A question concerning black holes

I have a question and was hoping to get some insight.

General scientific consensus holds that black holes certainly exist.
Link

There is general consensus that supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies.

Black holes have a gravitational force strong enough to prevent light from escaping.
Link 2

A black hole is an object — typically a collapsed star — whose gravity is so strong that its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Since nothing is known to exceed the speed of light, nothing can escape from a black hole.

Further enlightenment...
Link 3

5. Is a black hole a giant cosmic vacuum cleaner? The answer to this question is "not really."Mathematically, the gravity of any spherical object behaves as if all the mass were concentrated at one central point. Since most ordinary objects have surfaces, you will feel the strongest gravity of an object when you are on its surface. This is as close to its total mass as you can get. If you penetrated a spherical object with a constant mass density, getting closer to its core, you would feel the force of gravity get weaker, not stronger.

3. Since light has no mass how can it be trapped by the gravitational pull of a black hole? Newton thought that only objects with mass could produce a gravitational force on each other. Applying Newton's theory of gravity, one would conclude that since light has no mass, the force of gravity couldn't affect it. Einstein discovered that the situation is a bit more complicated than that. First he discovered that gravity is produced by a curved space-time. Then Einstein theorized that the mass and radius of an object (its compactness) actually curves space-time. Mass is linked to space in a way that physicists today still do not completely understand. However, we know that the stronger the gravitational field of an object, the more the space around the object is curved. In other words, straight lines are no longer straight if exposed to a strong gravitational field; instead, they are curved. Since light ordinarily travels on a straight-line path, light follows a curved path if it passes through a strong gravitational field. This is what is meant by "curved space," and this is why light becomes trapped in a black hole. In the 1920's Sir Arthur Eddington proved Einstein's theory when he observed starlight curve when it traveled close to the Sun. This was the first successful prediction of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. One way to picture this effect of gravity is to imagine a piece of rubber sheeting stretched out. Imagine that you put a heavy ball in the center of the sheet. The weight of the ball will bend the surface of the sheet close to it. This is a two-dimensional picture of what gravity does to space in three dimensions. Now take a little marble and send it rolling from one side of the rubber sheet to the other. Instead of the marble taking a straight path to the other side of the sheet, it will follow the contour of the sheet that is curved by the weight of the ball in the center. This is similar to how the gravitation field created by an object (the ball) affects light (the marble).

It still seems to me there must be some sort of "speed of attraction." What am I missing in terms of understanding?

reply to post by totallackey


You have to understand exactly what does happen to space time to understand why light can not escape.

Gravity bends space time. if you imagine space in a very simple way its like a road. Imagine you can only walk along the road. Now imagine that there is a black hole off in the distance to one size of the road. This black hole is bending the road towards it. Because you can only travel along the road you can not escape the pull of the black hole because your available path only leads towards it.

Well 3d space time is like a matrix grid of paths, you can move in any direction along them. But if there is a black hole it bends all the available paths in 3d space time towards it. So if you get close enough to it all directions you try to go in will only lead to to the center of the black hole. This is what they mean by light can not escape the pull of a black hole. Light has no mass but the path it is traveling long has been bent towards the center of the black hole by gravitational pull. So its the path that is bent and not the light that is being attracted.

This is how i understand it, I hope this helps

You know,I have also heard that there could be a universe in every black hole.

Try this out......

phys.org...

Kind of old news.


Sorry,got ahead of myself there. Aha ha ha ha .

There is a mass of empty knowledge about black holes. Lots of theories ,but very little proven.

Someone will come along and correct me here sooner or later.

All I amm doing is giving you a source to look at and figure out on your own.
That is the best way.

Peace,
K

A black hole is an object — typically a collapsed star — whose gravity is so strong that its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Since nothing is known to exceed the speed of light, nothing can escape from a black hole.

Does that indicate that an object within the gravity would be pulled faster than the speed of light? If not why not?
And If so, then FTL is possible.

reply to post by VoidHawk

Does that indicate that an object within the gravity would be pulled faster than the speed of light? If not why not?
And If so, then FTL is possible.

I think that what that means is that the energy needed to break free of a bent bit of space time that leads to the center of a black hole would be more energy than it would take to accelerate something to the speed of light.

reply to post by PhoenixOD


Thank you for your response.

I understand the analogies you presented. Link 3 in the OP actually provides a picture and explanation of the 3D explanation...



Now, if I was to set a marble in motion along a path, would the marble not speed up as it goes along toward its eventual destination at the bottom of the pit? Or would this be an optical illusion?

ETA: I understand the light issue. Light is really not drawn in to a black hole. But the force of gravity present is written in terms of escape velocity, in this case 186,000 miles per second. The Earth is maintaining sufficient velocity around the Sun to avoid being "sucked in," is it not? If this is the case, then is the "speed of attraction," (aka, "sucked in") for a black hole 186,000.00001 mps?

reply to post by totallackey


Yes the closer to the center of the black hole it got the faster it would go. But there's also a bit of a twist as you get closer to the speed of light the slower time would go in relation to the rest of universe. So it would only take like 10 seconds for you to hit the center but that could be thousands of years to everyone else outside.

This part of black hole theory is being debated, information loss.

The information paradox first surfaced in the early 1970s when Hawking, building on earlier work by Jacob Bekenstein at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, suggested that black holes are not totally black. He showed that particle–antiparticle pairs generated at a black hole’s periphery, known as its event horizon, would be separated. One would fall into the black hole while the other would escape, making the black hole appear as a radiating body.

Quantum entanglement demands that the trapped particle would have negative energy and, because of Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence E = mc2, negative mass. With each successive negative-energy particle the black hole would therefore steadily lose mass or “evaporate”. Hawking argued that even after a black hole has totally evaporated it would leave behind its central, infinitely dense point known as the singularity, in which information would be lost forever.

The significance of the information paradox came to a head in 1997 when Hawking, together with colleague Kip Thorne at Caltech, US, put this argument forward as a bet with John Preskill, also at Caltech. Preskill believed that, in accordance with quantum mechanics, information loss is impossible because it prevents the equations governing the process from being reversible. But in 2004 Hawking conceded the bet, saying he now believed that information is returned, although in a disguised state.

physicsworld.com...

PhoenixOD
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

Does that indicate that an object within the gravity would be pulled faster than the speed of light? If not why not?
And If so, then FTL is possible.

I think that what that means is that the energy needed to break free of a bent bit of space time that leads to the center of a black hole would be more energy than it would take to accelerate something to the speed of light.

edit on 27-9-2013 by PhoenixOD because: (no reason given)

I'll throw this question at you as you provided a reasonable answer for my last question
We hear talk of scientists claiming they may be able to create mini black holes, so is there a size where light is able to escape a black hole? I'm assuming the smaller the hole the weaker it would be.

reply to post by VoidHawk


It seems that all back holes have the same characteristic where light cannot escape, it would take more energy than needed to accelerate to the speed of light to break free once you have passed the point of no return (the event horizon) . But the distance the event horizon is from the center is relative to its mass. Black holes with more mass have event horizons 1000's of miles from the center. So all black holes have the same amount of ultimate pull possible its just some have a longer range.

Mini black hole are super tiny so only have a super tiny range, plus they are unstable and die in a split second.

reply to post by totallackey

I like your thread!

Mass is linked to space in a way that physicists today still do not completely understand. However, we know that the stronger the gravitational field of an object, the more the space around the object is curved.

There is something in this passage that struck me. Curved space around an object. All bodies in space are mostly spherical in nature. Some more than others, yes... but triangular planets or stars have not been discovered! So my question is this: Is space curving around the gravitational field of an object (like the Sun) due to its spherical nature, or is the interaction of space with the gravitational field causing the spherical shape? (That was so hard to word, to get my question across. What I'm asking is... is space bending around a sphere, or is the sphere shaped by the bending?)

Also, I have a sneaky feeling that gravity is tied into electro-magnetism and spin/rotation. If there is any truth in that, then perhaps light being sucked into a black hole (even tho it has no mass) could have something to do with "opposites attract" -- think of a black hole as the south end of a magnet and photons as the north end.

\speculation

Please don't hate me, all you brilliant science folks out there. I'm not an idiot. I just enjoy thought-journeys! Play nice, now...

reply to post by new_here

There is something in this passage that struck me.

Large bodies in space are nearly spherical because a sphere is the shape which can contain the most volume with the least surface area. Gravity tends to cause an object to become as small as it can given the constraints of structural integrity. Gravity makes an object (if massive enough) collapse as much as it can. The result has to be a sphere.

Sort of like of the reason soap bubbles tend to be spherical.

Phage
reply to post by new_here

 

There is something in this passage that struck me.

Large bodies in space are nearly spherical because a sphere is the shape which can contain the most volume with the least surface area. Gravity tends to cause an object to become as small as it can given the constraints of structural integrity. Gravity makes an object (if massive enough) collapse as much as it can. The result has to be a sphere.

Sort of like of the reason soap bubbles tend to be spherical.

Thanks for the kind, informative response. (Kinda scared when I saw I'd been Phaged, lol)

Please give your take on what causes gravity. It's not fully understood, or at least subject to some debate... am I right? I'd be interested to know what you adhere to.

reply to post by new_here

Please give your take on what causes gravity. It's not fully understood, or at least subject to some debate... am I right? I'd be interested to know what you adhere to.

As far as I can tell gravity is a property of matter. As to what "causes" that property...no one knows and physicists would be the first tell you that. That doesn't mean that they don't know how it behaves and it doesn't behave anything like magnetism. At least not like any form of magnetism that has ever been seen.

VoidHawk

A black hole is an object — typically a collapsed star — whose gravity is so strong that its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Since nothing is known to exceed the speed of light, nothing can escape from a black hole.

Does that indicate that an object within the gravity would be pulled faster than the speed of light? If not why not?
And If so, then FTL is possible.

No, it means an object would have to go FTL to escape. Nothing goes FTL. Nothing escapes (except for certain instances where the escape velocity is less than FTL). If FTL was possible then the black hole would not suck it in, it would escape, the fact nothing does is further proof FTL is impossible.

It helps to understand space if you can come to realize that energy and matter are the same thing simply in different forms.

Energy is a 4 dimensional wave in the fabric of the universe, and matter is the same thing but it is a standing wave and therefore doesn't dissipate. So basically each subatomic particle is a note of music played on a 5 dimensional harp, so atoms are clusters of vibrational standing waves in 4 dimensions, and we are made up of trillions and trillions of them. We're each a symphony.

You exist in a black hole, you are made of black holes, you are the black hole!!

Our Universe is a black hole, within a black hole, that's in yet another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole, that's in another black hole......

Singularity anyone??

i have a question about black holes as a male i always wonder about the nine months we spend getting out of one the rest of our adult lives trying to get back into one and at the end of the day our 6 best friends will lower you back into one head first . it's a funny old life eh next up quasars

Spheres are also the lowest energy state for a self-attracting object. Sort of like the lowest energy state of a stack of paint cans is all on the floor. In a sphere, everything's as close as it can get to the center.

totallackey
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

Thank you for your response.

I understand the analogies you presented. Link 3 in the OP actually provides a picture and explanation of the 3D explanation...

Now, if I was to set a marble in motion along a path, would the marble not speed up as it goes along toward its eventual destination at the bottom of the pit? Or would this be an optical illusion?

ETA: I understand the light issue. Light is really not drawn in to a black hole. But the force of gravity present is written in terms of escape velocity, in this case 186,000 miles per second. The Earth is maintaining sufficient velocity around the Sun to avoid being "sucked in," is it not? If this is the case, then is the "speed of attraction," (aka, "sucked in") for a black hole 186,000.00001 mps?

edit on 27-9-2013 by totallackey because: further content

Ahhh the old 3d sphere rolling along flat euclidean space diagram.
If the marble is a 3 dimensional object....which dimensions is flat Space curving off to in the diagram?

The fact we can envisage this occurrence as a natural event hints that space itself has multiple dimensions so smaller 3d objects ( a Marble) can exist within larger 3d construct ( a funnell) giving the marble a none euclidean relative co-ordinate to the funnel.

Quantum Space theory suggests a black hole is simply an area of tightly packed Space..( a relative area in the Universe which has undergone a phase change to pack the space quanta as tight as they can "naturally" be packed (see close packing of equal spheres).)

Any 3d object approaching this relative area of space from "normal" space (the average of space quanta packing not under phase change) needs to negotiate a gradient as the space becomes more tightly packed towards the centre co-ordinate of the black hole- put simply all parts of the marble need to move an equal distance of relative space to conserve angular momentum.

The right side of the marble needs to move through the same relative amount of space as the left side ( to keep going straight) but because space is warped (i.e packed very tightly) in a black hole the effect is to cause a deviation from the straight as viewed by the observer.

(If a marble has eyes it probably wouldnt notice it had changed course as it would still appear to be traveling perfectly straight through "warped" space...right up until ..well no one knows.)