High School What Would You See Inside a Black Hole? | General Relativity

  • Thread starter Thread starter Randy Subers
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Black hole Hole
Click For Summary
Crossing the event horizon of a large black hole, an astronaut would likely observe a severely distorted star field due to the intense gravitational effects of the black hole. The view would not be pure black, as light from stars outside the event horizon would still be visible but warped. Inside the spacecraft, the environment would appear normal initially, without immediate spaghettification effects. The discussion emphasizes the importance of General and Special Relativity in understanding these phenomena, while suggesting that further exploration of Andrew Hamilton's videos can provide deeper insights into the experience of falling into a black hole. Overall, the visual experience right after crossing the event horizon is complex and influenced by gravitational lensing.
Randy Subers
Messages
14
Reaction score
1
TL;DR
What does it look like looking out from inside a black hole?
For this assume General and Special Relativity and not some of the quantum enhancements that have been proposed for them. If I were an astronaut who just crossed the event horizon on a galaxy center type black hole (big enough so I would not be immediately spaghettified) and avoided the accretion disk and any jets on the way in and looked outward (away from the singularity) just after I crossed the event horizon, what would I see?
A more or less normal star field?
A severely distorted star field?
Pure black? or
Something really strange?

Also if I then looked around my spacecraft would it look normal (pre-spagettification)?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
I suggest a forum search. Topics has been brought up many times.
 
  • Like
Likes Umang Soni
Randy Subers said:
just after I crossed the event horizon, what would I see?

Andrew Hamilton has created a great series of videos on this (not just the specific point right after the astronaut crosses the horizon, but the whole infall process, from far above the horizon all the way through down to the singularity):

https://jila.colorado.edu/hamilton/black-holes/journey-schwarzschild-black-hole
 
  • Like
Likes berkeman
In this video I can see a person walking around lines of curvature on a sphere with an arrow strapped to his waist. His task is to keep the arrow pointed in the same direction How does he do this ? Does he use a reference point like the stars? (that only move very slowly) If that is how he keeps the arrow pointing in the same direction, is that equivalent to saying that he orients the arrow wrt the 3d space that the sphere is embedded in? So ,although one refers to intrinsic curvature...

Similar threads

  • · Replies 22 ·
Replies
22
Views
1K
  • · Replies 40 ·
2
Replies
40
Views
3K
  • · Replies 73 ·
3
Replies
73
Views
2K
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
1K
  • · Replies 44 ·
2
Replies
44
Views
4K
  • · Replies 57 ·
2
Replies
57
Views
4K
  • · Replies 67 ·
3
Replies
67
Views
5K
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
2K
  • · Replies 8 ·
Replies
8
Views
1K
  • · Replies 11 ·
Replies
11
Views
2K