Resonant scattering of light in a near-black-hole metric

We show that low-energy photon scattering from a body with radius R slightly larger than its Schwarzschild radius r s resembles black-hole absorption. This absorption occurs via capture resulting in one of the many long-lived, densely packed resonances that populate the continuum. The lifetimes and density of these meta-stable states tend to infinity in the limit r s → R . We determine the energy-averaged cross section for particle capture into these resonances and show that it is equal to the absorption cross section for a Schwarzschild black hole. Thus a non-singular static metric may trap photons for arbitrarily long times, making it appear completely ‘black’ before the actual formation of a black hole.