• Question: What is on the other isde of a black hole?

    Asked by williamtierney to Ben, Clare, Ezzy, Mario, Sam on 12 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Mario Campanelli

      Mario Campanelli answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      other “isde”? well, everything’s reversed, as you probably know already!
      Do you mean what is inside a BH? or really on the side we do not see? well, other stars, whose light is absorbed as on this side, and this is why we see it as “black”

    • Photo: Ben Smart

      Ben Smart answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      We don’t really know! Gravity is best explained by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, and really small stuff is best explained by quantum physics, but we don’t have a good way of combining the two. At the centre of a black hole gravity is really strong (so you need Einstein’s theory of General Relativity) but it’s also really really small (so you need quantum physics), but since we don’t know how to combine the two we don’t know how to describe what the inside of a black hole would be like. Whatever is at the centre of a black hole, or on the other side of a black hole if it leads somewhere, you’d never survive a journey through it. You’d be ripped apart by the extreme forces of gravity as you approached the black hole. 🙁

    • Photo: Elizabeth Pearson

      Elizabeth Pearson answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      It’s not so much what’s on the other side of a black hole, but what happens inside one. It’s such an intense environment that physics ‘goes a bit mental’ and we’re not really sure how it would all work. My teacher used to say inside a black hole you’d be able to measure time with a ruler and distance with a clock. So yeah, a bit mental.

    • Photo: Clare Burrage

      Clare Burrage answered on 17 Mar 2012:

      A black hole is lots of stuff packed together into a very small space, so that it’s gravitational attraction is so strong that not even light can escape. There is a line around the black hole which once you cross you will never be able to get back out again, but there are no markers of this line and you might not even know you were crossing it!
      We don’t really know what happens deep inside a black hole, our theories are not good enough yet to explain what goes on here, but we’re trying!

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