Black Hole Thermodynamics from Macroscopic Vacuum Elasticity

For the past fifty years, the physical foundations of black hole (BH) thermodynamics have remained heavily contested because their original derivations rest at the theoretical intersection of general relativity and quantum field theory (QFT). This work provides an alternative macroscopic formulation by treating the physical vacuum in and around a BH as an elastic continuum curved by the presence of mass. According to Hooke’s law of elasticity, the radial strain at the event horizons of all BHs must saturate at the exact same constant value. Under this principle of universal maximum strain, the laws of BH thermodynamics emerge directly from macroscopic continuum mechanics. This eliminates the need for QFT input, mirroring the contemporary macroscopic descriptions of the Casimir effect. Our calculations are formalized using the Reformulated Planck System (RPS), which relies exclusively on Planck’s constant h. This native approach prevents the dimensional contamination of 3D continuum mechanics caused by the 2D geometric factor inherently embedded in Dirac’s reduced constant ℏ, a salient miscue first recognized in the iconic definitions of the fine-structure constant α and the gravitational coupling constant α_g which firmly precluded the identification of the α-dependence of the weak coupling constant \( \alpha_{\rm w}^{} = \sqrt{\alpha} \). In BH thermodynamics, this RPS-based approach reveals higher Hawking temperatures and lower Bekenstein entropies, both by a factor of 2π.