B
barrykirk
Guest
Let us take a Supermassive Black Hole with a very large Event horizon.<br /><br />For such a Black Hole, the tidal forces exerted outside of the event horizon would be fairly small.<br /><br />This is because of the following.<br /><br />Gravity falls off as 1/R^2 <br /><br />but Tidal forces fall off as 1/R^3 <br /><br />This means that for two objects with the same mass but different densities, the tides experienced on the surface are much greater for the denser object.<br /><br />The mean density inside the Schwarzschild radius decreases as the mass of the black hole increases, so while an earth-mass black hole would have a density of 2 × 1030 kg/m3, a supermassive black hole of 109 solar masses has a density of around 20 kg/m3, less than water.<br /><br />This also means that the more massive the black hole, the smaller the tidal forces for an object orbiting just outside the Schwarzschild radius.<br /><br />Let's take an arbitrarily large black hole such that an object in orbit outside of the event horizon is experiencing small tidal forces.<br /><br />From a spacecraft orbiting just outside the event horizon, if one were to lower an object using a cable from this orbit through the event horizon, what would happen as the object passed through the event horizon.<br /><br />Just before the event horizon, the forces on the object being lowered down would have a small and smooth function. Is their a discontinuity in the forces as the object travels through the event horizon?