[Tycho?]

WHOOSH. That was the sound of that post going over my head.

http://www.wikipedia.com type in whatever you want, read the articles, follow links, you'll learn a lot. And be modest. Saying you are profoundly intelligent does little other than to make you sound like an arrogant jerk. You may indeed be quite intelligent, and probably are if you are asking these kind of questions at that age (I know I was). But be modest and you'll get much better reactions from people.

They do not have a charge.

I love incoherent posts about rediculous things, it goes so well in science forums.

Meh. This is basically in the same catagory as string theory, loads of math and equations, no observational evidence. I'll withhold my opinions until we get some evidence one way or the other if it actually works.

Yeah they're the same thing.

Thats a neat simulation. And I guess I must concede the point. I dont have any argument as to how gravitational information would be kept from escaping the event horizon, all I had was a feeling I guess that it seemed to violated that information dealy. Thanks Mart and Bobby for giving me some details on it.

This link describes my argument, ie that once an object has entered the event horizon it is no longer observable [detectable] to any outside observers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_hair_theorem The only proposed problems with the theorem are quantum mechanical/thermodynamic in nature, not gravitational.

Yes, but I dont think its the right answer personally. I dont see the distinction is observing something visually and observing something gravitationally. When we see something all we are seeing are photons emitted from it. When we detect something gravitationally, we detect how much it pulls on us or other objects. Different kinds of information about the object can be derived from both, I dont see why one is observing it while another is not. I can accept that this does not apply to gravity. However, I'd definately want a more concrete answer than "gravity can escape, or gravity can leak out of a black hole", which are vast oversimplifications of what is actually going on. Thanks for the replys, I'll try and get one of the experts to answer this for me.

http://www.wikipedia.com

Uh, no. Since by deducing its existance I AM observing it, just as we can observe planets by the wobble in their host stars, or observe dark matter through its gravitational influences. There are tons of things that we can only observe indirectly, but as long as we can get information about the object, then we are indeed observing it. But one of the cardinial rules of black holes is that no matter what what goes on, inside the event horizon is unknown to the rest of the universe. Unless this does not apply to gravity for some reason.

Ok, but that still doesn't answer my question. I'll boil it down to its main element. All mass exerts gravitational attraction over other mass. Have an example mass pass through the event horizon of a black hole, but not yet reach the singularity. It would seem to me an observer would be able to tell (if only maybe for a fraction of a second) that there is a second mass present in the event horizon, as it could be detected by its gravitational influence, however small. But this doesn't jive with what I know about black holes. Namely it would allow one to get information about what is going on inside the event horizon (ie that there is a mass present) out of the event horizon, which should be impossible. So, how does this work? Or does this not violate any theories at all?

Things with more strength would be required for what he's talking about. Larry Nivens Ringworld is a structure that loops around a star and has a radius of 1 AU, it rotates to give artificial gravity to the surface. Someone calculated how strong the material would need to be, and it is indeed on the same order of magnitude of the strong nuclear force. I dont think "nanotechnology" as it is currently understood would be sufficient for something like that. That would require manipulation on not just an atomic scale, but the sub-atomic scale of protons and neutrons. I dont think anybody would even know how to approach such a problem.

I dont think this is complete. When compared with other animals on the savanah, the only others with little hair are the very large ones, elephants, hippos, rhinos. Yet there are smaller creatures, such as lions, zebra and buffalo which still have fur. They are larger creatures than humans, and so should have more of a problem with radiating out that excess heat. Buffalo and other herd animals in particular will often walk for days or weeks at a time between feeding grounds, so its not as though humans would be more physically active than these animals. I'm tempted by Martins brain heat idea, but losing almost all of our hair just to compensate for our increase in brain size seems a bit extreme. A link would be helpful.

This is why I bumped.

I'm not sure if I'd call this a new form of propulsion, its just gravity slingshot using a particular case which will probably never come up. Neat idea however.

bump

You didn't look very hard. http://www.wikipedia.com

What? I can't see any reason why anyone would ever want to fuse anything heavier than iron, since iron is the cutoff point- after that, no energy is gained from the fusing process, you need to put more energy in than you get out.

Niven did the Ringworld series solo, you might be thinking of the Mote in Gods Eye series, or other works they did in collaboration.

Well tritium is radioactive, and so doesn't last for very long. Or do you mean that it goes a long way when used as a fuel, like a little bit of fusion fuel will run a fusion engine for a long time? Either way the question still remains, economic feasibility doesn't depend only on the resource being aquired. There might be a bit of gold on the bottom of the ocean, but if it costs billions of dollars to get it out nobody will bother unless the gold they can exract is worth billions of dollars. Same with helium3 on the moon. Sure it might be useful at some point, but it might end up we would use so much energy in extracting it that it wouldn't be worth using it as a fuel.

A more interesting test would be to throw positrons or other anti-matter particles into a black hole. Would they annihillate any matter in the black hole, since a singularity doesn't have electrons? I guess it wouldn't matter even if it did, its not like the energy produced is going to go anywhere.

Yes, we arn't talking about detecting such an event however.