What is Mass Inflation? A 5 Minute Introduction

[Greg Bernhardt]

Definition/Summary
Abstract from Poisson and Israel’s 1990 paper, ‘Internal structure of black holes’-
‘The gravitational effects associated with the radiative tail produced by a gravitational collapse with rotation are investigated. It is shown that the infinite blueshift of the tail’s energy density occurring at the Cauchy horizon of the resulting black hole causes classically unbounded inflation of the effective internal gravitational-mass parameter of the hole. Since this effect is causally disconnected from any external observer, the black-hole external mass remains bounded. The mass inflation phenomenon causes the spacetime curvature to grow to Planckian scales on a spacelike hypersurface in the vicinity of the Cauchy horizon, beyond which the classical laws of general relativity break down. A consequence is that an observer’s trip to this hypersurface embraces all but the last Planck time of the entire black-hole classical history.’
from ‘Structure of the Inner Singularity...

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