Three-Minute Physics

Black holes have an event horizon called the Schwarzschild Radius.  It is the volume surrounding them where gravity overcomes the ability of light to escape.

Rsch = 2GM / c2

 Rsch = Schwarzchild radius

G  = Gravity Constant

M  = mass of black hole

c  = speed of light

 Artists depict them as a big black blob surrounded by an accretion disk, sort of like a black Saturn.

Pretty… but wrong.

 

The distortion near the event horizon would be so severe that the light frequency would be shifted well below infrared to become invisible to us.

Gravitational lensing from near light sources on the other side of the black hole would be so redirected as to become mere noise.  Distant sources would appear at first on one side, then appear on the other side as the black hole moves past.

But there would be nothing near the black hole visible to our eyes.  Sensors might be able to detect the severely distorted accretion disk, but there would be no black gap between the disk and the black hole.  Lorentz contraction would make time, at the innermost distances from the black hole, effectively stop.  Nothing would be able to cross into the black hole.  Sort of a time barrier at sub-atomic distances.  All the mass would simply accumulate invisibly in the accretion disk.
So, the black hole’s appearance would shrink to a point just like the mass of the black hole.  The only thing to be seen would be the distortion of the star-field beyond it through the accretion disk.

And that’s what so interesting, and precisely what astronomers are seeing.

So, my task is to propose a thought experiment:

Let’s just say that not only matter and energy would shrink to a point in a black hole, but so would the space-time lattes itself.  I’d rename this to be a Black Point.

Why not use a simple mathematical trick to remap the space around a black point and make the Schwarzschild Radius shrink down to become that point.

S’ = S * (S-Rsch)/(S+Rsch)

 S  = Original distance to the Black Point

Rsch = Computed Schwarzchild radius

S’  = Apparent distance to the Black Point

Everything outside the radius (in other words not at the point) would behave predictably.  Light could escape (greatly stretched in wavelength) but be detectable… if we had the technology to detect light with such a huge wavelength.  {Which apparently the EHT has not.)

Of course that brings up a conundrum: How do black holes form in the first place?

Well, they didn’t.  That is, they didn’t with any appreciable Schwarzschild Radius.

The center of mass of a star is only a theoretical point.  At sub-atomic distances, the center of mass would first exist at a point between particles, no matter how dense the mass becomes.  Once Schwarzschild Radius conditions exist, the particles would be stuck by Lorentz time contractions at the radius.  But, as mass accumulates, the radius would be expanding and contracting at the same time.  Nearby particles would accumulate rapidly and the density increase would push the not-so-close particles away from the point… usually not so fast that they could escape, though.

But some would, in the apparent explosion of an A2 Nova, until most of the star was in the accretion disk around the point.

The lowest pressure would be at the poles of the accretion disk, thus the jets emanating from black holes at galactic centers.

Any questions?

 

C.D. Huntemann

7/3/2016 3:11 PM