>they have to first move from where they are to the event horizon No. I mean, from their point of view it would seem they kind of have to do, but there are som

>they have to first move from where they are to the event horizon No. I mean, from their point of view it would seem they kind of have to do, but there are some serious open questions about what happens here exactly. Regardless, as an outside observer, you would never see them actually move behind the horizon, you would only see the black hole grow beyond the point where they used to be. For a detailed description of all this you can check out chapter 32 of MTW's Gravitation. >Since they are made up of quarks what makes sense instead is that they become quark soup on the way to the event horizon Again, this depends on the equation of state and the existance and location of transition points. We don't know any of those things - but we do know that any realistic model must include general relativity, because quantum effects alone are no longer sufficient to describe what happens here. At that level all bets are off. >The best we could do is check different theories for consistency That is one thing. But it is also kind of moot since this is where string theory has been stuck for half a century now.