![\"star](\"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/star-getting-swallowed.jpg\")
Except it seemed the writers of these stories were so abuzz about the actual event, they didn\u2019t point out the curious aspect of HOW a star gets sucked in by a black hole.\u00a0 Observe the artist\u2019s illustration:<\/p>\nCouple interesting stories in the news lately.\u00a0 One was about the discovery of gravitational waves.\u00a0 The other was about directly witnessing a star get swallowed by a black hole.<\/p>\n
Except it seemed the writers of these stories were so abuzz about the actual event, they didn\u2019t point out the curious aspect of HOW a star gets sucked in by a black hole.\u00a0 Observe the artist\u2019s illustration:<\/p>\n
Wait, what?<\/p>\n
Did you see that?<\/p>\n
Here, let\u2019s take the REALLY interesting part of this diagram.<\/p>\n
Shouldn\u2019t the star be getting sucked directly into the black hole?\u00a0 If the black hole has such all-powerful gravity, shouldn\u2019t the star\u2019s mass be getting pulled right along the blue line, right into the center of the black hole?\u00a0 What\u2019s it doing curving AWAY from it, like with the red line?\u00a0 When was the last time you saw an object fall and turn AWAY like this?<\/p>\n For this, we need to get into the deeper workings of Einstein\u2019s theory of general relativity \u2013 the idea that space is curved, and all we can ever see as observers is a flattened version of it.\u00a0 Not far behind is the mystery of black holes, those unknowable holes of nothingness, those Bermuda Triangles of the universe, and ultimate examples of relativity in action.<\/p>\n To better understand the relativity of black holes, we must understand the concept of curvature of space.\u00a0 Likewise, light always travels straight, unperturbed by gravity since it has no mass.\u00a0 So why does it bend in a gravitational field?\u00a0 This is where Einstein\u2019s theory comes in.\u00a0 He said that gravity is more accurately understood as a warping of space and time (spacetime), and that a massless beam is still travelling straight through the field.\u00a0 So here\u2019s the issue, mathematically speaking.\u00a0 If a straight line goes through any whirlpool, no matter how steep, it will spiral in, level out, and eventually spiral its way out.\u00a0 If a black hole simply has really, really steep walls, light will be able to escape.\u00a0 There would be no such thing as an event horizon, through which light can never escape.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s how we would need to understand the topology of a black hole \u2013 not that it is just really really steep, but that it\u2019s more like a well \u2013 with walls asymptoting (limiting themselves) at the event horizon.<\/p>\n Which brings us to an interesting concept.\u00a0 \u201cLight can\u2019t escape a black hole\u201d is actually a misnomer. \u00a0Fact is, light can never ENTER a black hole.\u00a0 By our idea of the asymptotic well, light will always spiral in ad infinitum.\u00a0 We can see evidence of this in the picture below of a black hole crossing over a galaxy.\u00a0 That corona around it?\u00a0 That\u2019s light from the galaxy hitting the black hole, spiraling into its well, before spiraling back out in that ring formation.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s take that the actual mass of a black hole is a infinitesimal speck right in the middle of the event horizon.\u00a0 What we\u2019re seeing already is a black hole is literally a RUPTURE in spacetime.\u00a0 By this model, there is no spacetime between the black hole and the event horizon.<\/p>\n The “corona” around this black hole is light from the nearby galaxy that gets trapped in its pull. It then spirals in, flattens out at a certain depth, and spirals back out at us.<\/p><\/div>\n This is where things start to get weird.\u00a0 To better understand this weirdness, we need to understand just HOW spacetime warps around a black hole.<\/p>\n There is no speed limit<\/strong><\/p>\n First of all, the \u201cspeed of light\u201d is a misnomer.\u00a0 There is no universal \u201cmaximum speed\u201d per se.\u00a0 It may take four years for light to reach here from Alpha Centauri.\u00a0 But that\u2019s from the perspective of us sitting here on Earth.\u00a0 If you were somehow to hitch a ride on a beam of light, you\u2019d arrive at Alpha Centauri in an instant.\u00a0 It\u2019s only to all your friends back home that it seemed to take you four years (eight years, really, since it would take four more years for news of your arrival to hit home).<\/p>\n So what\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n If you were to somehow speed up that quickly, and slow down again, what you\u2019d see is the whole universe collapsing all around you, Alpha Centauri would only seem a step away, you\u2019d make a quick jump, and then the universe would expand again as you slowed down, finding yourself at your new star in just a moment.\u00a0 Meanwhile, everything around you just aged four years.<\/p>\n Cool, huh?\u00a0 Of course we haven\u2019t even gotten to the fact that you\u2019d have to accelerate far faster than the speed of light to get anywhere near it \u2013 meaning, if you had some gyroscopic speedometer that was based purely on acceleration, it would say you\u2019re going far far faster than light speed.\u00a0 But let\u2019s save that for another time.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a more realistic application \u2013 the Cern supercollider, which accelerates particles to near the speed of light.\u00a0 It runs them along a magnetic circular track, accelerating them to near the speed of light.\u00a0 What happens from an observer\u2019s perspective is far different from the particle\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s say we could shrink down to that particle level and hitch a ride.\u00a0 What would we experience?\u00a0 As we approached the speed of light, time would slow down for us, AND distances would shrink.\u00a0 Other things would happen too, like we\u2019d become more massive.\u00a0 But the distance and the time are the interesting part.\u00a0 Okay, now back to black holes.\u00a0 One fascinating phenomenon about matter entering black holes is, for a while it seems to turn AWAY from the black hole.\u00a0 As if the black hole wants matter to orbit around it rather than sucking it right in.\u00a0 How can that even happen?<\/p>\n Once again, this is an illusion brought by travel along non-Euclidean spacetime.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go back to our diagram of a black hole as a well.<\/p>\n Better yet, let\u2019s look down an actual well. Now, imagine this well is really deep.\u00a0 I mean, really REALLY deep.\u00a0 See that disk at the bottom?\u00a0 How small can you imagine it?\u00a0 And remember, it\u2019s the exact same diameter at the bottom as it is at the top.<\/p>\n Now, try shining a laser pointer at\u00a0 the bottom of this really deep well.\u00a0 Not too easy, is it?\u00a0 You\u2019ll inevitably end up hitting the surrounding wall.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s what happens when matter or light hits a black hole.\u00a0 Let\u2019s take what we learned from our Cern particle and see what happens as matter hits a black hole.\u00a0 From an observer\u2019s perspective, it approaches, then mysteriously turns away as it accelerates and starts orbiting the black hole. The incredible shrinking black hole<\/strong><\/p>\n But what happens from the particle\u2019s perspective, as it hurtles towards that black hole at breakneck speed, powerful gravitational forces accelerating it near the speed of light?\u00a0 We go back to our Cern illustration.\u00a0 As it accelerates, its universe collapses around it.\u00a0 Rather than curving away from the hole, the very black hole it seems to be hurtling into shys away from it.\u00a0 So, here\u2019s where things get REALLY interesting.\u00a0 If the event horizon is the circumference at which light can no longer escape \u2013 it means from the perspective of anything on the event horizon, that black hole is now infinitesimal in size.\u00a0 Which just happens to be the perfect distance for quantum mechanics.<\/p>\n Now, I\u2019m not much of a quantum mechanist.\u00a0 I know enough about the subject to separate science from new age bunk, but that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 But as a mathematician and armchair philosopher, I also know about Zeno\u2019s paradox: That nothing can ever get from point A to point B.\u00a0 That\u2019s because it has to travel half that distance first, and half that distance before that, and so on ad infinitum.<\/p>\n The solution to that paradox is also the prediction of the atom \u2013 that ultimately the universe is composed of indivisible quanta.<\/p>\n![\"gravity](\"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/gravity-pulling-away-notes.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>This is the branch of mathematics known as non-Euclidean geometry, and we\u2019ve all seen it at one point or another.\u00a0 Take, for example, an intercontinental flight.\u00a0 Watch your flight take place on a map, and your plane seems to curve along its way to the target, rather than going in a straight line.\u00a0 That seems a bit \u2026 inefficient.<\/p>\n<\/a>Until you recall that we\u2019re not travelling on a map, we\u2019re travelling on the surface of a sphere.\u00a0 We and the pilot are very nicely travelling along a straight line, never veering to the left or right as the map would have us believe.<\/p>\n<\/a>Much like if, instead of traversing a globe, our plane were to fly through a depression or whirlpool without turning. \u00a0It would also bend its path even though we were flying perfectly straight.<\/p>\n<\/a>From a mathematical perspective, the only shape that can hold a straight line is a cylinder.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>For simplicity\u2019s sake, let\u2019s say the track has a radius of 1 mile.\u00a0 It accelerates to near the speed of light, running round it at 100 times\/second.<\/p>\n<\/a>Our track would shrink to only 1 meter radius, and now while we were at around the same near-light speed the observer sees us at, we\u2019re now doing the track at 160 THOUSAND times\/second.\u00a0 In that second, we\u2019d see the outside world age 25 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> It continues ever towards it, missing this now shrunken black hole.\u00a0 Since it can never aim for absolute dead center, the black hole will always shy away just enough to have it \u201cmiss\u201d and gett pulled into orbit instead.\u00a0 Keep in mind it\u2019s the same black hole, it\u2019s still travelling a similar near-light speed, but it orbits this shrunken black hole 1000 times in the time it takes the observer to see it orbit the black hole once.
\nThat infinitesimal dot at the bottom of our well is starting to make a lot more sense now, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Also, it\u2019s a nice location for the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.\u00a0 But we digress.<\/p>\n