gravitationally attracted toward larger masses. The same year, a german physicist named Karl
Schwarzschild solved Einstein's equations for General Relativity to show that a spherical non-rotating mass would have an associated distance from its center at
which it would collapse into a gravitational singularity, which was named after him as the Schwarzschild Radius. Einstein believed that, while the equations showed
this as a possibility, it wasn't realistic to believe that any system could reach this point naturally. In fact, when French Mathematician Jacques Hadamard posed the
question of what would happen if a physical system ever reached that point during a conference in Paris, Einstein answered that it was impossible, going so far as to say that this occurance would have dire consequences for the universe, and termed it the, "Haramard disaster." However, today it is generally accepted that this
equation holds not only theoretically, but also within nature, as black holes have been observed not only within a number of galaxies, but it is theorized that at the
center of each galaxy is a supermassive black hole.
gravity. In short, if space is thought to be a sheet on which objects rest, then objects of greater mass will deform the sheet and sink into it. Other masses will then be drawn toward these deformations in space, in other words they are gravitationally attracted toward larger masses. The same year, a german physicist named Karl
Schwarzschild solved Einstein's equations for General Relativity to show that a spherical non-rotating mass would have an associated distance from its center at
which it would collapse into a gravitational singularity, which was named after him as the Schwarzschild Radius. Einstein believed that, while the equations showed
this as a possibility, it wasn't realistic to believe that any system could reach this point naturally. In fact, when French Mathematician Jacques Hadamard posed the
question of what would happen if a physical system ever reached that point during a conference in Paris, Einstein answered that it was impossible, going so far as to say that this occurance would have dire consequences for the universe, and termed it the, "Haramard disaster." However, today it is generally accepted that this
equation holds not only theoretically, but also within nature, as black holes have been observed not only within a number of galaxies, but it is theorized that at the
center of each galaxy is a supermassive black hole.
Karl Schwarzschild
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