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Foretranimal
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- TL;DR Summary
- Is it possible that Eienstien's equivalence principle does not apply to the perspective of someone falling through the event horizon of a black hole, because that perspective does not and cannot exist?
OK, so this has bugged me for a while about the equivalence principle and the black hole information paradox.
If black holes "evaporate" via Hawking radiation, then they cannot exist forever.
So, from my external perspective, watching the person fall in, they slow down, freeze, and redshift to "nothing," but never cross the event horizon.
Does the equivalence principle say my perspective is valid? If it does, is it possible that that person really never crossed the event horizon?
The thing I have always read is that when the in-faller crosses, they feel nothing special. But this paradox seems to assume the crossing happens. If the crossing never happens, is there an information paradox at all?
If it takes forever to cross the event horizon, and a black hole's existence is less than forever, would the black hole evaporate before that unfortunate person crosses the horizon?
It seems more like the event horizon has no "there" or "inside" the event horizon - the horizon is an asymptotic limit of what exists. There is no inside, like there is no "before" the Big Bang. If you remove the assumption, there was a crossing, is there still a paradox?
I have no expertise in this area, so there may well be something basic I am just missing.
If black holes "evaporate" via Hawking radiation, then they cannot exist forever.
So, from my external perspective, watching the person fall in, they slow down, freeze, and redshift to "nothing," but never cross the event horizon.
Does the equivalence principle say my perspective is valid? If it does, is it possible that that person really never crossed the event horizon?
The thing I have always read is that when the in-faller crosses, they feel nothing special. But this paradox seems to assume the crossing happens. If the crossing never happens, is there an information paradox at all?
If it takes forever to cross the event horizon, and a black hole's existence is less than forever, would the black hole evaporate before that unfortunate person crosses the horizon?
It seems more like the event horizon has no "there" or "inside" the event horizon - the horizon is an asymptotic limit of what exists. There is no inside, like there is no "before" the Big Bang. If you remove the assumption, there was a crossing, is there still a paradox?
I have no expertise in this area, so there may well be something basic I am just missing.
