Fuzzballs are hypothetical objects in superstring theory, intended to provide a fully quantum description of the black holes predicted by general relativity.

The fuzzball hypothesis dispenses with the singularity at the heart of a black hole by positing that the entire region within the black hole's event horizon is actually an extended object: a ball of strings, which are advanced as the ultimate building blocks of matter and light. Under string theory, strings are bundles of energy vibrating in complex ways in both the three familiar dimensions of space as well as in extra dimensions. Fuzzballs provide resolutions to two major open problems in black hole physics. First, they avoid the gravitational singularity that exists within the event horizon of a black hole. General relativity predicts that at the singularity, the curvature of spacetime becomes infinite, and it cannot determine the fate of matter and energy that falls into it. Physicists generally believe that the singularity is not a real phenomenon, and proposed theories of quantum gravity, such as superstring theory, are expected to explain its true nature. Second, they resolve the black hole information paradox: the quantum information of matter falling into a black hole is trapped behind the event horizon, and seems to disappear from the universe entirely when the black hole evaporates due to Hawking radiation. This would violate a fundamental law of quantum mechanics requiring that quantum information be conserved.

As no direct experimental evidence supports either string theory in general or fuzzballs in particular, both are products purely of calculations and theoretical research.^{[better source needed]} However, the existence of fuzzballs may be testable through gravitational-wave astronomy.

Samir D. Mathur of Ohio State University published eight scientific papers between 2001 and 2012, assisted by postdoctoral researcher Oleg Lunin, who contributed to the first two papers. The papers propose that black holes are sphere-like extended objects with a definite volume and are composed of strings. This differs from the classic view of black holes in which there is a singularity at their centers, which are thought to be a zero-dimensional, zero-volume point in which the entire mass of a black hole is concentrated at infinite density, surrounded many kilometers away by an event horizon below which light cannot escape.

All variations of string theory hold that the fundamental constituents of subatomic particles, including the force carriers (e.g., photons and gluons), are actually strings of energy that take on their identities and respective masses by vibrating in different modes and frequencies. The fuzzball concept is rooted in a particular variant of superstring theory called Type IIB (see also String duality), which holds that strings are both "open" (double-ended entities) and "closed" (looped entities) and that there are 9 + 1 spacetime dimensions wherein five of the six extra spatial dimensions are "compactified".

Unlike the view of a black hole as a singularity, a small fuzzball can be thought of as an extra-dense neutron star in which the neutrons have undergone a phase transition and decomposed, liberating the quarks comprising them. Accordingly, fuzzballs are theorized to be the terminal phase of degenerate matter. Mathur calculated that the physical surfaces of fuzzballs have radii equal to that of the event horizon of classic black holes; thus, the Schwarzschild radius of a ubiquitous 6.8 solar mass (M_☉) stellar-mass-class black hole—or fuzzball—is 20 kilometers when the effects of spin are excluded. He also determined that the event horizon of a fuzzball would, at a very tiny scale (likely on the order of a few Planck lengths), be very much like a mist: fuzzy, hence the name "fuzzball."

With classical-model black holes, objects passing through the event horizon on their way to the singularity are thought to enter a realm of curved spacetime where the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light—a realm devoid of all structure. Moreover, precisely at the singularity—the heart of a classic black hole—spacetime itself is thought to break down catastrophically since infinite density demands infinite escape velocity; such conditions are problematic with known physics. Under the fuzzball premise, however, the strings comprising matter and photons are believed to fall onto and absorb into the fuzzball's surface, which is located at the event horizon—the threshold at which the escape velocity has achieved the speed of light.

A fuzzball is a black hole; spacetime, photons, and all else not exquisitely close to the surface of a fuzzball are thought to be affected in precisely the same fashion as with the classical model of black holes featuring a singularity at its center. The two theories diverge only at the quantum level; that is, classic black holes and fuzzballs differ only in their internal composition and how they affect virtual particles that form close to their event horizons (see § Information paradox, below). Fuzzballs are thought by their proponents to be the true quantum description of black holes.