How do black holes “consume” light?

1.30K views

How do black holes “consume” light?

In: 378

36 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

TLDR: while light isn’t affected by gravity, it is still affected by the warping of space time which is an affect of mass.

Have you ever seen one of those [spiral wishing wells for charity?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TzSu14mOvqk)

That’s basically what gravity looks like when you map it onto spacetime. So light goes super fast and normally can just roll up the other side of the wishing well, but if the curve is steep enough on the wishing well due to the extreme gravity of a black hole and the light hits it at too high of an angle it’ll get trapped and basically spin in a circle forever and never leave.

It’s not that it’s affected by gravity, it’s just that spacetime is so warped around large masses that the light spins forever until it enters the singularity. Also remember that warped spacetime due to gravity is what causes time. The more affected warped spacetime is the slower time goes. By entering a black hole the light is entering an area where from our perspective they’re moving infinitely slow. This effect is even noticeable for our satellites because they experience time faster than we do.

Now what happens when the light enters the singularity is a big question because all our math can’t figure out what happens inside a black hole. I’m a fan of fuzzball theory, because it’s a fun name, where everything is broken down into its strings (see string theory) and chained together into a giant ball of fuzz.

You are viewing 1 out of 36 answers, click here to view all answers.