Identical twins have nothing on black holes. Twins may grow from the same genetic blueprints, but they can differ in a thousand waysfrom temperament to hairstyle. Black holes, according to Albert Einsteins theory of gravity, can have just three characteristicsmass, spin and charge. If those values are the same for any two black holes, it is impossible to discern one twin from the other. Black holes, they say, have no hair.

In classical general relativity, they would be exactly identical, said Paul Chesler, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University. You cant tell the difference.

Yet scientists have begun to wonder if the no-hair theorem is strictly true. In 2012, a mathematician named Stefanos Aretakisthen at the University of Cambridge and now at the University of Torontosuggested that some black holes might have instabilities on their event horizons. These instabilities would effectively give some regions of a black holes horizon a stronger gravitational pull than others. That would make otherwise identical black holes distinguishable.

However, his equations only showed that this was possible for so-called extremal black holesones that have a maximum value possible for either their mass, spin, or charge. And as far as we know, these black holes cannot exist, at least exactly, in nature, said Chesler.

But what if you had a near-extremal black hole, one that approached these extreme values but didnt quite reach them? Such a black hole should be able to exist, at least in theory. Could it have detectable violations of the no-hair theorem?

A paper published late last month shows that it could. Moreover, this hair could be detected by gravitational wave observatories.

Aretakis basically suggested there was some information that was left on the horizon, said Gaurav Khanna, a physicist at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Rhode Island and one of the coauthors. Our paper opens up the possibility of measuring this hair.

In particular, the scientists suggest that remnants either of the black holes formation or of later disturbances, such as matter falling into the black hole, could create gravitational instabilities on or near the event horizon of a near-extremal black hole. We would expect that the gravitational signal we would see would be quite different from ordinary black holes that are not extremal, said Khanna.

If black holes do have hairthus retaining some information about their pastthis could have implications for the famous black hole information paradox put forward by the late physicist Stephen Hawking, said Lia Medeiros, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. That paradox distills the fundamental conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics, the two great pillars of 20th-century physics. If you violate one of the assumptions [of the information paradox], you might be able to solve the paradox itself, said Medeiros. One of the assumptions is the no-hair theorem.

The ramifications of that could be broad. If we can prove the actual space-time of the black hole outside of the black hole is different from what we expect, then I think that is going to have really huge implications for general relativity, said Medeiros, who coauthored a paper in October that addressed whether the observed geometry of black holes is consistent with predictions.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this latest paper, however, is that it could provide a way to merge observations of black holes with fundamental physics. Detecting hair on black holesperhaps the most extreme astrophysical laboratories in the universecould allow us to probe ideas such as string theory and quantum gravity in a way that has never been possible before.

One of the big issues with string theory and quantum gravity is that its really hard to test those predictions, said Medeiros. So if you have anything thats even remotely testable, thats amazing.

There are major hurdles, however. Its not certain that near-extremal black holes exist. (The best simulations at the moment typically produce black holes that are 30 percent away from being extremal, said Chesler.) And even if they do, its not clear if gravitational wave detectors would be sensitive enough to spot these instabilities from the hair.

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Dont Tell Einstein, but Black Holes Might Have Hair - WIRED