Michell Dark Stars
This article is intended as a companion to The Schwarzschild Metric.
This article is to motivate the idea that ’Michell Dark Star’ replace the
term ’Black Hole’ in the scientific literature since the latter has now become
so encumbered with the false idea of an event horizon.
In the eighteenth century, John Michell proposed that there might be
stars so massive that bodies would need to be traveling the speed of light
to escape their gravity. If they were even more massive still then even light
could not escape. He was thinking in terms of Newtonian mechanics and
viewing light as small corpuscles with mass.
In Newtonian mechanics the gravitational binding energy of a body with
mass m bound to a larger body of mass M is − GMr m . To escape out of such
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an energy well the body with mass m would need kinetic energy mv2 >
GM m
r
2
and therefore velocity v2 > GM
r .
Now suppose the escape velocity is exactly the speed of light. Then
c2
2 = GM 2GM
r and we can solve for r getting r = c2 .
In Schwarzschild’s 1916 paper, he proposed as a solution to the field
equations of General Relativity the metric:
ds2 = (1 − α/R)dt2 − (1 − α/R)−1 dR2 − R2 dΩ2
p
where R = (r3 + α3 )1/3 and r = x2 + y 2 + z 2 is zero
qat the center of sym-
A
metry (the origin) and dΩ2 = dθ2 + sin2 θdφ2 . R = 4π is the area radius
of a sphere centered at r = 0.
The uniqueness of the Schwarzschild (1916) solution arises directly out
of the equations themselves and does not depend on an external theorem to
guarantee uniqueness. His derivation implies that space around a gravitat-
ing body is negatively curved.
The term α arises as a constant of integration in the 1916 derivation so
we must compute it empirically.
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The author in [Sch 1916] derives φ̇2 = α/2(r3 + α3 ) = α/2R3
The equation 2φ̇2 R3 = α imposes a constraint on φ̇ given R (and im-
plicitly r) similar to Kepler’s 3rd law: T 2 = Kr3 . For a circular orbit,
K = 4π 2 /GM
We can rewrite Kepler’s 3rd law as (2π/φ̇)2 = Kr3 and then 8π 2 /K =
2φ̇2 r3
So, we have
2φ̇2 r3 = 8π 2 /K (1)
2 3
2φ̇ R = α (2)
with equation (1) being Kepler’s 3rd law and equation (2) being the rel-
ativistic counterpart.
Since α is a constant we have R/r → 1 as r → ∞. Then αK/8π 2 = 1
and so α = 8π 2 /K = 2GM in units where c = 1. In these same units the
Michell radius also equals r = 2GM .
For an object hovering in a gravitational field at radius R, the energy is
α
E 2 = m2 c4 /(1 − R)
The energy that must be applied to remove the hovering mass to ’infin-
ity’ must be
2
E∞ = mc2 − √mc α = mc2 (1 − √ 1 α ) which is the gravitational binding
1− R 1− R
energy in General Relativity.
This value is asymptotically equivalent for large R to the traditional
Newtonian potential − GM
R
m
and they are approximately equal for R > 50α.
In his 1916 paper Schwarzschild comments on the location of the discon-
tinuity:
The exact solution teaches that in reality,[...],the discontinuity
does not occur at the origin [nullpunkt], but at r = (α3 − ρ)1/3 ,
2
and that one must set ρ = α3 for the discontinuity to go to the
origin.
So, we either have a discontinuity at an event horizon at 0 ≤ ρ < α3 or at
the origin with ρ = α3 but not both. Black hole orthodoxy violates this and
holds there is both a singularity at the origin and a discontinuity at the event
horizon. This latter claim is in clear conflict with the Schwarzschild solution.
Those who dispute this I simply request that they read Schwarzschild’s
1916 paper which apparently very few have actually done. Otherwise we
would not have such a load of nonsense about Black Hole event horizons.
It should be noted that this leaves open the possibility of wormholes with
no central mass but that is a story for another time.
General Description of a Michell Dark Star
For an object with non-zero mass, infinite energy is required to remove it
from R = α to infinity. For photons escaping along radial lines wave lengths
are stretched to the point of being unobservable. Photons traveling trans-
verse to radial lines remain in orbit at R = 32 α. This requires that the mass
of the gravitating body is compressed p to within that amount. Notice that
R = α at r = 0. So for R < α, r = x2 + y 2 + z 2 < 0 which would require
imaginary values for at least one of the spatial parameters. So there is no
space inside R = α. There is no inside and so there is no Hawking radiation
since that requires an inside and outside of an event horizon. There is no
Event Horizon.
In the companion article we recommended that the term Black Hole be
defined as a stellar object massive enough to entrap photons in orbits around
it. The difference between that and the traditional view is that photons can
escape along radial lines. They, however, lose energy in the process result-
ing in the stretching of their wavelengths. In extreme cases such stars are
no longer visible and we recommend those objects be referred to as Michell
Dark Stars rather than Black Holes.
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