Theoretical physics

[termrork]

Maybe let's say not light, but you in a spaceship. When the curvature of the spacetime becomes too big the spaceship gets ripped apart because the grav. attraction of the front of your spaceship is much bigger than of the back. Where this point is depends on the size of the BH. If the BH is really really huge you can simply surpass the even horizon and not even noticing it... But as you come closer and closer to the singularity you will finally reach that point and die (the bigger the BH the longer this will take). After that the particles you and the ship were made of will sometime reach the singularity and become a part of it. This is at least what Einstein tells us, what I personally highly doupt, but we have no better theory yet.

[Voros]

So a BH gains size with the particles rather than taking them to another place(heh)!
I see. We have so much to learn.

Oh, have scientists tried sending a small probe, while recording the readings during the "sucking"?
Although that seems highly unlikely.

[scifista42]

Voros said:

So a BH gains size with the particles rather than taking them to another place(heh)!

Oh, have scientists tried sending a small probe, while recording the readings during the "sucking"?

1. You might be confusing a black hole with a wormhole.
2. The closest black hole to Earth is thought to be 1600 light years away from Earth.
3. Getting sucked is just like getting attracted AND deformed by an extreme gravitational force.
4. Anything that comes close-enough to a black hole is doomed. It can neither go back, nor send back light or any kind of signals, because the black hole's force at this distance will attract and suck everything, including light.

[Gez]

Voros said:

Oh, have scientists tried sending a small probe, while recording the readings during the "sucking"?
Although that seems highly unlikely.

None of the data the probe would send would come back to us after it's gone through the event horizon.

To escape a gravity well (like the Earth's, for example), you need to go fast. This is called escape velocity. More massive things require a greater escape velocity. What if something is so massive that its escape velocity is greater than the speed of light? Then light isn't fast enough to get out, and when light doesn't get out, we call that a black hole.

Now, every form of data transmission is actually material -- whether you're sending photons in a vacuum or electrons on a wire, it's always just as physical as a paper attached to a carrier pigeon's leg, even if modern telecommunications may seem immaterial.

[termrork]

everything said before is true for einsteins theory. But if there is a quantum theory of gravity, there can be ways to find out the structure by scattering experiments. But still as said before there is no BH in our neighbourhood...

[Koko Ricky]

Gez said:

Now, every form of data transmission is actually material -- whether you're sending photons in a vacuum or electrons on a wire, it's always just as physical as a paper attached to a carrier pigeon's leg, even if modern telecommunications may seem immaterial.

We say this with utter confidence, but I suspect that every form of data transmission is pure information, and that information does not necessarily need a physical form to be transmitted. For instance, elementary particles contain information about their spin, charge and mass, among other qualities. Now, is this information physical? Well, when we observe the particle, these qualities become apparent, but it would be foolish to say that the spin or the charge is "made up" of anything. They are simple qualities that exist, that appear to be material on the macroscopic scale. But when we peer into them at the quantum level, these qualities are abstractions, they are mathematical information which does not contain material.

For that reason, I think it would be better to replace the phrase "every form of data transmission is actually material" with "every form of data transmission is a transmission of information, and information is embedded in elementary particles and forces, which is not at all physical."

Voros said:

What happens to the objects (such as light) that are sucked in? A realistic guess/theory, is what you have in mind.

Some theories state the light is trapped in the black hole, so if you were to somehow survive a trip into one, you would be blinded with the light of however many stars and other celestial objects ended up inside. However, there was a recent discovery that suggested that information is ejected out of black holes, which would mean that not all of the light is trapped indefinitely. In fact, if this discovery holds up, then eventually the black hole should evaporate, with all of its information eventually being retrievable. Theoretically, any information that gets sucked into a black hole is retrievable and fully reconstructable because it apparently exists on the event horizon as a lattice of 2D information.

[Voros]

Imp fireballs, Doom1/2 version. Hit me.

Yes, a bump.

[Gez]

Voros said:

Imp fireballs, Doom1/2 version. Hit me.

Yes, a bump.

A roughly similar effect (glowing ball that moves relatively slowly and doesn't seem to really care about gravity) can be replicated by ball lightning, but it's quite a stretch.