- #1
VeronicaS
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I posted this question on another forum, and, the answers, thus far, have not really helped me out very much. So, I figured physics questions are best directed toward the 'physics guys'. Here is the text of my two posts. I feel like the problem probably lies with my extremely limited understanding of the subject, so, do not be concerned at all with the idea of hurting my feelings. If I am an idiot, I need to know that. :)In my own strange version of counting sheep the other night, a question occurred to me about what would happen if a person fell into a black hole. To picture the curvature of space/time, I imagine the universe as being sort of like a great big block of wood, and everything that moves in it has to follow the grain, with that ‘grain’ being caused by mass imbedded in the wood. I assume space to be quantized, and, each strip of grain in the wood being one unit in diameter. Everything moving through this goes to the next unit of space/time that is directly in front of it, so, in that sense, it is moving in a straight line, even though it appears to dip and curve from a different point of view. The curvature would be at it’s most extreme at the black hole. If my understanding is approximately correct, then, something with mass would be pretty much as close to the speed of light as it’s mass allows after it crosses the event horizon. After that, the ‘grain’ of space/time has sort of circled into a closed loop from which there is no escape. I don’t understand how the acceleration process could continue after having crossed the event horizon, since you are already traveling, literally, as fast as possible. I guess that the spaghettification thing would have to happen before one actually reached the event horizon? So, it would then be possible to actually observe this from a safe distance?
"ibanezerscrooge - 29 March 2012 06:45 AM
I love black holes (that does not sound right, lol)! Check out this video. I really like the way it is explained and the graphics are very good. I think this might help you think about it as it does me. Forgive me if you’ve seen it before." I did watch the video just to make sure that I hadn’t missed something important, which, sadly, is always a possibility. What he said was essentially what I thought he would say. And, he did say that the spaghettification thing would happen after crossing the event horizon, not before, which, to me, makes no sense at all. If an object is released at the outer edge of the earth’s gravitational well and falls to the surface, it will hit the surface at about 11 km/s, the escape velocity from the surface of the earth, assuming that it is sufficiently aerodynamic to reach that speed. Whatever the escape velocity is at a given distance from a center of gravity, that is how fast an object will be going that free falls into that point. If an object free falls into a black hole, it would have to be traveling at near the speed of light right after crossing the event horizon, because that is the escape velocity at the event horizon. It would speed up very little, if any, from that point on. If one accepts that gravity isn’t really a force in the same sense as kinetic energy or electromagnetism, but rather, a curvature in space/time, more of a geometrical property, and, that there is a maximum speed at which something can travel through space/time, then, it follows that any additional ‘pull’ on an object would not express itself as more speed, but, rather, more mass, since mass and energy are the same thing. You would get a lot heavier, not stretched out because of your feet being closer to the center of gravity than your head. You’ve already hit the speed limit. I understand that the math for calculating escape velocities and other gravitational phenomena allow for infinitely higher escape velocities, but, in practise nothing can go faster than light to escape, and, nothing can fall in faster than the speed of light because of gravitational acceleration. This, to me, would suggest the possibility of a maximum possible amount of curvature in space/time, which would make sense, since, if there is no limit to how much space can be curved, that would have the possibility of violations of the uncertainty principle. If a particle is on a trajectory that curves in on itself more and more, and there is no limit to this inward spiral, eventually the both particle’s location and momentum could be known with very high precision. It is sitting right there, spinning in a very specific location. All of it’s momentum is now angular.
And, that is when I fell asleep. I could be just as wrong as can be because of some information that I am totally unaware of, but, I just don’t see how that spaghettification thing could happen on the inboard side of the event horizon.
"ibanezerscrooge - 29 March 2012 06:45 AM
I love black holes (that does not sound right, lol)! Check out this video. I really like the way it is explained and the graphics are very good. I think this might help you think about it as it does me. Forgive me if you’ve seen it before." I did watch the video just to make sure that I hadn’t missed something important, which, sadly, is always a possibility. What he said was essentially what I thought he would say. And, he did say that the spaghettification thing would happen after crossing the event horizon, not before, which, to me, makes no sense at all. If an object is released at the outer edge of the earth’s gravitational well and falls to the surface, it will hit the surface at about 11 km/s, the escape velocity from the surface of the earth, assuming that it is sufficiently aerodynamic to reach that speed. Whatever the escape velocity is at a given distance from a center of gravity, that is how fast an object will be going that free falls into that point. If an object free falls into a black hole, it would have to be traveling at near the speed of light right after crossing the event horizon, because that is the escape velocity at the event horizon. It would speed up very little, if any, from that point on. If one accepts that gravity isn’t really a force in the same sense as kinetic energy or electromagnetism, but rather, a curvature in space/time, more of a geometrical property, and, that there is a maximum speed at which something can travel through space/time, then, it follows that any additional ‘pull’ on an object would not express itself as more speed, but, rather, more mass, since mass and energy are the same thing. You would get a lot heavier, not stretched out because of your feet being closer to the center of gravity than your head. You’ve already hit the speed limit. I understand that the math for calculating escape velocities and other gravitational phenomena allow for infinitely higher escape velocities, but, in practise nothing can go faster than light to escape, and, nothing can fall in faster than the speed of light because of gravitational acceleration. This, to me, would suggest the possibility of a maximum possible amount of curvature in space/time, which would make sense, since, if there is no limit to how much space can be curved, that would have the possibility of violations of the uncertainty principle. If a particle is on a trajectory that curves in on itself more and more, and there is no limit to this inward spiral, eventually the both particle’s location and momentum could be known with very high precision. It is sitting right there, spinning in a very specific location. All of it’s momentum is now angular.
And, that is when I fell asleep. I could be just as wrong as can be because of some information that I am totally unaware of, but, I just don’t see how that spaghettification thing could happen on the inboard side of the event horizon.