Black holes can’t be formed from pure light. Quantum physics would curb their creation under any foreseeable conditions, a new study suggests.
A black hole formed from electromagnetic energy — that is, light — is called a kugelblitz. That concept has been jangling around in physicists’ brains for decades. But actually producing a kugelblitz Physical Review Letters In recent years, science fiction writers have picked up the kugelblitz mystique and run with it. Fans of the Netflix show may be familiar with the term, which is German for “ball lightning.” In season 3, a kugelblitz In general relativity, gravity results from matter curving spacetime. If enough mass is packed into one region, the spacetime can curve so dramatically that it forms a region within which it’s impossible to escape — a black hole.
That’s because of a quantum effect that occurs when electromagnetic energy is highly concentrated. According to the well-verified theory of quantum electrodynamics, when light reaches those extremes, pairs of particles and antiparticles begin to form. Those particles — electrons and their positively charged antimatter partners, positrons — would escape the region, taking energy with them. That prevents the energy from reaching the levels needed to form a black hole.