Does matter that goes into a black hole just stay there?

Question

I do not believe this. I believe it is expelled into a reverse world or somewhere. Do I need prozac or has anyone else come to this common sense conclusion?

Answer 1

Hello. You understand black holes incorrectly. They aren't actually "holes," they are just objects so massive that even light is incapable of escaping them -- hence making them "black."

The short answer is "Yes, the matter just stays there."

The long answer is more complicated. Due to quantum fluctuations that would take a long time to explain, black holes do re-emit absorbed matter as "hot" photons called Hawking radiation, and as they radiate they shrink a little bit at a time. (This is because black holes have finite entropy, which is measurable by the surface area of the event horizon in Planck lengths divided by four, or S = A / 4... this concept is called Bekenstein's Bound if you want to wiki it or something).

When black holes get small enough, gravity ceases to be the dominant force. This is why we aren't worried at all about the Large Hadron Collider possibly making black holes -- even if we do make some, they will be harmless and quickly dissipate. In fact, we think we've already made a quantum black hole at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in the US.

In any case, since black holes do eventually dissipate thanks to Bekenstein's Bound and Hawking radiation, the matter does eventually exit a black hole and thus doesn't "stay there forever." This can technically be thought of as it being "expelled ... somewhere."

In fact, Hawking and Bekenstein were able to work out basic concepts on the entropy of black holes, culminating in the discovery that they do radiate, by studying theoretical solutions to Einstein's equations called "white holes." A white hole is supposed to be a black hole in reverse time, which means it radiates matter rather than "sucking it in." People thought for a little while that maybe black holes could form wormholes that led to white holes on the other end.

However, Hawking showed that this is not the case. "White holes" are really just a mathematical duality of black holes. That is to say, white holes ARE black holes -- even though the math is expressed differently, it's describing the same object, and the concept of a hole that only radiates matter is mistaken.

So, the long answer is no, black holes don't lead anywhere -- at least not typically. It could be possible that under certain extreme conditions which might be possible to an advanced civilization but isn't very likely to happen in nature (that is, black holes without charge and with a strong enough angular momentum to distort their shapes into a torus) could possibly do "something" to spacetime, such as maybe a wormhole. However that's entirely the realm of science fiction and without a theory of quantum gravity we don't even know what really goes on in that scenario, it's likely that it wouldn't be stable or even do anything at all.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

In a way the matter that drops into a black hole ceases to be matter in the conventional sense. A black hole is made of something called a singularity. This is what's left over when a really massive star collapses. A singularity has all the mass of the original star but it now occupies no space at all and still manages to have a nearly infnite density. Nearby matter that falls into this thing pretty much ceases to exist although the mass of the singularity will grow.

Answer 3

Something that might help you is to realize that a black hole isn't an actual "hole".  It's simply a stellar remnannt of very dense matter with very high gravity.  Basically, it's a massive ball (and mass refers to density, not size).

Answer 4

Believe is the wrong word to use in science.  Either you know or you don't know.  Don't cover up ignorance with a waffle word like believe.

But we know that matter stays in a black hole because its mass increases with the mass of the matter it consumes.

If your hypothesis were correct its mass would not continue to increase.  Therefore a black hole is NOT a way to another universe or "reverse world".

Answer 5

When you fall to Earth out of an airplane, do you hit the ground or do you warp to another universe?  There's the answer to your question.

Answer 6

Yes, it just stays there.  It's not a portal, it's just a gravity well.  The only difference between it and the gravity well created by a planet is it has more mass packed into a smaller area.

Answer 7

no one actually knows the answer of this question. That is why black holes are presently the greatest mystery of physic

Answer 8

Prozac will not help, you need to study physics.