What Is A Black Hole?
Since their discovery, the description of the nature of black holes has been built upon the years of speculation leading up to that point. It is taken for granted that black holes are black holes to begin with--singularities from which nothing can escape, as this description finds its origin even before they were observed.
Thereby, the first step in understanding how black holes have been interpreted, just like with any other system in existence, is to look back through the history of interpretations that led to current outlooks. This process enables consideration of the thought process that has been used which exposes where assumptions were made.
History of Black Holes
Before these objects were known, the first step in the process of their interpretation was the description of gravity by Sir Isaac Newton. From this, in the 18th century John Michell and Pierre Simon LaPlace theorized that if an object was massive enough then the escape velocity would be greater than the speed of light. This meant that even light could not escape such an object.
Fast-forwarding to the 1960s, John Wheeler helped to popularize the term “black hole” assigned to such a body. This was used to describe such an object where light could not escape its force of gravity. Up until this time, no observations had been made that provided the critical supportive evidence of their existence. In 1971, Cygnus X-1 was identified as the first object recognized to be a black hole.
Source Cygnus X-1 X-ray image
Since then, their existence has been confirmed by many observations. Their interpretation, though, has included the same foundation throughout. This basis has shaped how we describe the nature of these objects ever since. It has been taken for granted that black holes are singularities due to our inability to visibly see them. This is compounded by the speculative proposals of their existence prior to their observation, which included descriptions of the nature of the objects.
The X-Ray Light of Black Holes
With this in mind, the most important observation about the nature of black holes as "singularities" that has been overlooked is the x-ray light originating from them, such as shown in the image above of Cygnus X-1. As we have already assumed these objects to be singularities, we then have concluded that the x-ray light we see comes from their surroundings. Therefore, this claim is built on an assumption.
A simple thought experiment can be used in this regard.
Let us say that there is a given object, A, having a given mass. If two separate objects, B and C, travel away from object A at the same initial velocity, then how they are influenced by the gravity of object A depends on their mass.
If object A is earth, for example, and object B is significantly smaller in mass than object C, then object C may have a sufficient velocity to escape the force of gravity while object B may not. Let us say object C has the mass of the moon whereas object B has the mass of an atom. In this case, the object with the mass of the moon could easily escape the gravity of earth with a sufficient initial velocity away from Earth where the atom traveling at the same initial velocity would not be above its escape velocity and would be pulled back by gravity.
In other words, the escape velocity from a first object is a function of the mass of a second object traveling away from it.
In the same way, as we understand that E=mc2, if we then conclude that the mass of relatively lower energy visible light photons is less than that of relatively higher energy x-ray light photons, when the two are traveling at essentially the same velocity—the "speed of light"—then x-ray light may have sufficient velocity to escape the gravitational pull of the object while visible light does not.
In this case, an object having sufficiently high relative mass could prevent visible light from traveling from it while being incapable of preventing X-ray light from traveling from it.
And what do we see? We see x-ray light coming from black holes. As we do not interpret variations in how gravity influences each wavelength of light, we jump to the conclusion that the x-ray light does not come from the black hole but rather is from its surroundings.. This is a very significant assumption that stems from a lack of recognition of the difference between absolute zero and infinitesimal.
The Nuances of the Infinitesimal
We claim that light has no mass—absolute zero—but this is built on the assumption that we can even produce experimentally conclusive evidence of such. The difference between absolute zero and infinitesimal is non-trivial. One is nothing when the other is something. As a result, we do not recognize the mass differences of the photons in each wavelength of light when this is the critical difference between each wavelength of light.
Black holes, by this very interaction of different wavelengths of light with their mass, show us that light does have mass. They demonstrate that light is waves composed of particles and that their wavelength is an indirect measure of the variations in the masses of the particles of which the light is composed.
This is because the x-ray light coming from black holes does not come from its surroundings, but rather comes from the object itself. When we look at a black hole in the x-ray spectrum, what we are looking at is its photosphere. These objects are not "singularities" as is theorized, but rather are so massive that visible light coming from them cannot reach earth and thus when we observe them in the visible light spectrum we see what appears to be nothing but a gravitational anomaly, and when we observe them in the x-ray spectrum we see them more as they truly are--having a body just like any other celestial object. They are no different than atoms or planets or stars, only they are observed differently due to their relative mass compared to that of visible light photons.
The "singularity" nature of black holes is an optical illusion.