Re: starship-design: Black holes: a mystery

[TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Reply to Steve and Kyle:

Steve,

>What really makes a black hole inescapable is that once you pack enough
>mass within a critical radius the spacetime curvature within that radius
>become degenerate.  All movement in space or time leads inexorably
>towards the central singularity; you can't escape and you can't even
>stand still.  I don't think that even moving faster than light would
>help; you'd just get to the singularity faster.

Hmm, I'd say all movement through space would lead to the singularity.
Movement through time however is a hope, unfortunately you'd need to go back
in time though.

Timothy

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Kyle,

Some years ago, I discovered Ken's puzzle myself. Not being able to solve
it, I asked a theoretical physics teacher. The conditional answer he had
after 1 day of preparation time was:

The surface of the black hole is a dense network of gravitons. From what I
understood, these gravitons can "communicate" both with the inside and
outside (and thus can represent the mass that is inside).

In my own words, I'd tend to use the rubbersheet approach. Even though the
properties of the sheet change from inside to outside the event horizon,
they are still connected in some way. The stresses in the sheet are
exchanged, otherwise the sheet would let loose.

To use Jim's two cents: space-time itself is the transmitter.

Sofar, I'd say the puzzle is solved, but needs prove to exclude other
possibilities.


Timothy