Someone that I don't believe exists said:
> So if the mass has collapsed to the proverbial point, and the
> R(g) has not changed.. what is the state of things in the space
> between the centre point and the radius? Or is that a meaningless
> question, or at least one to which there is no answer in English?
You're looking at this the wrong way. Remember that spacetime is curved
by the presence of mass, but that if you look at a sufficiently small
region then the effect of the curvature shrinks until it looks flat.
Any small region within the black hole will look just like empty space.
However, the effect of the curvature is so extreme that within the
horizon the direction that you might naively think of as "inward" is
really towards the future: the singularity isn't at the "centre" of the
black hole, but rather in the future of all observers who fall through
the horizon. People who fall through the horizon can no more dodge the
singularity than we can sidestep the future. Furthermore, time dilation
means that the more a spaceship fires its rockets, the less proper time
will elapse before it reaches the singularity.
Searching for "Kruskal coordinates" and "Schwarzschild solution" on the
Web will probably find you a clearer explanation.
Rich
GSV A Shortfall Of Lucidity
