Revisiting the semiclassical gravity scenario for gravitational collapse

The existence of extremely dark and compact astronomical bodies is by now a well established observational fact. On the other hand, classical General Relativity predicts the existence of black holes which fit very well with the observations, but do lead to important conceptual problems. In this contribution we ask ourselves the straightforward question: Are the dark and compact objects that we have observational evidence for black holes in the sense of General Relativity? By revising the semiclassical scenario of stellar collapse we find out that as the result of a collapse some alternative objects could be formed which might supplant black holes.
Comment: 8 pages, proceedings of the ERE2008, aipproc style