What does "ergosphere" mean?

A region outside the event horizon of a rotating black hole in which space and time are distorted by shear forces.

What is a synonym for "ergosphere"?

Common synonyms include: black hole, event horizon.

Ergosphere

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A region outside the event horizon of a rotating black hole in which space and time are distorted by shear forces.

Synonyms

All synonyms

black hole event horizon

Etymology

From ergo- + -sphere. Coined by Remo Ruffini and John Archibald Wheeler in 1971 in reference to the fact that it is theoretically possible to extract energy from the region.

Related phrases

black hole event horizon

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.