Freelance Writing Jobs | Today's Articles | Sign In

 
Browse Sections

OUR black hole. Part I


Hubble
Keep pouring in matter, and surrounding space and time warp ever more tightly. If you could by some means be there, you should not notice anything special except for the suffocating gravitational tug. The space time distortion is not perceived by you, because you are within it, forming part of that distortion. You have no reference to check whether you are distorted, because all rulers you may grab are as much distorted as you.

Yet, this distortion as seen from outside is quite notorious. Things close by look like going into slow motion; time looks like going ever so slower. Light speed in particular, slows to a crawl. Throw in more matter, and at over 3 times the Sun's mass a threshold is crossed. Light slows so much it stops moving at all (as seen from outside, if it were possible). You have a fully fledged black hole, named so in 1969 by John Wheeler. Not for its color, which it does not possibly have, but after the fact light cannot escape from within (hence no color).

From an external point of view, light has stopped moving inside, so you see nothing past the distance where the gravity field exceeds the threshold, in its ever increasing trend as you approach the center (remember, attraction goes up as distance goes down).

Again, seeing inside is not possible, for seeing implies light photons reaching your retina, and coming from inside. Since from your external vantage point these photons do not move, there is no way they can reach you. In a more general sense, information cannot escape from within a black hole (well, do not bet your life on this, weird things are happening in the quantum theories arena), for information needs a physical means to be ferried on, and not even the swiftest weightless photons can escape carrying it.

Now, placing yourself virtually inside again (not practical, you should be smashed by gravitation), since you are part of this space time distortion, you do not notice something special is going on. You measure light going fast as usual, but due to Relativity what you see inside as going fast, is seen as standing still from outside. You simply cannot reach the threshold frontier. From within, it lies at infinite for all practical purposes. You see space from inside the black hole as an infinite unbounded universe.

Well, at least according to current Classic Relativity, things may

The copyright of the article OUR black hole. Part I in Astronomy is owned by Rodolfo Astrada. Permission to republish OUR black hole. Part I in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic