What is Mass Inflation? A 5 Minute Introduction

[Greg Bernhardt]

Definition/Summary
Abstract from Poisson and Israel’s 1990 paper, ‘Internal structure of black holes’-
‘The gravitational effects associated with the radiative tail produced by a gravitational collapse with rotation are investigated. It is shown that the infinite blueshift of the tail’s energy density occurring at the Cauchy horizon of the resulting black hole causes classically unbounded inflation of the effective internal gravitational-mass parameter of the hole. Since this effect is causally disconnected from any external observer, the black-hole external mass remains bounded. The mass inflation phenomenon causes the spacetime curvature to grow to Planckian scales on a spacelike hypersurface in the vicinity of the Cauchy horizon, beyond which the classical laws of general relativity break down. A consequence is that an observer’s trip to this hypersurface embraces all but the last Planck time of the entire black-hole classical history.’
from ‘Structure of the Inner Singularity...

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[AndyW]

The abstract from Poisson and Israel's 1990 paper, 'Internal Structure of Black Holes', discusses the effects of gravitational collapse with rotation on a black hole's internal structure. The paper shows that the infinite blueshift of energy density at the Cauchy horizon of a black hole causes unbounded inflation of the effective internal gravitational-mass parameter. This inflation is not observable by external observers, and therefore the black hole's external mass remains bounded. This phenomenon leads to the growth of spacetime curvature to Planckian scales on a spacelike hypersurface near the Cauchy horizon, where classical laws of general relativity break down. As a result, an observer's journey to this hypersurface encompasses almost the entire classical history of the black hole, except for the last Planck time. This abstract highlights the importance of understanding the internal structure of black holes and the limitations of classical general relativity in extreme conditions.