I posted this on my blog...
http://rastermon.livejournal.com
I'm no scientist - how much of my understanding is correct?


If I had a choice of how I would die... purely hypothetical - you'll see.

Since we all have to go sometime, my choice would be to fall into a black hole.
Yup.
Suppose I'm in a VERY stong spacesuit. I see the black hole, or rather, I see an emptiness that is distorting the stars and galaxies behind it with gravitational lensing. Spacetime is bent by gravity. Light travels in (as far as the photon knows) a straight line, the light isn't bending, space itself is bending.

Because I don't want to become a noodle just yet, I position myself to be like a skydiver - belly and face first. I feel my nose getting pulled more towards the hole than the back of my head. Tidal effects are not fun, but it may just clear out my sinuses.

This black void is rushing toward me as I excellerate towards the speed of light... but wait, as I go faster, time slows down. Not my time, but the time of the reality show watchers who are seeing this. To them I never quite enter the black hole, I'm stuck on the event horizon with everything else that has fallen into the black hole. I hope they aren't TiVoing this. Their hard drive will fill up.
I'm catching up to the speed of light, which, by my opinion is the speed of time. So do I really ever enter the black hole? I think I do.
I'm travelling at 99.999% of c
As far as I know, my clock is still ticking off the familiar pace of seconds. But if I were able to turn around, I see the light from the stars and reality tv cameras - travelling at the speed of light also. Would time stand still?
The speed of light is the same for all observers, so the tv camera lights should be coming at me at the speed of - well - light. But distances are shortened so they still look pretty close.

I turn back around, my entire view is filled with the event horizon. The threshold of no escape. Photons can't travel faster than the gravitation force that makes them fall back into the hole. Beyond the event horizon, time has lost its meaning. There is no room for anything. There is no space.
So there I sit, squashed to a size much smaller than an atom, maybe smaller than a Plank length. That's 10-20 times the diameter of a proton. That's small

__________________
http:www.rastermon.com

I'm no expert but i think you'd be dead by the time you get to the " I position myself to be like a skydiver" part. I also don't think you'd enjoy the concept of time even though theoretically your particles would still be falling into a black-hole.

Though it would be cool if your scenario was possible to "experience" and not a bad way to go :-)

I'm hypothetically thinking I'd live through all that violence.

__________________
http:www.rastermon.com

Choose a big enough black hole, and you'll get through the event horizon without suffering any damage from the tidal forces; although they'll still get strong enough to kill you as you approach the singularity.

The sky-diver position isn't a great help, though: tides compress tangentially as well as stretch radially. So if you fell into a region of strong tides in a skydiver position, the tide would shove your arms and legs inwards and wad you briefly into a ball before stretching you out again in a new direction.

Grant Hutchison

Im not sure falling into a black hole would be all that fun. It fact, I think it would suck.

__________________
"There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives" - US Army Demolitions School

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

There's no doubt that it would suck, and suck hard.

(Title)... would be really nasty.

__________________
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

It's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing.

In this case, a little from column A and a lot from column B.

I seem to recall a fictional short story in which some 60 y/o astronauts in a ship decided to drop into a huge black hole, big enough that they'd survive 30 years to look around inside thehole before the tides start tearing the ship apart. That would be an interesting way to go....

Of course, if a lot of other junk is falling into the hole, you'd collide with something.

__________________
-----
Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

That would need to be a big black hole.
About 6x10¹³ solar masses; the mass of a hundred galaxies, or thereabouts.

Grant Hutchison