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| SFReader Forums > SFReader > Ask The Expert > Black holes? | Forum Quick Jump
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|  edward-mckeown Neophyte

       Date Joined May 2004 Total Posts : 138 | Posted 6/3/2007 3:18 PM (GMT -4) |   | not sure if this is on topic. I want to do a short where the main characters are approaching an event horizon but I don't know enough physics to know if what I am thinking has any merit. If a vessel is going down the gradient, time slows down. Will the persons inside the vessel experience time as slowed down.
In short, two lovers are escapng capture as they plunge down into a black hole. Too outside view they are destroyed by tidal force of gravity in minutes. To them they fall for an eternity BUT do they experience that enternity or are their perceptions so slowed that they experience it as a few seconds.
Steven Hawking where are you?? | | Back to Top | | |
 |  MysticWino anarchist fringe monkey boddhisatva

       Date Joined May 2007 Total Posts : 1570 | Posted 6/3/2007 8:24 PM (GMT -4) |   | The way I understand it, they're dead long before that eternal moment. The Gravitational forces are simply unsurvivable.
Aside from that, it works how you want it to. To assume that they are in a ship possible of interstellar travel, though, is to assume that they have dealt with some of the physics dilemmas we have no answers for now. One possible solution - ever see Abyss? - is to have a bio-jelley atmosphere to create enough pressure to keep the ship from simply caving in like a beer can between your fingers. Flexible, but strong enough to resist destruction. What shape is the ship? Perfect sphere would do a lot to ease the G-force, but it'll warp like wax in a lava lamp at some point.
I would say that if they can remain alive - IF - they can have their eternal moment.
In a way, you could do the inversion thing to justify it. Basically, at some point, the theory du jour was that if you hit the singularity, you would simply turn inside-out and expand again. But if this were true, it might be more like a magnet than a funnel; that is, you simply go from a singularity of infinite gravity to one of infinite gravity, being pulled back into the black hole in a sort of fatal error infinite loop. If I were to write a story of this kind, I would go and read one of Brian Greene's books - The Elegant Universe. This guy actually makes advanced physics make sense.
Exile of my own dull vice. . . | | Back to Top | | |
        |  MysticWino anarchist fringe monkey boddhisatva

       Date Joined May 2007 Total Posts : 1570 | Posted 6/4/2007 12:46 PM (GMT -4) |   | |
Edward,
First, I believe that in an infinite universe all things are possible. Second, I find some of the information on the Black-Hole FAQ page to be less than satisfactory. Scientists should refrain from saying that something is impossible simply because they cannot figure a way to test it in nature or laboratory. To say that it is expected to be nonexistent in nature is great, but denying the possibility simply due to our ignorance and inability to imagine exactly how it would work is, in my opinion of course, scientific blashpemy. If the math figures, then perhaps we simply misunderstand the answers. These guys - quantum physicists - are still stumped on 'dark matter' as they call it. What if 'dark matter' turns out to be the 'white hole' and wormhole substance they claim does not exist? Also, extreme conditions tend to make our understanding of physics look rather pedestrian; all our science can't explain a whole lot of what's out there.
Now, what happens if you escape into a dual event hirozon formed by competing black holes of opposite charge and/or rotation? Might there be a seam of eternal stasis where the horizons meet? Perhaps some weird electro-magnetic cushion through which they might travel into either some unknowable place or simply their immortal moment of love?
I guess my point is this: starting from the hard science is great, but what about the speculation part? It's your story; if you believe it could happen and you write that faith into your story, your audience will believe you. Those unable to suspend their own disbelief with any given work are simply not your target readers. So be it. If you believe it in the telling, others will believe it in the hearing. They may scoff later after thinking it through, but as long as you tell the story well, they will be transported to where it could happen - where it did happen: your imagination.
Exile of my own dull vice. . . | | Back to Top | | |
       |  Frank Adept

       Date Joined Aug 2005 Total Posts : 629 | Posted 6/4/2007 5:27 PM (GMT -4) |   | | Someone else may have mentioned this (I'm not reading the entire thread) but Fred Pohl covered some of this territory in his Gateway series. | | Back to Top | | |
 |  MysticWino anarchist fringe monkey boddhisatva

       Date Joined May 2007 Total Posts : 1570 | Posted 6/4/2007 8:49 PM (GMT -4) |   | | Experiments prove that light is both a wave and a particle. This is what drove the creation of Heidleburg's theory of uncertaintly.
The observers' expectations as a causal effect is calle the Hawthorne effect, as that is the name of the guy who first studied it after realizing that physicists were getting proof of seemingly untenable theories from different experiments (such as light proven as wave as well as particle). Most of what science proves on the theoretical horizon is that we know too little about some things to even ask the intelligent, that is educated questions. We have a great many intelligent questions, such as the one posited causal to this thread.
The question is not whether it is so, but whether it could be so. We may start with hard scientific fact or theory, but when we follow it logically, can we make a case for the speculation in question? For the matter of black holes, white holes, dark matter, and many other phenomena or theoretical phenomena, we haven't enough evidence really to say what the hard science is - it's all speculation with mathematical evidence at this point. We can't rule dark matter out - and we can't rule out the possibility that it is somehow the result of particular expulsion from a white hole. How could we measure it? Our failure of imagination, logic, or science to prove any given speculation is no basis for judging it as impossible. How long ago was globe vs flat world impossible? How long ago was it impossible for man to fly; to reach the moon; to reach Mars; and ad infinitum?
Hard science is great. But on the level of quantum physics, there is more to prove that so-called impossibilities exist somewhere in the megaverse than there is to prove that anything is impossible. It may be WAY improbable, but improbable is not impossible.
Exile of my own dull vice. . . | | Back to Top | | |
  |  MysticWino anarchist fringe monkey boddhisatva

       Date Joined May 2007 Total Posts : 1570 | Posted 6/5/2007 8:47 AM (GMT -4) |   |
crystalwizard said...
Bitter Hermit said... Experiments prove that light is both a wave and a particle.
They prove nothing of the sort. Experiments prove that whatever causes light can produce the effect of both a particle and a wave. That's all that can be measured.
It was formerly held as proof of both. But science found it untennable, and so they backtracked. You're right.
Bitter Hermit said...
The question is not whether it is so, but whether it could be so.
The question is whether all the experts will stop looking at the individual pieces, put all the data together and take a look at the much bigger, more basic underlying reality. I don't expect that any time soon.
This is a good example of the challenge they face: it's hard to agree on solutions if you're asking different questions. And so much depends on your approach. I was asking the question in relation to writing fiction. Seems to me CW is point out a problem with micro-attention versus systems thinking - 5th Discipline stuff (which is a very good point to bring in). Exile of my own dull vice. . . | | Back to Top | | |
    |  edward-mckeown Neophyte

       Date Joined May 2004 Total Posts : 138 | Posted 6/5/2007 8:26 PM (GMT -4) |   | | | |
 |  WRJames Stablehand

       Date Joined Apr 2007 Total Posts : 49 | Posted 6/11/2007 1:52 AM (GMT -4) | |
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