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Black holes

Let's consider the extreme case of a supermassive black hole, like the M87 one. Say the event horizon is a light year across. An explorer approaches the event horizon at very low speed, say .000001c. I'm not mathematically inclined enough to calculate what the tidal force on the explorer would be, but based on what's been posted already I'd feel safe in saying it would be a small fraction of g. Now the explorer looks back across the horizon; what does he see? I'd always understood that he would in principle (ignoring the whole spaghettification thing) be able to watch the entire future history of the universe (but not be able to communicate what he saw back to observers outside). That's not the case?

ETA: I'm asking, I guess, how slowly would the explorer be able to approach the singularity? Could he approach it slowly enough to see the entire future history of the universe, if the hole were large enough and his velocity relative to the singularity low enough?

Now, suppose he fires his rockets so as to move along the event horizon (spiraling in to the singularity as opposed to falling directly in). How does what he sees change? Are objects redshifted behind him and blueshifted in front?

Apologies for the science-noob questions.
 
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It's like the Red Queen race in "Through the Looking Glass":

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
:)
 
Let's consider the extreme case of a supermassive black hole, like the M87 one. Say the event horizon is a light year across. An explorer approaches the event horizon at very low speed, say .000001c. I'm not mathematically inclined enough to calculate what the tidal force on the explorer would be, but based on what's been posted already I'd feel safe in saying it would be a small fraction of g.

Correct.

Now the explorer looks back across the horizon; what does he see? I'd always understood that he would in principle (ignoring the whole spaghettification thing) be able to watch the entire future history of the universe (but not be able to communicate what he saw back to observers outside). That's not the case?

No, it's not.

ETA: I'm asking, I guess, how slowly would the explorer be able to approach the singularity? Could he approach it slowly enough to see the entire future history of the universe, if the hole were large enough and his velocity relative to the singularity low enough?

Only in some in-principle and very unphysical sense. If our observer was equipped with an extremely powerful rocket that never ran out of fuel, he could hover just inside the horizon for arbitrarily long, thereby seeing more and more of the "future" simply by virtue of living for a long time. But real rockets must carry reactive mass, and you'll find that with that constraint even "arbitrarily long" is impossible, because at some point the rocket will weigh more than the hole and be a black hole itself.

Now, suppose he fires his rockets so as to move along the event horizon (spiraling in to the singularity as opposed to falling directly in). How does what he sees change? Are objects redshifted behind him and blueshifted in front?

That's a bit more complicated. While he's still far from the singularity, objects near him and behind him (objects that are also far from the singularity) won't look significantly different than they would in flat spacetime. As he approaches the singularity, more complicated effects can occur, especially if he fires his rockets or has angular momentum with respect to the center of the hole.
 
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Let's consider the extreme case of a supermassive black hole, like the M87 one. Say the event horizon is a light year across. An explorer approaches the event horizon at very low speed, say .000001c. I'm not mathematically inclined enough to calculate what the tidal force on the explorer would be, but based on what's been posted already I'd feel safe in saying it would be a small fraction of g. Now the explorer looks back across the horizon; what does he see? I'd always understood that he would in principle (ignoring the whole spaghettification thing) be able to watch the entire future history of the universe (but not be able to communicate what he saw back to observers outside). That's not the case?

Well, if it were the case, it would be quite unpleasant. If you compressed the history of the universe into any timeframe that a person could observe, what he'd be seeing would be incredibly bright and blueshifted, and he'd be instantly vaporized.

Also, I don't think you would want to try to approach an event horizon at a slow speed. While a supermassive black hole would not kill you with tidal forces until you were well past the event horizon, the gravity at the event horizon is still tremendous enough to make it an event horizon... If your ship has engines that can slowly lower you past the event horizon, the acceleration is going to splatter you against the floor. The only way to survive the trip past the event horizon is in freefall.
 
I don't understand the spaghettification reference. I think I've heard it somewhere before as well, but not sure exactly what's meant by it.

Being ripped to small chunks I get. Vast tidal forces over very small distances will do that to you.

But presumably spaghettification is something different?

But real rockets must carry reactive mass, and you'll find that with that constraint even "arbitrarily long" is impossible, because at some point the rocket will weigh more than the hole and be a black hole itself.

Unless he has his reaction mass periodically replenished by supply shuttle.
 
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I don't understand the spaghettification reference. I think I've heard it somewhere before as well, but not sure exactly what's meant by it.
I think it refers to the vertical stretching and horizontal squeezing by the tidal force, that makes you look like a spaghetti stick.
 
Unless he has his reaction mass periodically replenished by supply shuttle.

Even then. Each shuttle ends up inside the black hole. After a while, their accumulated mass is larger than the mass of the hole, at which point the whole hole has to be re-analyzed.
 
No one knows if there's any solid mass at the core. No known form of matter could survive the gravitational force at the center of a black hole. On the other hand, the gravitational force there is mathematically infinite, which probably indicates that the known laws of physics are wrong (in such environments). So all we can do is speculate.

One exotic possibility is that there is no matter in the center, and instead it leads somewhere else entirely (i.e., to "another universe"). If so, black holes are really holes. A less exotic possibility is that there is some extremely dense stuff there (which probably shouldn't be called "matter"), and anything that falls in just gets crushed into it. They're still a bit like holes even then, because stuff falls in and never comes back out.

I'm not sure I can wrap my head around this. I can do the math for escape velocity, and there's a point where you would plug in mass and get an answer that was equal to or greater than the speed of light, but this is not infinity, any more than the speed of light is infinity. Am I missing something? (not an astrophysicist by any means)

ETA why wouldn't the gravitational force at the center of a black hole be zero, just like any other mass?
 
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ETA why wouldn't the gravitational force at the center of a black hole be zero, just like any other mass?

Just a guess, but for a planet or star virtually all the mass is outside the exact center, so the gravitational forces on either side of the center cancel each-other out. But for a black-hole, presumably all the mass is exactly at center, so it doesn't cancel itself out like in a regular star or planet.
 
Even then. Each shuttle ends up inside the black hole. After a while, their accumulated mass is larger than the mass of the hole, at which point the whole hole has to be re-analyzed.

Sounds more like an engineering and logistics problem than a physics problem to me.

How about the observers are on a platform close to the black hole, the platform is supported by a long chain attached to thrusters located at a convenient distance from the black hole. Shuttles supply fuel and reaction mass to the thrusters, and then leave, carrying spent fuel and other waste with them.

Instead of one thruster discharging reaction mass directly at the black hole (and observation platform), you have three thrusters discharging reaction mass in different directions at a 45 degree angle to the direction of the black hole (like a tripod) so that with the angle of discharge, distance to the black hole and velocity of discharge, the discharged reaction mass never falls into the black hole, thus does not add to it's mass.
 
Just a guess, but for a planet or star virtually all the mass is outside the exact center, so the gravitational forces on either side of the center cancel each-other out. But for a black-hole, presumably all the mass is exactly at center, so it doesn't cancel itself out like in a regular star or planet.

maybe that's the point I'm having trouble with. I was under (and am under) the impression that the concept of point mass is a mathematical model, and does not actually imply that all the matter composing the mass exists within a mathematical point. For example, the earth's gravity produces an effect on nearby objects (objects outside its actual physical radius, like you, me, bullets, the moon, etc) identical to the effect it would produce if all its mass was at a point, i.e. those objects are attracted towards the center of mass. If you compressed the earth to a mathematical point, the moon would continue right along in its orbit. You and I would of course, not being in orbit, fall towards the center, in much the way we are currently falling towards the center but without the nice comfy layer of rock to stop us. The mathematical model breaks down in reality for you and me, for if we dug a tunnel to the center and dropped ourselves down it, we would find that some of the mass was above us, so when doing calculations that don't involve the radius of the mass or when things actually hit the surface of the mass, it can be considered as a point to avoid silly effects like that.

Does all the actual physical matter in a black hole exist within a mathematical (zero size) point? Or is it of a small but finite size, depending on so-far-unknown figures on how far matter can be compressed? (like neutron stars are compressed, but more so?)
 
Does all the actual physical matter in a black hole exist within a mathematical (zero size) point? Or is it of a small but finite size, depending on so-far-unknown figures on how far matter can be compressed? (like neutron stars are compressed, but more so?)

We don't know. The current theories don't know any force that can stop the mass from collapsing into a point.
 
Horizontal squeezing?
Well, when you stretch something by the ends it squeezes in the middle thus becoming thin and long like spaghetti. Also if your feet point exactly towards the center of the black hole, then the vectors of the gravitational force for the sides of your body will point slightly inwards, i.e. they will have a horizontal component pointing towards the vertical axis of your body.
 
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I'm not sure I can wrap my head around this. I can do the math for escape velocity, and there's a point where you would plug in mass and get an answer that was equal to or greater than the speed of light, but this is not infinity, any more than the speed of light is infinity. Am I missing something? (not an astrophysicist by any means)

That's the horizon, more or less - not the center.

ETA why wouldn't the gravitational force at the center of a black hole be zero, just like any other mass?

As Brian-M said, it's because all the mass is concentrated in the center.

Sounds more like an engineering and logistics problem than a physics problem to me.

How about the observers are on a platform close to the black hole, the platform is supported by a long chain attached to thrusters located at a convenient distance from the black hole. Shuttles supply fuel and reaction mass to the thrusters, and then leave, carrying spent fuel and other waste with them.

Instead of one thruster discharging reaction mass directly at the black hole (and observation platform), you have three thrusters discharging reaction mass in different directions at a 45 degree angle to the direction of the black hole (like a tripod) so that with the angle of discharge, distance to the black hole and velocity of discharge, the discharged reaction mass never falls into the black hole, thus does not add to it's mass.

If the platform is inside the horizon, the chains will break. If it's outside, it's another story - but we were discussing going inside.
 
If the gravity inside the BH appraches infinity, would this increase the density of the matter in the BH to infinity too ?
It's not exactly infinity. Calculating density or gravity requires dividing by a unit of linear measurement (to one power or another). When positive numbers get low, the result of dividing by them (or their squares or cubes) gets high... but the extreme end of that trend is NOT division by yielding infinity. The result is actually "undefined", because it's something you just can't do... not just you can't do it physically, but you can't even do it mathematically.

To illustrate the difference between infinity and undefinity (yes, I did just make that word up), consider that whenever
n/d=q, that means dq=n. Starting with any division problem, you can always multiply the answer by what you were dividing by, and get what you were dividing. So if division by zero yielded infinity, that would mean zero times infinity would equal whatever "n" was, whatever number you were dividing by zero in the first place. But does it? It can't; multiplying zero by infinity doesn't give you any particular answer. Multiplication by zero just yields zero, multiplication by infinity just yields another infinity, and even if those two facts somehow didn't get get in a fight with each other in this case, you'd still have no way to choose an answer among the infinite supply of finite non-zero numbers. And if you can't multiply two things together and get an answer, then there's nothing that you can divide by one of them that will give you the other as an answer.
(No "dq" means no "n".)

The rubber anology, but with the BH as a well in the rubber, still assists visualisation of it for me.
Then let me throw in a couple of things that will make it work better.

First, there's the matter of how far down the gravity well or cone pulls the surface, and how steep that means the sides of the well/cone are. Stronger gravity pulls it farther and creates a well/cone with steeper sides. A black hole is the answer to the question "What would you have if the sheet were pulled an infinite distance away and the well became a cylinder instead of a cone, with perfectly vertical sides?". That image presents us an interesting component: the lack of a bottom point for the gravity well's walls to converge to. Instead there's a tube, an area that would look like a circle from above, where the sheet does not cover. What could that represent? Something that is not within our universe. That's one way in which the name "black hole" fits pretty well.

Second, there's something we can add to the sheet to make the image more complete. In its original form, it's just a snapshot of space at some particular moment; it's got nothing to show the passage of time from one moment to the next. To show time, we'd need to draw the sheet multiple times, above and below each other, where each one represented where things are a moment after the one below and a moment before the one above. So up is the direction of the flow of time. But instead of representing that with lots of different layers in one image, we can just use one layer like we had before, with arrows added to show that time flows upward instead. If you're picturing the sheet with a grid drawn on it, then at each intersection, put a little arrow pointing up and away off of the sheet, perpendicular to it, like a nail. The look at what happens when you pull on the sheet to represent gravity. The rule about time and space is that time has to be perpendicular to space, so when you pull the sheet down, the time arrows tip in with it in order for each arrow to stay perpendicular to the point at which it's attached. The steeper the gravity well is, the farther they tip in. If the gravity well's walls go vertical, all of the time arrows then point in toward the central axis of that cylinder I described before. Whereas the flat sheet had space laid out horizontally and time vertically, in the black hole, you end up with space laid out vertically and time horizontally; they've switched places/roles. Each one acts like the other would normally have acted. When that happens, we get a whole new reason why you can't escape: the center, the singularity, is not a place you move toward or past or away from, but a moment in your future, and you can't not go to your future.

would that not mean that the dimensions of what ever matter there is in it would then approach NIL ? Is it still matter if this is the case ?
We don't know. The current theories don't know any force that can stop the mass from collapsing into a point.
We don't know of anything that could cause it either. It would require a bunch of particles to become smaller than a particle is, which is not an effect that any known force has. A field-based (non-quantum) view of gravity doesn't forbid it, but only because it doesn't pay any attention to particles, so that's like the fact that the rules of airplane design have nothing against owls living on a diet of lemons and shoelaces.

If the platform is inside the horizon, the chains will break.
And the reason why is important. When the answer to some kinds of questions in physics is that the proposed object would break, some people respond by just asking what if it's a really really strong substance. But any object's strength is based on the interactions of electrons and protons, which interact by emitting and absorbing photons... so if a photon can't get from one particle in the object to another, then there's no basis for the object having any strength at all, or even being an object at all. (And in this case, redshifting & blueshifting would have the same results before you got to the point of "can't get there at all anymore" anyway.)
 
We don't know of anything that could cause it either. It would require a bunch of particles to become smaller than a particle is, which is not an effect that any known force has.

How big are any of the fundamental particles? I wasn't of any evidence of any of them having a physical size.
 
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All: I'm afraid some of the answers given on this thread are misleading. The waterfall analogy is particularly misleading - in no way is space moving inwards towards a black hole. That isn't why a light beam emitted vertically from the event horizon doesn't escape. To understand that you have to appreciate that the coordinate speed of light varies in a non-inertial reference frame. Note this comment by sol: The coordinate speed of light is c only in inertial frames.

The room you're in is a non-inertial reference frame - the coordinate speed of light is lower at the floor than it is at the ceiling. We have hard physical evidence of this, in that super-accurate optical clocks lose synchronisation when separated by a vertical elevation of only a foot: see Optical Clocks and Relativity by Chou, Hume, Rosenband, and Wineland. Also see this article on the same group, and note that when one identical clock goes slower than the other, it's because the thing it's clocking up is going slower, and these are optical clocks.

Armed with this, somebody ask this question:

According to observers at a great distance, what is the coordinate speed of light at the black hole event horizon?
 
How big are any of the fundamental particles? I wasn't of any evidence of any of them having a physical size.

They don't. Quantum mechanically, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle tells us that they have a kind of minimum size that depends on their momentum - but at large momentum, that size can be arbitrarily small.

All: I'm afraid some of the answers given on this thread are misleading. The waterfall analogy is particularly misleading - in no way is space moving inwards towards a black hole.

On the contrary, it's quite exact. You can even reformulate hydrodynamic equations to make them look mathematically identical to those that describe the spacetime near a black hole horizon, hence the work on so-called "dumb holes".

Armed with this, somebody ask this question:

According to observers at a great distance, what is the coordinate speed of light at the black hole event horizon?

It's a meaningless question. Coordinates are a convention for labeling points in space and time, and anyone can choose any coordinates regardless of their location. In some coordinates the coordinate speed of light on the horizon is zero, in others it's exactly the same as it is far from the hole, and in still others it's precisely "1.000000 smoot/eon". Hence, the answer to your question is, "anything you like".
 
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