the value of light

[jjuris]

This might have been answered but does light have infinite energy. If a black hole has an event horizon, this is the point at which light cannot escape and hovers at a certain point. What keeps those particles at that point. I can understand that every mass has an escape velocity, but if that is even or more than 186000 mps what keeps that mass there?

[iNow]

I believe you have a misconception about the event horizon. Particles (light or otherwise) do not actually hover there. They pass right by it without noticing a thing. It is only to observers outside the horizon (like you and me) who see the transmission of the light signal seem to freeze.

 

I'd read this then ask more questions when done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon

 

 

Also, escape velocity is not something specific to a mass, but instead is specific to the body or planet from which it's trying to escape. Basically, the escape velocity from the Earth is higher than the escape velocity from the moon because the earth is more massive and exerts stronger gravitational pull. For the same reason (it's huge and exerts tremendous gravity, and hence takes more energy to escape from), the escape velocity from the sun is enormous.

 

It has a little bit to do with mass, but only because that mass is interacting with the local gravity.

 

As for 180K/sec speed, that is the speed of light, and any object with any mass can never reach it. The closer a non-zero mass object gets to the speed of light, the more energy it takes to accelerate further, and before the speed of light gets reached, the energy required to accelerate it further becomes infinite.

 

 

Either way, the mass doesn't stay (or "hover") at the event horizon, at least not in its own reference frame. It only looks like it does to us looking at it from beyond the event horizon.

 

 

There's a great book I read years ago (somewhat out of date, but still good for the types of questions you're asking) which made this all very clear to me, without ever having officially studied it. It's called "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outragous Legacy" by Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist at CalTech. Kip Thorne helped give Carl Sagan the idea of a wormhole for the book Sagan wrote called "Contact." You should consider checking them out.

 

Enjoy.