Changing the Rules

There are two important differences between Laplace’s idea of a dark star and the modern idea of a Black hole. The differences are due to two important discoveries of modern astrophysics. The first discovery is that nothing can travel faster than light. This means that if light cannot escape from a massive star, nothing can. This also means that a dark star is a hole, because nothing that is pulled in by the star’s gravity can never escape. The second difference is that Laplace used Newton’s law of gravity as the basis of his work. Modern astrophysics says that these laws do not work in and around Black holes.