Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!gatech!mcnc!uvaarpa!umd5!brl-adm!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!gf
From: gf@dasys1.UUCP (G Fitch)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Black Holes II
Message-ID: <2480@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jan 88 17:07:21 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: The Big Electric Cat
Lines: 33

------
Since my last posting, I have read (mail or news) about a dozen 
wildly divergent reasons for believing in black holes.  A few 
were cogent and have caused me to _partially_ revise my opinion.

I had forgotten to consider that an object of nonzero mass
cannot be accelerated to C (due to time dilation, increase of
mass under acceleration, etc.)   Therefore, no material object
can ever quite get to an event horizon, or what would be an
event horizon if anything could ever encounter it; it will
spend eternity falling the last infinitesimal distance.  During
this process, it will still be able to "communicate" with the
rest of the universe, in a manner of speaking.  Thus, there is
no "inside" to a black hole, because the black hole isn't
there; it's just almost there.  This almost-there black hole
satisfies all the external requirements of a black hole I can
think of (but I'm an infidel.  The believers will have to speak for
themselves.)  It's there and it isn't there; everybody should be
happy.
           Yesterday, I know not where
           I saw a hole that wasn't there....

My thanks to Mark W. Hopkins (U.Wisc./Milwaukee) and Doug Freyburger
(Caltech) for their contribution to lightening or deepening my 
ignorance.  They are of course not responsible etc. etc., and their 
views are different from mine.  I think it would be interesting 
to discuss the religious requirements for reverence and doing-math-
for-the-sake-of-doing-math in the sciences, but that's for a different 
newsgroup. 
-- 
G Fitch	        				{uunet}!mstan\
The Big Electric Cat     {ihnp4,harvard,philabs}!cmcl2!cucard!dasys1!gf
New York City, NY, USA  (212) 879-9031          {sun}!hoptoad/