Types of Black Holes
There are four known, exact, black hole solutions to Einstein's equations, which describe gravity in General Relativity. Two of these (the Kerr and Kerr-Newman black holes) rotate. It is generally believed that every black hole decays rapidly to a stable black hole; and, by the no-hair theorem, that (modulo quantum fluctuations) stable black holes can be completely described at any moment in time by these eleven numbers:
- mass-energy M,
- linear momentum P (three components),
- angular momentum J (three components),
- position X (three components),
- electric charge Q.
These numbers represent the conserved attributes of an object which can be determined from a distance by examining its electromagnetic and gravitational fields. All other variations in the black hole will either escape to infinity or be swallowed up by the black hole. This is because anything happening inside the black hole horizon cannot affect events outside it.
In terms of these properties, the four types of stable black holes can be defined as follows:
| Nonrotating (J = 0) | Rotating (J > 0) | |
| Uncharged (Q = 0) | Schwarzschild | Kerr |
| Charged (Q ≠ 0) | Reissner-Nordström | Kerr-Newman |
Read more about this topic: Rotating Black Hole
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