Re: Black Holes

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
15 Apr 1998 14:35:23 +0200


ChuckKuecker <ckuecker@mcs.net> writes:

> In the case of a black hole sufficiently large and massive that the tidal
> forces at the event horizon do not tear one apart - does anyone have
> theories on what the gravitational conditions INSIDE the event horizon are?
> If an observer could survive the transition inside the horizon, would the
> situation be similar to that inside a large mass - the gravitation would
> drop smoothly to the center of mass - or is the situation completely unknowable?

No, infalling victims/observers do not notice anything special when
they pass the horizon, the tidal forces just continue to grow. Note
that a black hole is a vacuum solution of the field equations, so the
only place where there could be "mass" is at the singularity (and
there, it is doubtful if it can be called mass); a black hole is
almost completely a spacetime phenomenon once it has formed. What is
important is the curvature, and it increases indefinitely as one
approaches the singularity.

See _Gravitation_ by Misner, Thorne, Wheeler for an analysis of this.

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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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