Black Mirrors: CPT-Symmetric Alternatives to Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper proposes black mirror solutions as CPT-symmetric alternatives to traditional black holes, potentially resolving issues related to event horizons and singularities in gravitational collapse models.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of black mirrors, a topologically distinct, CPT-symmetric solution to Einstein's equations, with explicit stationary solutions and collapse scenarios.

Findings

Black mirrors have smooth, bounded curvature unlike traditional black holes.

They connect exterior metrics to CPT mirror images, avoiding singularities.

Black mirrors may resolve paradoxes associated with event horizons.

Abstract

Einstein's equations imply that a gravitationally collapsed object forms an event horizon. But what lies on the other side of this horizon? In this paper, we question the reality of the conventional solution (the black hole), and point out another, topologically distinct solution: the black mirror. In the black hole solution, the horizon connects the exterior metric to an interior metric which contains a curvature singularity. In the black mirror, the horizon instead connects the exterior metric to its own CPT mirror image, yielding a solution with smooth, bounded curvature. We give the general stationary (charged, rotating) black mirror solution explicitly, and also describe the general black mirror formed by gravitational collapse. The black mirror is the relevant stationary point when the quantum path integral is equipped with suitably CPT-symmetric boundary conditions, that we propose. It appears to avoid many vexing puzzles which plague the conventional black hole.