---
title: "Planck stars, or: the singularity that never was"
url: "https://lui.vn/planck-stars-or-the-singularity-that-never-was/"
language: "en"
type: "chirp"
published: "2026-05-27T04:35:56+00:00"
modified: "2026-05-27T04:35:56+00:00"
categories: ["Chirps"]
kicker: "Bounce, Don't Crunch"
intro: "Planck stars rewrite the black hole singularity as a quantum-gravity bounce - microseconds inside, eons outside, and possibly fixing physics' worst paradoxes."
---

# Planck stars, or: the singularity that never was

[Loop quantum gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity) has this idea called a planck star, and it’s the most elegant fix to the black hole singularity problem I’ve come across:

Classical GR says a collapsing star can crunch down to a singularity – infinite density at a point, physics’ polite way of saying “the math broke”. [Planck stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_star) say nah. Once density hits planckian (5.1 × 10⁹⁶ kg/m³, comically extreme), quantum gravity kicks in, the inward pull gets balanced by a repulsive force, and the collapse halts. You get a stable-ish ball at planck density. Not point-sized either – density triggers it, not size. Could be macroscopic.

And it’s not stable forever. It’s mid-bounce. Microseconds in proper time, billions of years from outside thanks to time dilation. What we call a black hole is just a very slow ball hitting the floor. [PBS Space Time breaks it down nicely](https://youtu.be/Wu8xNx4njoM).