Saturday, 18 March 2017

general relativity - How can a singularity in a black hole rotate if it's just a point?


I guess nobody really knows the true nature of black holes, however, based on everything I know about black holes, there is a "singularity" at their center, which has finite mass but is infinitely small and thus infinitely dense. So a black hole is really just a point mass that dramatically warps the space-time around it so that an event horizon is achieved.


What doesn't make sense to me is how a true mathematical "point" can rotate, or at least how it is even possible to determine if a point is rotating (or if it should even make a difference about whether or not it is rotating, for the same reason it would be impossible to tell if a perfect, featureless sphere were rotating (I know it would have higher rotational energy but lets assume you can't measure that because a true "point" can't attain rotational energy since it has no radius)).


The only conceptual solution I have to describe a rotating black hole would be to compare it to a rotating whirlpool, where the surface of the water is the fabric of space-time... but this is different because there is no "singularity" in a whirlpool that causes the water around it to rotate, whirlpools form from flow of water around a point (put into motion perhaps by some kid swirling water in a 2-liter bottle... it's due to an external cause), but the only thing that could cause rotation around a black hole would be the singularity itself, which doesn't make sense because, once again, how can we know if a true point is actually rotating?


Aside from everything I've said, here is what I am actually asking: Why/how do some black holes rotate... what is the mechanism of their rotation (is analogous to a spinning point or a 3-d whirlpool, or something different)?




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