Re: That Black-Hole Space-Time Curvature Thing

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Mon, 15 Sep 1997 02:28:35 -0500


I posted my own visualization of spacetime. My objection to yours was that it
sounded sort of like this:

"Imagine a 2-D world with a large hole in the center. Any flatlander trying
to cross the 'hole' gets squeezed into the center."
I.e., a spatial geometry.

I was particularly worried because of the way Aegis responded; it sounded like
that's what she had been visualizing.

Anyway, we both know it's spacetime.

Sometime I'll have to post a wonderful description of what it would look like
to fall into a black hole; it's from one of my earliest physics books,
"Frontiers of Modern Physics: New Perspectives on Cosmology, Relativity, Black
Holes and Extraterrestrial Intelligence." (Much smaller than it sounds.) I
think I was only nine or so at the time, so the only part I really got were
the vivid descriptions of the black hole and the odd behaviors around the
event horizon.

-- 
         sentience@pobox.com      Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
          http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
           http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer:  Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.