Regular black holes and black universes

We give a comparative description of different types of regular static, spherically symmetric black holes (BHs) and discuss in more detail their particular type, which we suggest to call black universes. The latter have a Schwarzschild-like causal structure, but inside the horizon there is an expanding Kantowski-Sachs universe and a de Sitter infinity instead of a singularity. Thus a hypothetic BH explorer gets a chance to survive. Solutions of this kind are naturally obtained if one considers static, spherically symmetric distributions of various (but not all) kinds of phantom matter whose existence is favoured by cosmological observations. It also looks possible that our Universe has originated from phantom-dominated collapse in another universe and underwent isotropization after crossing the horizon. An explicit example of a black-universe solution with positive Schwarzschild mass is discussed. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007.