Re: SCI: The light barrier

Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Sun, 07 Dec 1997 00:04:27 -0500


CurtAdams wrote:
>
> In a message dated 12/5/97 9:07:18 PM, retroman@together.net wrote:
>
> >The event horizon is described as the
> >altitude above the black hole at which the most energetic visible light
> >is bent so much that it is trapped in orbit around the black hole.
>
> Oddly, no, light orbiting a black hole is some distance beyond the
> event horison. Scientific American had an interesting article on this
> and some other peculiar near-hole physics a year or two back. At the
> event horizon, light ends up in the hole no matter what direction it's
> going.

Really, its rather obvious that light, and other EM radiation, at energy
levels too low to at least maintain orbit would fall in, so, the event
horizon is actually relative to the observers particular visible
spectrum. One could say the event horizon is a whole region of orbits.
High energy EM radiation would obviously have a much lower event horizon
than low energy radiation. Since EM radiation has no upper bounds in
terms of frequency, this means that for at least SOME radiation, the
event horizon only exists at the "surface" of the blackhole, i.e. the
singularity. At this point we then are dealing with infinity and near
infinity mathematics. Of course, this is also relative to the black
hole's mass. Large mass black holes will have a much higher terminal
frequency than small black holes.

-- 
TANSTAAFL!!!
			Michael Lorrey
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