The discussion centers on the nature of black holes, specifically the behavior of objects approaching a black hole's singularity. Participants assert that as objects accelerate towards a black hole, they experience time dilation, causing them to appear to slow down relative to an outside observer. This leads to the conclusion that objects do not actually reach the center of a black hole but instead form a massive shell around it due to relativistic effects. The conversation also touches on the implications of mass increase and the composition of matter falling into black holes, with hydrogen being noted as the most common element in space.
PREREQUISITESAstronomy enthusiasts, physicists, students of general relativity, and anyone interested in the complexities of black hole dynamics and relativistic physics.
em370 said:Are singularities actually finitely dense? The basis of the singularity is that gravity is so strong that the object contracts without stopping and will never slow down as their is nothing to stop it( I could be wrong in this as shown by my previous immense lack of understanding). Will it really become infinitely dense or do we just say that because it will continue getting denser and denser to the point where it would no longer make any sense or even matter to measure the density? I read something on the internet about the Schwarzschild radius but I think it was talking about the size of the event horizon instead of the actual singularity.
Vorde said:The easy way out is to say that a singularity has a finite mass and an infinite density.
However we don't have a good mathematical description of a singularity, so we don't really know.