We now know, from relativity theory, that no force in the Universe can prevent the star from continuing to collapse, once it has reached the light-trapping stage. So the star simply shrinks away, essentially to nothing, leaving behind empty space — a hole where the star once was. But the hole retains the gravitational imprint of the erstwhile star, in the form of intense space and time warps. Thus the region of gravitational collapse appears both black and empty — a black hole.
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On the one hand, the notion that a star shrinks away to nothing is inconsistent with the first law of thermodynamics,
On the other hand, from the perspective of the General Theory of Relativity, gravity is a relation between matter and space-time, such that the presence of matter contracts space intervals and expands time intervals, increasingly so towards the centre of mass. A black hole thus comprises both matter and the effect of the matter on space-time.
Thus, if the matter of a black hole were truly to disappear, the effect of the matter on space-time, its "gravitational imprint", would also disappear. On this reasoning, a black hole cannot be empty, since it must contain sufficient matter to contract space intervals to the extent that the geodesic of light is curved within its event horizon.
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