At 01:29 AM 12/27/2012, David Roberson wrote:
You are asking very good questions. I have given this a little
thought over the years and there are certain things that seem likely
to happen. It has been proven that a gravity field causes time to
dilate. A very large field will cause it to dilate a lot. A black
hole has an extremely large gravitational field around it due to the
enormous mass.
We need to get, I suggest, unless someone comes along and rescues us,
much more specific. I'm afraid that we might actually have to ...
horrors! I hoped it would not come to this!
... do some math.
It's not enough to say that a gravity well causes time to dilate. *How much*?
This might explain why time for one on board a spaceship
approaching the event horizon slows down from an observer outside
of the field and eventually comes to a complete stop.
I'm not accepting the description without knowing where it came from.
And without knowing what, exactly, it means. You are getting clearer;
here you do specify the observer, but not how the observer makes the
observation, and that might be critical. Your sentence is a bit
contradictory, you speak first of "time for one on board," but then
refer to "from an observer." I think I know what you mean, but
becoming obsessively careful about each detail of statements is how
students approach topics like this, if they are to hope to actually
understand them.
We have trouble with understanding black holes because they are
outside our experience, and we have accepted ideas about them, and
our ideas about ideas, as being true. We really need to back up and
cleave, as closely as possible, to what we know. That would, first,
take us back to classical mechanics, but we can be explicit about that.
This is strange indeed. Time actually coming to a standstill is
difficult to put ones arms around.
Time doesn't actually come to a standstill, except for light itself.
I.e, from our point of view, photons don't age. Einstein is said to
have derived much of his theory from thinking about what the universe
(of matter) looks like to a photon... As I read this, *it all happens
at once.* But is that right?
The implication is that the guy on board that ship does not age at
all as far as we are concerned. A million years could go by for us
and he would not seem to change. This is a way to travel into our
future provided you are not annihilated by the black hole. If you
escape the hole, then you get a look at working ECATS! LOL! I sure
hope that they are available for sell before a million years goes by.
I have no problem understanding, it seems, time dilation from
velocity. There is a simple derivation of it from considering an
photon oscillator clock. It falls out from the constancy of the speed
of light (and all interactions are governed by photons or
electromagnetic phenomena that travel at the speed of light).
But gravity is general relativity, and I just don't get it.
As I was speculating before, I think that the amount of red shift
that occurs is directly in proportion to the amount of time dilation
for the fellow.
Maybe. Math. I'm not sure how to define the "amount of red shift."
The wavelength goes to infinity....
Remember his heart beats at a rate that is a fraction of the cycles
of the time measuring laser and it seems logical that we observe
both changing by the same percentage.
Don't even think about biology. All physical phenomena are mediated
by light speed. Now, that apparently appplies to gravity as well....
The implication is that every method of time keeping is similarly
effected by the gravity field present near the black hole
boundary. We need to explore this concept and determine whether or
not it makes sense.
There is no problem with "every method of time keeping." We can
assume a clock. We actually don't need to specify some particular
clock, but it can make the understanding simple if we do, and that's
how the equations are developed.
I understand that we should expect that the space guy is
accelerating toward the black hole and from his perspective it must
be true since he is within a gravitational field.
He does not experience the gravitational field, per se, setting aside
tidal forces. If his spaceship is closed, he can't tell the
difference between approaching a black hole, and floating in space.
*We*, outside the ship, see him accelerating, or do we? That is one
of the questions here, becuase it's being said that, instead, we see
him slow down, and the information coming to use from him, i.e,
photons, increasingly red shift and disappear. It's said that the
disappearance takes a very long time. Does it?
I'm not trusting any of the popular explanations. That does not mean
that they are wrong. What it means to me is that I don't understand them.
The only way out of this dilemma is if he indeed does continue
forward until he becomes dissociated into atoms or whatever near the
actual surface of the black hole. This probably happens. But, from
our far off perspective it is in an infinite number of years into the future.
That's what you say. I'm not convinced, and I doubt that you
understand it, either. But what do we know?
That is another reason that time dilation must occur. We do not
live long enough to see him hit the hole dead on. It never happens
during the age of the universe unless some other mechanism is at
work that we are unaware of.
Again, you say that. Look, nothing inside the event horizon can be
seen. We readily accept this, though you are trying to find a way
around it. Setting that aside, of course we don't ever see him "hit
the hole." But what *do* we see, as he approaches the event horizon?
To answer that, we probably need to define some meaning for "see."
See, in the sciences, we often get stuck when we assume we understand
words and things, when we don't.
Physicists in 1989-1990 got seriously stuck on "cold fusion" because
they believed they understood "fusion." They had examples of things
called "fusion," and this wasn't one of them, or was it, and everyone
was confused -- including Pons and Fleischmann. There *really was* a
semantic problem. The word "fusion" confused everone, hardly without
exception. What was important was to back up.
What was actually known?
Well, Pons and Fleischmann were reporting anomalous heat from PdD,
and claiming that the energy released was greater than what they, as
expert electrochemists, could explain by chemistry.
Had this been the pure focus -- what is this heat? Is it real or is
it artifact? -- we'd be way ahead today.
Instead, the DoE and a pile of physicists and others fell all over
themselves looking for "fusion evidence." I.e., radiation or
radioactive products. Helium had been reported by Pons and
Fleischmann, but that was received with incredulity. After all,
"fusion" only produces helium with a gamma ray, and people noticed
that Pons and Fleischmann and their grad students were not dead.
Indeed, the expected neutrons were absent as well, except for pesky
low level reports that mostly turned out to be artifact.
None of this made sense, with our spectacular hindsight. If "fusion"
is impossible, as most thought, why even look for fusion evidence
until you know there is a reason to do so? I.e., until the heat is
solidly confirmed and verified. (Looking for accessory conditions is
very reasonable. What was very *unreasonable* was looking only for
radiation, and then concluding from the lack of it that the heat must
be artifact.)
We still see all of this going on today. There is a report of some
amazing new Free Energy device. And then some of us fall all over
ourselves trying to "explain" it. How about just finding out what is
*actually there* first? Instead of diving into New Physics, Zero
Point Energy, and all the rest, with practically no experimental evidence?
This is, I'm suggesting, real skepticism. If someone I know reports a
"ghost," I want to know what they *actually experienced*. Yeah, they
call it a "ghost." What's that? Immediately, if I focus on the name
it's called, I think classify it in with many other reports and
phenomena, when this one may have *nothing* to do with the others.
What happened? -- I want to know.
My daughter comes to me and says "Mom is being mean to me." My
question is never "how"? It is always, "What happened?" And when I
can steer her -- and listen to her -- as to what actually happened --
she gets clear, she knows what to do, she gains understanding, and
she's more prepared for life.
"Mean" is a theory of mind. There is no cheese down that hole, not at
the first levels of understanding, anyway.
