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Re: No Hair



A hair is a property of the object -- e.g. charge, mass, etc. When
Hawking says a black hole has no hair, what he means to say is that
it has three like Homer Simpson -- mass, charge and angular momentum.
All the other possible hairs have disappeared.

I think this is probably an excessively colorful phrase since, as you
have discovered, it tends to obscure the point. The statement was
made somewhere during the course of proving the uniqueness theorems.


What does the list suppose Hawking means when he says that a "black hole has
no hair"?


Jim Green
JMGreen@sisna.com


Paul J. Camp "The Beauty of the Universe
Assistant Professor of Physics consists not only of unity
Coastal Carolina University in variety but also of
Conway, SC 29528 variety in unity.
pjcamp@coastal.edu --Umberto Eco
pjcamp@postoffice.worldnet.att.net The Name of the Rose
(803)349-2227
fax: (803)349-2926