Question #f2bb4
1 Answer
Spaghettification on the way in, no one knows afterwards.
Explanation:
Spaghettification is caused by the tidal forces of the black hole. Basically, the gradient of the field is so steep, that the gravity on your feet (assuming you go in feet first) is significantly stronger than that on your head. So you're stretched vertically, and compressed horizontally much like the water on earth is due to the tidal effects of the moon.
This assumes you aren't demolished by the accretion disk, which is everything orbiting the black hole outside the event horizon. These objects can move at incredible speeds, so chances are the newly formed noodle that was you is going to be torn apart, and left to orbit the black hole in fragments.
The event horizon is basically the point at which light can no longer escape the gravitational pull of the black hole. The has to do with the mass and density of the black hole, and is position is at the edge of the Schwarzschild radius.
The Schwarzschild solution to the Einstein Field Equations is actually what led to the postulation of the existence of black holes to begin with. This guy Schwarzchild used the EFE to show that if a bunch of mass was crammed into a small enough sphere, there's a critical point at which the escape velocity from the surface of the sphere is greater than or equal to the speed of light.
So, we come to the conclusion that approaching a black hole will stretch you out and rip you apart, but once you cross the event horizon... no one knows.
There's no way we can perform any experiment to retrieve any data from beyond this point. If nothing moves faster than light, then information can only travel that fast at a maximum. So along with the light, information is also lost to the black hole.
Check out the lectures Leonard Susskind has on the subject. Or just watch all of them. They're great, and the guy invented string theory, so it's safe to say he knows more than I do.
