While it is widely believed that the gravitational collapse of a sufficiently large mass will lead to a density singularity and an event horizon, we propose that this never happens when quantum effects are taken into account. In particular, we propos
e that when the conditions become ripe for a trapped surface to form, a quantum critical surface sweeps over the collapsing body, transforming the nucleons in the collapsing matter into a lepton/photon gas together with a positive vacuum energy. This will happen regardless of the matter density at the time a trapped surface starts to form, and as a result we predict that at least in all cases of gravitational collapse involving ordinary matter, a large fraction of the rest mass of the collapsing matter will be converted into a burst of neutrinos, and {gamma}-rays. We predict that the peak luminosity of these bursts is only weakly dependent on the mass of the collapsing object, and is on the order of ({epsilon}_q/m_Pc^2)^1/4c^5/G, where {epsilon}_q is the mean energy of a nucleon parton and m_P is the Planck mass. The duration of the bursts will depend the mass of the collapsing objects; in the case of stellar core collapse we predict that the duration of both the neutrino and {gamma}-ray bursts will be on the order of 10 seconds.
In this note we observe that the exact Maxwell-Einstein equations in the background metric of a spinning string can be solved analytically. This allows us to construct an analytical model for the magnetosphere which is approximately force free near t
o the spinning string. As in the case of a Kerr black hole in the presence of an external magnetic field the spinning string will acquire an electric charge which depends on the vorticity carried by the spinning string. The self-generated magnetic field and currents strongly resemble the current and magnetic field structure of the jets associated with active galaxies as they emerge from the galactic center.
