Our Universe can be inhabited by extremely exotic objects - the so-called "black stars" that emit not light, but gravitational waves, in the center of which absolute emptiness reigns, the astrophysicist says in an article published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“This is the first description of how the repulsive force generated by the quantum polarization of the vacuum can create some kind of stable state inside a massive object. If such 'luminaries' exist in nature, they will be even more exotic and compact than neutron stars, but they will not turn into black holes,”says Grant Tremblay, an astrophysicist at Harvard, quoted by Gizmodo.
Today scientists believe that the vacuum, contrary to our common beliefs, is not the embodiment of absolute emptiness and just an empty space. It represents, in accordance with the laws of quantum physics, a constantly agitated "sea" of an infinite number of constantly born and self-destructing pairs of virtual particles and antiparticles. Their interaction, according to physicists, should influence the behavior of atoms and light in a special way.
For example, this quantum "sea" should have a special effect on the polarization of light in the presence of strong magnetic fields, causing it to split and polarize in the same way as light behaves in some crystals, causing it to split into two beams. Scientists have been talking about the existence of such an effect since the 30s of the last century, but they have not been able to record it until now.
This quantum effect, according to Raul Caballo-Rubio, an astrophysicist at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), could spawn some of the most unusual objects in the universe. They have almost the same density as black holes, but at the same time they have no event horizon, and they are not singularities and cannot turn into them in principle.
As the theoretician explains, virtual particles born in a vacuum, under certain conditions, for example, at ultrahigh pressures and temperatures in the bowels of dying "ordinary" stars, will begin to strongly polarize and repel each other. As a result, in the central part of such luminaries, an unusual "incompressible" structure will appear, filled with a void, which will prevent its gravitational collapse.
According to Caballo-Rubio, this "sphere of emptiness" is strong enough to prevent the star from turning into a black hole, and at the same time shrink it to a comparable density and size. This object will not emit light and other forms of radiation, with the exception of gravitational waves, which such "black stars" will generate during approaches to other luminaries and other compact structures.
Whether such exotic "stars" exist in reality, as well as how exactly they are born, is still a matter of debate among scientists. On the other hand, Caballo-Rubio notes that the "black stars" are very similar in terms of their structure to another type of degenerate objects - neutron stars.
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According to him, in both cases the star is kept from complete collapse by quantum phenomena - the pressure of a degenerate electron gas in the case of neutron stars, and the quantum polarization of the vacuum in the case of their "black cousins." Therefore, as he believes, the objects discovered by them can exist not only in theory, but also in reality.