Can black holes be predicted?
I’m not sure what you mean by “predicted”. Do you mean, was the existence of black holes predicted before they were discovered? The answer to that is yes; the theoretical understanding of the existence of black holes preceded observational discovery of black hole candidates. Or do you mean, can we predict where black holes will form or be found? The answer to that is generally yes- we have some idea of what size of neutron star will turn into a black hole (about 3 solar masses), although there are still uncertainties in the specifics of the models. We’re also pretty sure that the centers of most galaxies harbor supermassive black holes (we’ll talk more about that later). Is it certain that black holes exist? I thought I was reading somewhere that they were based on the theory of relativity, and if another theory ends up being true, would that predict for black holes being different than we think now? I remember something about string theory predicting “fuzzballs” or something…? I
