The gravitational collapse of a dust ball

Abstract

It is shown that the description of collapse given by the classic model of Oppenheimer and Snyder fails to satisfy a crucial matching condition at the surface of the ball. After correcting the model so that the interior and exterior metrics match correctly, it is established that the contraction process stops at the Schwarzschild radius, that there is an accumulation of particles at the surface of the ball, and that in the limit of infinite time lapse the density of particles at the surface becomes infinite. A black hole cannot form. This result confirms the judgements of both Einstein and Eddington about gravitational collapse when the collapse velocity approaches that of light.