Gravitational collapse

Over time an initial, relatively smooth distribution of matter, after sufficient accretion, may collapse to form pockets of higher density, such as stars or black holes.

Star formation involves a gradual gravitational collapse of interstellar medium into clumps of molecular clouds and potential protostars.

Before it reaches the Chandrasekhar limit (about one and a half times the mass of the Sun, at which point gravitational collapse would start again), the increasing density and temperature within a carbon-oxygen white dwarf initiate a new round of nuclear fusion, which is not regulated because the star's weight is supported by degeneracy rather than thermal pressure, allowing the temperature to rise exponentially.

Once a body collapses to within its Schwarzschild radius it forms what is called a black hole, meaning a spacetime region from which not even light can escape.

Nevertheless, according to Penrose's cosmic censorship hypothesis, the singularity will be confined within the event horizon bounding the black hole, so the spacetime region outside will still have a well-behaved geometry, with strong but finite curvature, that is expected[9] to evolve towards a rather simple form describable by the historic Schwarzschild metric in the spherical limit and by the more recently discovered Kerr metric if angular momentum is present.

It might be thought that a sufficiently massive neutron star could exist within its Schwarzschild radius (1.0 SR) and appear like a black hole without having all the mass compressed to a singularity at the center; however, this is probably incorrect.

Within the event horizon, the matter would have to move outward faster than the speed of light in order to remain stable and avoid collapsing to the center.

No physical force, therefore, can prevent a star smaller than 1.0 SR from collapsing to a singularity (at least within the currently accepted framework of general relativity; this does not hold for the Einstein–Yang–Mills–Dirac system).