If time stops at the event horizon of a black hole, how does anything ever fall into it?

Question

If time stops at the event horizon of a black hole, how does anything ever fall into it?

Answer 1

Time doesn't actually stop, as such.

If I watched you falling into a black hole I would be able to observe that, relative to mine, your time was slowing down. As you reached the event horizon - the point of no return, even for light - I would see your image frozen.

This does not mean that you are actually still there, frozen in time. You would have fallen into the black hole (being stretched like a piece of spaghetti as your feet would become massively heavier than your head) and your mass would contribute to the mass of the singularity.

But the image of you would remain forever as the light (which is how we see anything) has been unable to escape.

Therefore - all things being relative, of  course - my perception of what's happened to you and your perception are totally different.

Answer 2

I dont know. I tried reading Stephen Hawkings, "A brief history of time" many moons ago but was totally confused, but i`ve found out he`s re-written it for people the likes of me,with limited grey matter!

Answer 3

Time doesn't stop, but the flow is altered.

Because of the distorting effects of gravity, in a black hole, space becomes time and time becomes space. If something falls in, it is separated from the centre by a finite time, not a finite distance.

Answer 4

i think wat the other guy is tryin to say is time aint wat we think it is. its more complicated than wat we imagine and i think its related wif the change in gravity occuring due to a black hole that makes us think that time stopped

Answer 5

It would appear for an outside observer that your spaceship froze in time, but that's only from their perspective. You would experience time normally.

Time is not absolute, it's a relative thing, depending on what frame of reference you're measuring it from. You can't say "time stops" without mentioning who's perspective does it stop from.

Answer 6

well, from the point of view of the person falling in time doesnt stop. he falls into the black hole, towards the singularity.

but to an outside observer time does stop at the event horizon. so something falling in is forever stuck right at the event horizon from the point of view of that observer. that hardly matters, since he still cant observer it anyways and it still adds to the mass of the black hole and therefore extends the event horizon, so its not right at it, its slightly inside.