On Fri, 20 Jun 2014 14:12:14 -0700, etpm wrote:

On Fri, 20 Jun 2014 15:33:43 -0500, Tim Wescott
wrote:

On Fri, 20 Jun 2014 08:35:30 -0700, etpm wrote:

Not THAT kind of black hole. Sheesh! So I have been reading off and on
about black holes for years. One of the theories about objects falling
into black holes says that an observer outside a black hole watching
an object fall into a black hole will see the object make it to the
event horizon and just hover there. I have not yet found an
explanation for this that I understand. Can anyone point me to a book
that explains this?

snip

Stephan Hawking, "A Brief History of Time". There's a sequel, which I
haven't read, but I do like the guy's writing.
I've read it. It does not explain the "hovering" phenomena very well.
Eric

Maybe we all need to learn special relativity and work through it
ourselves.

I do know that the biggest challenge presented by black holes is that,
basically, the math breaks down. Relativity is a theory that's tacked
onto classical mechanics, so it works just peachy as long as quantum
effects don't come into play. Quantum mechanics is formulated assuming a
flat space-time, so it works just peachy as long as relativistic effects
don't come into play.

So it's not surprising that the explanations should be a bit shaky and
hard to wrap your head around -- theoretical physicists can't agree on
the details, so why should we be able to understand?

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com