No-hair theorem
Teorema de no pelo
- Date
- 1967-1975 · confidence medium
- Place
- Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Werner Israel, Brandon Carter and Stephen Hawking, among others
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
States that stationary black holes in general relativity are completely determined by only three observable parameters (mass, angular momentum and electric charge), retaining no other information about the matter that formed them.
A collective result built by several physicists at different institutions (Werner Israel, 1967; Brandon Carter, 1971; Stephen Hawking, c. 1972), without a fully general mathematical proof; often also called the "no-hair conjecture".
What it led to
- Uniqueness of the Kerr metric for every stationary rotating black hole
- Theoretical framework for interpreting later black hole observations
- Link to the black hole thermodynamics of Bekenstein and Hawking