File:Triangle_of_everything_simplified_2_triangle_of_everything_-_Planck_Units.png · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Schwarzschild radius
Sign in to saveAlso known as gravitational radius
distance from a massive body where the escape velocity equals the speed of light
The Schwarzschild radius is the distance from a massive object where gravity becomes so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape from it. This concept is important because it defines the boundary of a black hole and helps us understand the extreme physics of the universe's most mysterious objects.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- physical quantity
- Named after
- Karl Schwarzschild
- Image
- Black hole details.svg
- Said to be same as
- event horizon
Show 3 more facts
- Commons category
- Schwarzschild's radius
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~9 min read
Encyclopedic overview
In this mass–radius plot, the Schwarzschild radius is shown as a lower limit on radii of isolated objects, and below the Compton limit quantum effects become significant. The Hubble radius gives a very rough sense of the scale of the observable Universe.
The Schwarzschild radius is a parameter in the Schwarzschild solution to Einstein's field equations that corresponds to the radius of a sphere in flat space that has the same surface area as that of the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole of a given mass. It is a characteristic quantity that may be associated with any quantity of mass. The Schwarzschild radius was named after the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild, who calculated this solution for the theory of general relativity in 1916.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Schwarzschild radius” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.