SP:' You wouldn't necessarily be squashed if you were inside the event horizon of a black hole provided that it was massive enough. Being inside the event horizon is not the same as being inside the singularity.'
MP: Two thoughts come to my suspicious mind. 1/ [Not far from the post-Freudian speculation :-] ... Attendance within the event horizon of a common or garden galactic variety black hole would seem to incorporate a one-way ticket *to* the singularity, would it not? 2/ I once heard someone on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National Science Show [on every Saturday after the midday news] describing our universe in these terms. His point was that whatever we might think about what was 'beyond' the bounds of 'our' universe, nothing from here can escape to 'there'. As I understand it this is in line with Einstein's concept of the universe being closed in upon itself, the key cause of which is gravity, the curvature of space-time. MP: Going off at a tangent, I have a question which is quite possibly a dumb question that just needs to be asked because it CAN be asked. Preamble: The expansion of the universe, characterised by the Hubble Constant I believe, is usually explained non-mathematically by analogy with the stretching of the surface of a balloon as the balloon is inflated. The balloon surface is stretched uniformly, pretty much, by its having everywhere the same tensile strength and elasticity and by the force which causes the deformation being applied equally all over because it is the averaged effect of all the gas particles within the contained volume. That much makes sense, and the overall effect is to cause point locations on the surface of the balloon to recede from one another at a rate which is proportional at any given moment to the distance between the points, measured along the surface. Question: Would it be mathematically equivalent, or significantly different, to consider the measured change in size and in distances as a uniform *contraction* of the metric, ie the measuring system, rather than an expansion of the location, so to speak. In particular, why is it not feasible to consider the Big Bang and subsequent Inflationary epoch as being in effect a collapse? Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 3/8/07, *Mark Peaty* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > NB: I hope that my imaginary destination in your speculation of > possible > post mortem exploits for my erstwhile sceptical soul is not a > post-Freudian slip. I know that many of my contributions to this and > other lists have lacked the erudite succinctness of those with greater > talents; failure of concentration [AKA 'ADD'] has been a > characteristic > of life for me, but I think that 'awaking' to the innards of a black > whole would do more than wonderfully concentrate the mind: > concentration > itself would become the major problem even for a ghost! =-O > > > You wouldn't necessarily be squashed if you were inside the event > horizon of a black hole provided that it was massive enough. Being > inside the event horizon is not the same as being inside the singularity. > > Stathis Papaioannou > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
