3 ms·
Could you perhaps quote exactly what statement I made which is malformed? In any case the picture of time and space switching places inside a black hole is at
by eigenket 3y ago
Could you perhaps quote exactly what statement I made which is malformed?
In any case the picture of time and space switching places inside a black hole is at best a rather deceptive simplification. The most important thing about the event horizon is that locally (i.e. to one falling in to it) nothing at all interesting happens at the event horizon.
Edit: The "swapping" you are referring to is an artifact of coordinate systems, not of space-time. Thinking something wild happens to space-time as you pass through the event horizon is the same as thinking that something wild happens to the Earth's geometry as you reach the north pole. Sure at the north pole there is no longer any meaningful direction other than "south" but thats an artefact of the coordinate system you're using, the pole is a normal point just like any other.
- gosub100 3y agoTo any single observer that crosses, I agree with your statement, but it changes the moment you have two observers. I also agree that at the North Pole, "all directions are south", but the difference is you are free to move back and forth. If you picture us in an X-Y plane (which somehow represents all 3 spatial coords), and "up" is the time dimension, then a black hole would be the X-Y plane deformed into a 90-deg "pipe" facing straight down. Once you are in the pipe, your "X-Y" is our "up-down", this is probably the "artifact" you are referring to.
- eigenket 3y ago> If you picture us in an X-Y plane (which somehow represents all 3 spatial coords), and "up" is the time dimension, then a black hole would be the X-Y plane deformed into a 90-deg "pipe" facing straight down. This is not correct, there is no 90 degree bend. Space-time is locally Minkowskian ("flat") at the event horizon. It looks like a sharp 90 degrees turn in some coordinate system, just as when you walk in a "straight line" (a great circle if you prefer) over the north pole you go discontinuously from "walking north" to "walking south" even though your real motion is continuous.