Strange

The important point about photons is not whether you can detect one or not (you can) but the fact that light is quantised. This is shown by the photoelectric effect even if you detect a billion photons at a time.

What sort of questions? People here might be able to answer, even if they have done these specific experiments.

What sources of information are you using? If you are looking at news stories and yootoob videos, then you won't find any detail. But if you look at primary sources, you should find more. For example: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=single+photon+counting

http://www.hamamatsu.com/us/en/technology/innovation/photoncounting/index.html https://www.picoquant.com/products/category/photon-counting-detectors You need some sort of multiplier/avalanche/amplification device because the amount of energy associated with a single photon is so small. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_counting

Of course it isn't. The experiment has been performed and, like every other test of relativity, reality confirms the theory. That is an idiotic statement. However, every prediction of relativity has been found to match reality. The only other people who deny reality to the same extent that you do are those young-Earth creationists who say, "if reality and the book disagree, then it is reality that is wrong." Then present the evidence to support your "hypothesis" (in the Speculations forum). Please provide the experimental data and calculations to support this claim. (I assume that will be pretty easy for you.) (The remaining incoherent rambling skipped.)

How can you confuse that crank with real science?

It is in standard DimaMazinese.

What? Who is "she"?

What is popularly known as "the correct way". Ignoring the tiny detail that you get the wrong answer. Why would you say that? Do you have any evidence of this? But there is no correlation between relativistic effects and the presence of electromagnetic radiation. Making "stuff" up is not an alternative to science. Not a useful one, anyway.

I believe there is evidence showing that it is at least partly innate. But I'm sure there are cultural factors as well.

Occam's razor might favour your example if you ignore reality. This experiment (and every other experiment performed) has shown that relativity is correct and you are wrong. So your example does not work.

We are only concerned with rest mass. "Relativistic mass" is a misleading phrase and usually discouraged (because it is just a source of confusion). In your own frame of reference you are not moving at the speed of light. In someone else's frame of reference, you might be moving slightly slower than the speed of light, so photons are just inching away from you. But in your frame of reference, photons travel at the speed of light. That is not the point: you can get arbitrarily close. You can make the answer as accurate as you wish by approaching infinity. In some cases 1 metre might be enough. In this example, maybe 1 million kilometres is good enough. This is basically the inverse of escape velocity: that is defined as the speed you would need to escape gravity to infinity (without further propulsion). No one says escape velocity is meaningless because you can't get to infinity. (Actually, I think there was someone here a while ago saying that, but no sane person would say it!) It is just a way of calculating the velocity that a free falling body will have as it reaches the event horizon. This is purely mathematical. You can't go out and measure these things. It is full of approximations and assumptions. The Schwarzschild metric is completely unrealistic: it is for a non-rotating, static black hole that has existed for eternity in an otherwise empty universe.

Why invent incorrect numbers when Janus has gone through a detailed worked example for you.

If you didn't keep inventing lies strawman arguments like this, you might not have such a problem understanding what is said to you.

No, photons do not have mass. To echo your earlier question, in what frame of reference. But it doesn't matter. in your frame of reference photons will be rushing ahead of you at the speed of light. Huh? This is mathematics we are talking about. There is no problem with it being infinitely far away. Imagine you are sufficiently far away holding the test particle stationary above the black hole. You let it go and it starts to move (very, very slowly at first) under the effect of the black hole's gravity. As you are not infinitely far away, then the test particle will not quite reach the speed of light. However, you can move further away and the final velocity at the event horizon will be closer to the speed of light. You can make it get as close to the speed of light as you like by moving sufficiently far away. That is what "infinitely far away" means. Have you done a basic calculus course? As a simplifying assumption. As the text you quoted earlier said, this is to minimize the effect on the gravitational field you are calculating. If you need to take the mass of your particle into account, then things get much more complicated. In fact, there may not even be an analytical solution. For example, calculating the orbits or merger of two black holes has to use numerical methods (simulation). But, for a large black hole as in this example, you could probably consider the Earth to be a "test particle".

I don't believe so. Photons always follow null geodesics, the purpose of that is to calculate the path of a massive particle. (meaning "particle with mass" rather than a really big one ) Light will still travel at the speed of light (in your frame of reference). Free fall: falling purely under the effects of gravity; i.e. not experiencing any forces or acceleration. Radially: directly towards the centre of the object (black hole, in this case) From rest: starting with a velocity of zero (relative to the object it is falling towards) At infinity: it starts at rest an infinite distance away (or sufficiently far away that it doesn't make a significant difference) All observers (in this context) are fictional!

And as photons will be racing ahead of you at the speed of light, they will get to the singularity even sooner.

I noticed that too. I put it down to sloppy writing.

You do not see it "frozen in time". It is heading towards the singularity faster than you are. You will never see them reach it, nor will you see the singularity. But you (and it) will still reach the singularity in finite time. Please stop making stuff up and read the linked pages (or others if you think I just happened to stumble across an erroneous source).

Yes. And ... ? You asked how long it would take to reach the singularity (or rather, you said you never would). That page shows the results of the calculation (for a Schwarzschild black hole of a given mass). And explains in some detail (with pictures and animations) how this might appear - slightly artificially, of course, because the event horizon, for example, is not actually visible. For some reason you don't want to accept his calculation that you would reach the singularity in a fraction of a second. But you are happy to post random quotes from that web page. Would you like to explain their significance to you?

How is that relevant? All we know about what occurs inside (or around) a black hole is calculated from the equations of general relativity.

You will have to explain that, because I see nothing that contradicted what I said. You seem to be picking words and phrases out of context and investing them with some sort of hidden meaning.

All of that confirms what I have said. So I'm not sure what your point is. (Tempting though it was, the -1 wasn't from me.)

It makes sense for observers inside the event horizon. It is only from outside the event horizon that it is not possible to observe what happens. It is the proper time (i.e. in its own frame of reference) for an object in free fall. More detail here: http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/schwp.html

Please show, in mathematical detail, how this conclusion is derived from the Schwarzschild metric.