Quote:
Originally Posted by gaseous
I've never really understood why inside a black hole must be a "tiny" singularity. Infinitely dense, I don't have a problem with, but if you've gone from a planet-sized white dwarf or a city-sized neutron star to something like a black hole with more mass/density, and the accompanying gravitational pull means that the event horizon is the escape velocity of light, I don't see why the centre of a black hole is not just a super dense ball of a certain size depending on how much mass it starts with (and accumulates over time).
Or does "singularity" in this case just mean that matter is packed so tightly together that it's just an homogenous mass that can't be scientifically/physically separated into any discreet/quantifiable smaller pieces, but is not necessarily microscopic in size?
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A singularity is a point in space time that is infinitely small (possibly Plank Length) with infinite density. What stops a stellar core from collapsing further than a Neutron Star is neutron degeneracy (neutrons not wanting to get further packed together). When gravity takes over and the neutrons get forced together physics as we currently understand it has no way of stopping the collapse so in theory it could continue collapsing and never ever ever stop; i.e. a singularity.