black hole gravity acceleration

[obhassell]

I got this thought...and I figured it would be worth asking about....

 

Here on Earth we have gravitational acceleration because of the amount of gravitational pull on us and the distance from it's center of mass and the speed we are moving at relative to Earth (cuz we'd shoot off the planet if we move fast enough).

 

Now I'm going to assume that this is true for all objects that have mass and therefore a gravitational pull. If a black hole is massive enough to pull in light, and a gravitational pull creates acceleration when you get close enough to the object, would a black hole cause light to speed up when it's "sucking in" light? Could it make light go faster than the ~300,000m/s? or does particles being sucked into a black hole have a sort of terminal velocity like they do for a falling object here on Earth?

 

thanks

[Riogho]

First off, light is always moving at the speed of light. No faster, no slower, if you idea breaks these rules it's wrong in some way.

 

I do know that terminal velocity has more to do with the resistances (friction) than just a random speed that you can't accelerate faster than. I doubt there are much of those in space so that isn't going to be the reason.

 

I don't believe that a black hole would 'suck' in light, because light doesn't have anything to 'suck' in. If the light were already traveling to the black hole, I assume it would go into the black hole, at the speed of light.

 

Now, if the black hole curved space in such a way around it, I could see the light orbiting a black hole, and falling in eventually because of the curvature of space, but the black hole would not accelerate the light from it gravitational "pull".

[Shadow]

~300,000m/s

 

You're missing a 'k' there

[Mr Skeptic]

The light will be blue-shifted.