Saturday, November 01, 2008

things you don’t know about black holes

Near a black hole, things get weird

The spin of the black hole throws a monkey in the wrench of the event horizon. Black holes distort the fabric of space itself, and if they spin that distortion itself gets distorted. Space can get wrapped around a black hole — kind of like the fabric of a sheet getting caught up in a rotating drill bit.

This creates a region of space outside the event horizon called the ergosphere. It’s an oblate spheroid, a flattened ball shape, and if you’re outside the event horizon but inside the ergosphere, you’ll find you can’t sit still. Literally. Space is being dragged past you, and carries you along with it. You can easily move in the direction of the rotation of the black hole, but if you try to hover, you can’t. In fact, inside the ergosphere space is moving faster than light! Matter cannot move that fast, but it turns out, according to Einstein, space itself can. So if you want to hover over a black hole, you’d have to move faster than light in the direction opposite the spin. You can’t do that, so you have to move with the spin, fly away, or fall in. Those are your choices.

I suggest flying away. Fast. Because…

You fall in. But even if you keep your distance you’re still in trouble…

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Since coming back from Manila, i'm still in a wormhole. There had been a lot of changes in me and by me. Sometimes, I miss my past life.

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