UNIVERSALITY AND SCALING IN GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE OF A MASSLESS SCALAR FIELD

I summarize results from a numerical study of spherically symmetric collapse of a massless scalar field. I consider families of solutions, S[p], with the property that a critical parameter value, p*, separates solutions containing black holes from those which do not. I present evidence in support of conjectures that (1) the strong-field evolution in the p --> p* limit is universal and generates structure on arbitrarily small spatiotemporal scales and (2) the masses of black holes which form satisfy a power law M(BH) is-proportional-to \p - p*\gamma, where gamma almost-equal-to 0.37 is a universal exponent.