Black Hole Stability Conjecture: Why Is It Important?

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Suzanne Rosenzweig
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I am working on a presentation for a course in general relativity and my topic is the stability of black holes. In many of the references and articles that I have found, the author asserts the importance of the conjecture but offers no reason. So I ask: Why is the black hole stability conjecture so important? Any information and references provided will be greatly appreciated!
 
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Suzanne Rosenzweig said:
In many of the references and articles that I have found, the author asserts the importance of the conjecture but offers no reason.

Can you give some specific examples?
 
In astrophysics when they talk and study black holes they mean the Kerr solution. If it is not stable a lot of the results will have to be at least revisited, especially if the rigidity conjecture turns out to be false. From a mathematical point of view it is also interesting to settle the question, one way or the other. The only other such result is the stability of Minkowski (of course there are other stability results but this is essentially the only one).

You can find some of the talks of Klainerman on black holes, he usually talks about the importance of the conjecture.

 
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Suzanne Rosenzweig said:
I am working on a presentation for a course in general relativity and my topic is the stability of black holes. In many of the references and articles that I have found, the author asserts the importance of the conjecture but offers no reason. So I ask: Why is the black hole stability conjecture so important? Any information and references provided will be greatly appreciated!

A non-technical reference:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-test-einsteins-equations-poke-a-black-hole-20180308/

It might be possible to use this to track down some useful technical references.
 
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martinbn said:
In astrophysics when they talk and study black holes they mean the Kerr solution. If it is not stable a lot of the results will have to be at least revisited, especially if the rigidity conjecture turns out to be false. From a mathematical point of view it is also interesting to settle the question, one way or the other. The only other such result is the stability of Minkowski (of course there are other stability results but this is essentially the only one).

You can find some of the talks of Klainerman on black holes, he usually talks about the importance of the conjecture.



Thank you very much for your response! Yes, ideally I will discuss Schwarzschild and Kerr solutions to Einstein's equations, citing works by Regge and Wheeler, Vishveshwara, Zerilli, Wald and Kay, etc. Also, I greatly appreciate your sharing a resource. I will look into the rigidity conjecture and check out Klainerman's lectures. :)