Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 7/18/2008

Question
Is it true that as matter enters a black hole that it will be stretched until the matter is in it's most basic form(ups, downs, tops.....ect) and continues on this path until, well we just don't know? Is it possible that the universe that we know came to be because of an oveload of mass in a black hole? Exploding out to start everything from the begining?     My second question is why are we not seeing mor super novas in the night sky? With the universe as old as we are told by experts, I would think that it time to see more "magic" in the sky. The ball is lofted over the net into your court....lol.

Answer
Hi Jim,
All true!

THAT happens because of gravitational tides.

One does not have to be near a black hole to feel and see these.
The daily TIDES in our oceans are a gentle reminder of what is in store when gravity becomes overlord.

Just as a small pull due to a sun 93 million miles away, causes so large (Hawaiian tides are HUGE) tides, Large tides are created when a multiparticle body (say a satellite) approaches the Roche's limit for its planet.

That is how saturn got its rings, when either an existsing satellite approached too close, or loose primordial debri was prevented from forming into a satellite or space junk (ices of ammonia and water and methane) accumulateed in tha unstable area close to the planet.

In case of the black hole, the boundary of this instability is a bit farther off than its event horizon. The event horizon is the closer extremity of the accretion disk. (like saturn's disk, which is  millions of times milder).

Once a prticulate body enters this region, "differentiall pull" of the tide occurs as the gravitational potential gradient becomes so pronounced that within the body itself, the field has differing pull on separate points.

At one point (as happened with saturn), the object shreds! then as it progresses inward, the shattered parts themselves shred, and so on until it reaches the atomic level where that shredding stops. That is where the electrons start sourcing X rays (compton effect) from the accretion disk.

Much nearer, almost at the event horizon, matter is all plasma, a sea of nucleii and electrons. The circulatting "curents" of charged particles may be generating the magnetic funnel that emits strong matter jets along two axes.

Another thing is that the swartzchild's radius (of the event horizon) increases with increasing mass, reducing the density of matter inside. Asimove once hypothesized that if the universe has infinite mass, then it would resemble the insides of a black hole! It would have an event horizon of infinite radius, and a density so less, that we may be really inside one such hole! looking at the emptiness of space all around us!! And like a TRUE black hole, nothing including light NEVER escapes the universe!

Who told you we dont see supernovas!
And god help us if we see one.
For a supernova to occupy a large enough visible radius, it would have to be close by, and at THAT close a distance (anything less than 26 light years), we would die if we could SEE it!

A wolf rayet star exploding 8000 light years away could harm us if we are in its "sights"..(a narrow 12 degree beam of disaster).

SuperNova 1987a is so called because it happened in the Large magellanic cloud (star sanduleak something).

So on the supernova front and seing them ..ignorance is bliss!!

hope that suffices.

Please do rate the answer if you find it interesting.

regards
Jayen