system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are black holes literal "holes" or "rips" in space, or are they actual objects?

I've read about black holes that can "move" across space, orbit each other, and revolve.  I guess I always grew up thinking black holes were literally that: holes in space; that after enough mass has accumulated, that whole "collapsing in on itself" thing makes a hole, not an object.  Am I mistaken?  How could a "rip" or "hole" move around like an object without leaving a "tear?"
gpt
We don't know what a black hole is made of, or if the question even makes sense; classical gravity theory tells us that it's a singular point, not a "rip" in space but a point where the curvature blows up, and there's no problem with that sort of thing moving around, because curvature can change. Compounded in this is that there's no such thing as absolute position, so there's no absolute notion of where a black hole *would* leave a "tear" even if it were possible.

But as it is we can't trust classical gravity theory at very close distances to the center of the black hole because at those short distances quantum effects become important, and we don't know how to make gravitational physics and quantum physics work nicely together. Until we have a theory which unifies the two, the nature of the black hole center - whether it's truly a singularity, or perhaps something more exotic - remains speculative.