On Black Holes
Ever since the hypothesis that entities known as “black holes” existed in our universe, scientists have been struggling to understand them. According to current knowledge, a black hole is an infinitesimally small point containing an enormous amount of matter, such that its own gravity causes it to collapse in on itself forever. Because the gravity is so strong, not even light can escape a black hole’s pull within a certain radius (known as the event horizon). Thus, there is no possible way for anyone to “see” the inner workings of a black hole, without actually going inside one. This presents the grandest of problems to physicists, for black holes, being both significantly massive as well as significantly small, ought to simultaneously obey both the laws of general relativity and quantum mechanics, the two contrasting theories of fundamental physics. As of now, no solutions have been proposed.
The purpose of this post is to redefine the problem and from doing so to perhaps pull out even more peculiar understandings of the real goings-on. First of all, a black hole is typically formed from the collapse of a star. As the star collapses, its density increases, and thus its gravitational field increases as well. General relativity dictates that near massive objects, time actually slows down from a foreign perspective. For example, if we on Earth were to watch an atomic clock attached to the surface of a very dense star, we would see it tick maybe half as slowly as an equivalent clock on Earth. If that star were to then start collapsing and becoming more dense, we would see its clock tick even more slowly. This phenomena is not just about clocks but about time itself. From our perspective, the star is actually collapsing more slowly than non-relativistic equations would predict. Now, if this star were of the black-hole-forming variety, as its size shrunk we would see it collapse more and more slowly, until eventually, when its radius reached the radius of its event horizon, we would “see” it freeze all together. Its time would stop from our perspective, it would forever maintain the size of its event horizon. Thus, it would never in fact shrink to an infinitesimally small point from our perspective, except given an infinite time (which is silly). So, from our perspective–which as per general relativity is no less favored than any other, i.e. the perspective of the black hole–we have no paradoxes.
Of course our goal now is to disprove paradoxes from inside the perspective of a black hole. This feat could amount to anything, perhaps even to changing/expanding the laws of physics inside a black hole. Maybe in there nothing would be the same because of all the gravity. Maybe acceleration wouldn’t be distance per time squared, maybe 1+1 wouldn’t equal 2. Maybe everyone wouldn’t be so obsessed with joining fraternities.
