• Question: What happens at the event horizon of a black hole?

    Asked by ratherfastblackman to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 2 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      In theory, I think that because of the super high gravity a black hole has due to it’s monumental mass, as you approach the event horizon matter gets stretch and compressed in various dimensions until its long and and skinny like shoelace…anything that then makes it to the event horizon would be compressed and crushed into the singularity at it’s core…

      Time and space start getting a bit too weird for me around black holes…I’m sure a physicist could give a better explanation of this though!!

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      AT the event horizon in a black hole the bending of space is strong enough to stop light escaping, this is called the Swartzchild radius (I think) any thing even a photon found here can not escape the black hole.
      It will get compressed in to a single block of matter, which is incurable dense.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      This is a hard one!!! The event horizon is the point of no return of a black hole, where the speed required for an object to escape the black hole becomes larger than the speed of light!!! That means that beyond the event horizon, no light can escape and thus you see the black hole as black. I think that the distortion that happens at the event horizon can even be used by scientists to tell that a black hole is there…. because how do you know something exists if you can’t see it?!!! http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon#section_1

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