If we managed to give negative electric charge to a black hole, would positive objects be attracted?

Question

This question is a different way of asking the "How can we feel gravity from a black hole if gravitons cannot escape?" question. Since general relativity doesn't need gravitons to explain gravity, I wanted to ask the question a different way.

Since we know photons cannot escape a black hole, and we also know photons are the force carrier particle for electro-magnetic force, would an oppositely charged body be able to feel the force of a charged black hole since photons cannot escape to deliver the force? Or perhaps even more interesting, would same charged objects not be drawn in if the charge were strong enough to counteract the gravity of the black hole?

Answer 1

Cool question!  If my instincts serve me, a negatively charged black hole would still exert an electromagnetic force, although not for the reasons you might expect.  According to the standard model, forces occur when force-carrying particles, like photons, are exchanged.  The "charge" on a particle simply refers to its ability to create and absorb virtual photons which carry momentum to other particles.  In the case of a black hole, no virtual photons could escape, but virtual photons from the outside particle could still be sucked past the event horizon to interact with the photons that aren't escaping.  Virtual particle interactions deal with the uncertainty principle, which has a sneaky tendency to get around the cosmic speed limit, so I think the outside particle would indeed feel the resulting force.  I'm not sure, though - this question is interesting enough to look into in a little more detail, if you have the time and interest.