PDA

View Full Version : Wikipedia's article on black holes


kernelpenguin
Sep23-04, 04:47 PM
Objects in a gravitational field experience a slowing down of time, called time dilation. This phenomenon has been verified experimentally in the Scout rocket experiment of 1976 [2] (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/gratim.html). Near a black hole, the time dilation increases to a large degree. From the point of view of an external observer, it appears to take an infinite amount of time for an object to approach the event horizon, at which point it is infinitely red-shifted.

That's what Wikipedia said.

If, for an outside observer, it takes an infinite amount of time for matter to enter a black hole, does this mean that from the point of view of an outside observer, after a black hole has formed, no new matter will enter it?

selfAdjoint
Sep23-04, 07:48 PM
Sure looks that way, doesn't it. But they can see a traffic jam right above the event horizon. They can distinguish earlier fallers from later ones and so on. BTW, these outside observers are WAY outside, out where the spacetime bending by the black hole is negligible.