Thread: What a black hole really is...(no more Mr Event Horizon)

If one were to park one's space ship a few thousand miles from a large black hole, what exactly would one see?

The standard answer would be a large black sphere, supposedly made up of the event horizon(leaving aside the stuff about matter forever falling towards the event horizon).

But if one were to imagine a photon leaving from just above the supposed event horizon, if would have a curved path as seen in the diagram below.



So for a person in that space ship, they would see that photon as having come along that dotted line(the tangent to the photon's real path).

So that the black hole should really appear much bigger.



Well, I would say that this is all wrong and that what one would see WOULD be the standard sized Schwarzschild radius black hole, and that it is ALREADY magnified..

What I think it is is a magnified, highly time dilated, collapsing grain of dust, the mass of several Suns(or whatever the mass).. See this old diagram I did a while ago.



I hoped that shows up.

As you should be able to see, B and C would appear on the dotted line, and as the standard theory goes, would appear to be forever falling towards the apparent event horizon.

Also, if you imagine the light leaving that grain of dust; as it gets further away, the grain of dust(black hole thing) would appear bigger, and as appearances are not just for show, they actually dictate how the universe works(information traveling along light paths), then that ball of dust being bigger would be less powerful(I think) gravitationally; and so the further that photon got from the ball of dust, the bigger it would appear(less singularity like), and the easier it would become to escape.


I think the fallacy of mainstream black hole stuff is to assume that there is already a singularity, or assume that there is definitely an event horizon.

Anyway, I made a page about it a while ago which might explain, more what I mean; well a bit more.

Home (Gravitational Magnification and Black Holes )

here is a site where you can play around with the self-lensing of a neutron star

Jeremy Heyl - Neutron Star Self Lensing Applet

To an outside observer, nothing ever crosses an event horizon. What he would see is a mass that is contracting and darkening, due to GR effects. This is a kind of "cosmic censorship principle" writ large.

I thought photons had to hit the light-sensitive part of your eye in order to see anything... so wouldn't you see nothing?

Originally Posted by Chris Kirlin

I thought photons had to hit the light-sensitive part of your eye in order to see anything... so wouldn't you see nothing?

Yes, exactly. Some light/energy is escaping; otherwise, you wouldn't be able to see it. One way black-holes are detected is by seeing the light from other stars being bent around a black-hole's gravity well; much in the same way a star or planet appears to be beside the sun when it is actually behind it. The gravity is so intense that it bends the photons around the curvature of the celestial phenomenon's gravity well. However, some of the photons are lost due to the fact that not all light travels at the same rate. This is how you get different colors of light. The color of light is determined by it's frequency; blue is one of the lowest frequencies of light and red is one of the highest (in the visible light spectrum).

Originally Posted by Agent_Zero

However, some of the photons are lost due to the fact that not all light travels at the same rate.

Well, they have different frequencies.

Originally Posted by Agent_Zero

This is how you get different colors of light. The color of light is determined by it's frequency; blue is one of the lowest frequencies of light and red is one of the highest (in the visible light spectrum).

I think what you probably meant was that blue has one of the shortest wavelengths, and red has one of the longest. For frequency, blue is high, and red is low.