2007/05/31 by Vitor Cardoso, Vítor Cardoso, Óscar J. C. Dias +2 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Black hole (networking) #Charged black hole #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dispersion relation #Event (particle physics) #Event horizon #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Gravitation #Instability #Mechanics #Membrane paradigm #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Sonic black hole #Theoretical physics #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/s0218271808012176
published as Int.J.Mod.Phys.D17:505-511,2008 · This essay received an honorable mention in the Gravity Research Foundation Essay Competition, 2007. v2: Published version
openalex publication_date 2008/03/01 · arxiv created 2008/05/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Several general arguments indicate that the event horizon behaves as a stretched membrane. We propose using this relation to understand the gravity and dynamics of black objects in higher dimensions. We provide evidence that: (i) The gravitational Gregory–Laflamme instability has a classical counterpart in the Rayleigh–Plateau instability of fluids. Each known feature of the gravitational instability can be accounted for in the fluid model. These features include threshold mode, dispersion relation, time evolution and critical dimension of certain phase transitions. Thus, we argue that black strings break in much the same way as water from a faucet breaks up into small droplets. (ii) General rotating black holes can also be understood with this analogy. In particular, instability and bifurcation diagrams for black objects can easily be inferred. This correspondence can and should be used as a guiding tool for understanding and exploring the physics of gravity in higher dimensions.