Black Hole Perspectives

by John Michael Williams

jwill1000000@gmail.com
2017-05-31

A nonmathematical thought
experiment provides insight into
what it might be like inside and
outside of a black hole.

Copyright (c) 2011, 2017 John Michael Williams. All rights reserved.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 1

Preface
Everything in this essay is intended to be physically correct, although it represents the
author's particular reasoning and is subject to criticism based on prevailing opinions,
some of which, in turn, may be based on inconsistent applications of mathematics.
Because no black hole can be observed except by its gravitational influence on other
objects, some arguments and calculations in the literature must be accepted as much on
mathematical faith as on evidence.
Readers wanting some simplified mathematics to support the theory behind the
discussion in this essay should read the excellent presentation on relativity by Christoph
Schiller, Motion Mountain: The Adventure of Physics,Volume II, which is downloadable
at http://www.motionmountain.net/mmdownload.php?f=motionmountain-volume2.pdf.
Black holes remain a complex and sometimes controversial subject in astrophysics.
This essay ignores quantum effects near the event horizon and just touches upon
questions of whether time might be reversed, in some sense, inside a black hole. The
idea of low-mass "little black holes", in which energy density alone could create a
gravitational event horizon, is proposed solely to implement a thought-experiment
neutrino detector.

Basic Assumptions
We assume here that the reader has some familiarity with the basics of relativity
theory: The speed of light in vacuum is the maximum, limiting speed -- nothing can
move at a speed faster than light. Also, the speed of light always is the same, constant
value, c, no matter how or by what instrument that speed is measured.
Along these same lines, it must be understood that accelerating an object to a very
high velocity in a particular reference frame, adding energy to that object, causes it to
experience time dilation and length contraction relative to other objects not accelerated
in that reference frame. Time dilation means that time for the accelerated object
passes more slowly than for unaccelerated objects, as measured from an unaccelerated
object. Length contraction means that the length of the accelerated object becomes
less in the direction of motion when measured from an unaccelerated object.
These effects, time dilation and length contraction, are relativistic: In other words,
they are relative to ones point of view. When measured within an accelerated object,
time, which is to say proper time, passes at a normal rate and is not dilated; however,
time is compressed, passes more rapidly, for unaccelerated objects when measured from
the accelerated object. Likewise, unaccelerated lengths become greater, are expanded,
when measured from the accelerated object.
It has been confirmed again and again, by experiment, theory, and observation, that
there is no possible vacuum frame of reference, no fixed structure or coordinate grid in
space, except as shared locally by objects not (a) moving or (b) accelerating in any
significant way relative to one another and not (c) in significantly different gravitational
fields.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 2

The Home Object

We begin our thought experiment by imagining a very dense, very massive object in
space which we shall call the Home Object. This object, perhaps something like a
neutron star, is spherical, fairly small, say 10 kilometers (km) in radius, and extremely
massive. The Home Object does not rotate, and it is almost homogeneous, with maybe
some minor lumpiness and layering of structure from place to place within it.
At the very center of the Home Object, there resides an observer. Because the mass of
the Home Object is symmetrical about the observer, the pull of gravity at its center
cancels out and is zero. However, the weight of the overlying matter creates an
enormous pressure on the observer, a pressure which we shall ignore for now.
The matter of which the Home Object is composed, whatever its nature, would make it
opaque to light: Photons within such a dense medium would be scattered or absorbed
completely. So, the observer could not see anything by light. However, like all matter,
the Home Object would be much more transparent to neutrinos, tiny massive particles
which travel almost at the speed of light. Neutrinos do not interact with anything except
very rarely by the weak force. A neutrino could traverse a light-year of solid lead, and
the likelihood that it would interact with a lead atom would be very small -- but not zero.
Whatever the Home Object might be, we assume that it does not interact much with
neutrinos -- specifically, we shall assume that a neutrino could pass through the Home
Object with only about a 10% probability of an interaction.
In addition to being very transparent to neutrinos, let us assume that all the matter in
the Home Object also emits neutrinos, making it slightly luminous (in neutrinos). We do
not specify the presumably nuclear source of these neutrinos.
Our observer has a very special neutrino telescope which allows her to see: In our
thought experiment, its sensitive surface is made of a grid of thousands of tiny, low-mass
black holes. The black holes are held fixed rigidly and, like all black holes, absorb
everything, even neutrinos, which intercept them. Every neutrino has momentum, and
this momentum is transferred to any black hole which absorbs it. The resulting
vibration of the black holes on their grid thus reports every neutrino reaching the
telescope. Our observer can see by what, for brevity, we shall call "neutrino light".
Neutrinos are produced by high-energy cosmic rays and also by the nuclear fusion
reactions which power the Sun and stars. Stellar neutrinos typically have an energy in
the range of 5 to 15 MeV (million electron volts). We shall not care exactly what this
energy means, but it does correspond to a specific quantum wavelength or frequency of
each neutrino: A neutrino of 5 MeV will have a longer wavelength, and a lower
frequency, than one of 10 MeV. A neutrino of 10 MeV will travel at a speed a little closer
to the speed of light than one of 5 MeV; the speed is what makes the energy, wavelength,
and frequency, differ.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 3

Gravity and Neutrino Light

So, what can our observer see? Well, the Home Object itself will appear to be like a
slightly tinted, luminous glass ball; she will see perhaps some of the lumpiness and
layering and will be able to tell where the outer surface is. She also will be able to
observe the external stars and galaxies beyond the Home Object. Whereas astronomy by
light observes the hot surfaces of the stars, astronomy by neutrino light observes the hot
neutrinos created in their cores.
But, there is a factor which we have omitted: Gravity. The Home Object has an
enormous gravitational field. To move anything from the observer's location toward the
surface of the Home Object would reduce the gravitational energy it would have gained
by falling to the center; equivalently, if an object located near the surface could fall freely
to the center, its energy would be increased enormously by gravity. It is the latter which
determines, by relativity theory, that our observer will see objects distant from the center
to experience time compression and length expansion, just as though the observer were
moving at a high speed or were being accelerated strongly. Features of the Home Object
near its surface will be seen by our observer as increased in length; and, the frequency of
their emitted neutrino light will be raised because of time compression, making them
appear "bluer" in neutrino color (because blue light has a higher frequency than red
light).
So, our observer will see the radius of the Home Object as being more than 10 km,
perhaps 50 km; and, more distant features of the Home Object will appear expanded
away from one another -- increasingly expanded, the closer they are to the surface. As
already mentioned, the neutrino light from the outer layers of the Home Object will be
blue-shifted; the farther away, the bluer the shift.
Because a blue shift in general can be interpreted as being caused by a positive
Doppler shift, a velocity directed toward the observer, our observer in principle could
interpret the neutrino-light blue shift as an ongoing contraction of the Home Object.
Thus, our observer could interpret her observations as meaning that the Home Object
was collapsing, with the rate of collapse being greater, the greater the distance away.
Alternatively, our observer could interpret the blue shift as an expansion of the central
regions of the Home Object, bringing herself and her telescope toward the outer regions of
the Home Object at an increasingly high speed.
Neutrino light from the stars also would be blue-shifted as it was accelerated and fell
toward the surface of the Home Object, a process which would increase the speed of the
neutrinos relative to the Home Object. After passing through the surface of the Home
Object and reaching the telescope at its zero-gravity center, the acceleration from the
Home Object would fall to zero, but a maximal shift to the blue would remain.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 4

Pressure and Gravity

We have decided to ignore the pressure of the Home Object upon our observer, but
what about the pressure elsewhere?
Pressure depends on weight, and, as we go farther and farther away from the center of
the Home Object, the pressure decreases. Near the surface of the Home Object, the
pressure is near its minimum; it still is substantial, because the force of gravity there is
near its maximum, even if applied only to a few overlying layers of neutrons, iron atoms,
or whatever other matter we choose to imagine for the Home Object.

Outside the Home Object

How would the Home Object look to a different observer, an astronaut, say, on a space
ship more or less motionless and some thousands of km away? Well, assuming the
surface of the Home Object to be cool, he could not see it except by reflected light. The
astronaut could shine a light onto the Home Object; the surface might appear grey in
color. A flux of neutrinos from the Home Object also might be detected.
Given the enormous gravitational field, the surface would appear more or less smooth
and otherwise unremarkable. Photons from the space ship emitted toward the Home
Object would gain energy from its gravitational field and thus be shifted toward the blue;
when they were reflected, they would lose the same energy and be red-shifted back to
their original color. Neutrinos emitted by the Home Object would be slowed down and
delayed by its gravity, causing a shift to the red.
Near the surface of the Home Object, time would be compressed in the view of our
internal observer, so actions taken by the astronaut would be seen by the observer to
occur more quickly than expected. Conversely, actions taken by the observer would
appear greatly slowed-down as seen by the astronaut.

Fig. 1. Time sketched at different locations in and around a massive object not a black hole. Left, compression
in the frame of the internal observer. Right, dilation in the frame of the astronaut. Time unaffected by gravity
is at the extreme left in each figure.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 5

Black Hole Basics

A black hole is a massive object with a gravitational field so intense that it attracts
photons or anything else at the speed of light. Equivalently, any light leaving a black
hole would be red-shifted to a frequency of zero. Light can not escape from a black hole,
which is why it is called black. Depending on their distance and direction of
propagation, photons originating from outside could be lost into the black hole, could
orbit it, or simply could have their path of propagation bent by it.
For our purposes, we shall use the word mass to refer either to the rest mass m of
massive particles or other objects, or, equivalently to the rest energy E as related by E =
mc2 -- or, to any mixture of E and m. Both E and m have the same gravitational effects,
as given by the equation.
To begin, it seems obvious that, because any black hole has a mass greater than zero,
and contains many elementary particles (or a mass equivalent to many of them), its mass
must occupy more than a zero volume of space. Even a Bose condensate of many
particles could not reside at a single point. No matter how space might be distorted by
gravity, there will be a nonzero volume occupied by the mass of a black hole.
Because light can not escape from the inside of a black hole, neither can anything else,
including neutrinos. However, gravitational intensity decreases approximately as the
inverse square of the distance from the center of mass of any object; so, at some distance
from any black hole, the gravitational field necessarily will become low enough to allow
light to escape. This boundary, at which light could escape, is called the event horizon
of the black hole. It is like the horizon for a ship at sea: No one on the ship can see past
the horizon, which is caused by the curvature of the earth. Likewise, no one outside can
see past the event horizon of a black hole, which equivalently may be explained as a
distortion of space caused by its gravitational field. The event horizon follows the black
hole around, just as the horizon at sea follows the ship. Unlike, say, the Great Wall of
China, a horizon is just a value of field strength; regardless of the associated distortion of
space, it does not represent a physical feature or object. However, it imposes constraints
upon the physics of the space around it.
So, an astronaut could shine light on a black hole, the light would go into the black
hole, would meet the event horizon -- and nothing would come out. Our astronaut thus
can not see a black hole, except by the fact that nothing else is visible at its location, and
by other effects of its gravitational field on nearby objects or on light passing nearby.

Entry Forbidden
Suppose our astronaut observed a second astronaut falling into a black hole: Our
astronaut would notice an increasing time dilation as the infalling one approached the
event horizon. If the infalling astronaut ever reached the event horizon, time would
have been dilated to zero; this means that a clock carried by the infalling astronaut
would have stopped ticking, as measured by, say, radio signals sent from the clock to our
astronaut. This, of course, can not happen during any finite time of observation by our
astronaut.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 6

Some authors assert that in the proper time of the infalling astronaut, he simply will
pass through the event horizon which, after all, is just a certain value of the strength of
the gravitational field. Because photons emitted by the infalling astronaut are
weakened to zero frequency, therefore the astronaut must be able to pass through the
event horizon. This assertion not only is irrational but creates a topological
inconsistency between the observations of the two astronauts.
The topological inconsistency arises because our astronaut never will see the infalling
astronaut cross the event horizon, because time in the frame of our astronaut will be
stopped at the horizon, preventing further spatial displacement.
If the infalling astronaut could cross the event horizon, we would have two
inconsistent final states:
State 1: The second astronaut is inside the event horizon (in his own frame);
State 2: The second astronaut is not inside the event horizon (in the others frame).

Even allowing time to approach infinity as a limit for both astronauts would not
resolve this inconsistency. There is a conceptual error here which also leads to errors in
any application of mathematics to this problem. It is not a matter of observability but of
a space-time interval in two different frames.
There are two obvious and simple reconceptions:
A. Apply only the proper time argument and extend it to the external astronaut's
frame. This would require that the externally observed red shift on approaching
the event horizon, which is a blue shift in the frame of the center of the black hole,
somehow be continued to the interior. The infalling astronaut would vanish at the
event horizon, in the view of our astronaut. The zero time at the event horizon
would develop into an increasingly blue shift as the infalling astronaut, now inside
the event horizon, continued to accelerate toward the center of the black hole.
Otherwise, the infalling astronaut could not continue gaining gravitational energy.
Locally, in the frame of an object at rest near the event horizon, either (a) speed
would exceed c or (b) time would run backwards for the rest of the fall, or both,
causing gross violations of the laws of physics, particularly thermodynamics, inside
the event horizon.
B. Apply only the external observer argument and extend it to the proper time of
the infalling astronaut. This would require that, in the frame of the infalling
astronaut, (proper) time should pass normally during his free-fall acceleration, and
he should notice that he continually was being speeding up, in reference to other
objects outside the black hole. However, objects in the direction of the horizon
would be increasingly blue-shifted; as he approached the event horizon, the
remaining distance to it increasingly would be stretched in his frame, and no
amount of proper time would allow him to reach it.
In the present work, the resolution is to assume that an infalling object can not reach
the event horizon of a black hole in any frame of reference. This is a special case
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 7

deducible from the more general assertion that a zero rate of passage of time is zero in
any frame of reference. This may not be entirely satisfactory, but at least it does not
require irrational, inconsistent, or unphysical assumptions.

Black Hole Anatomy

Tensor calculus could be used to project the shape of the gravitationally-distorted
space of a black hole onto a three-dimensional Cartesian grid. However, we shall bypass
the mathematics and just sketch how that space would appear. The procedure we shall
use is consistent with typical physical analysis but may not be found in the astrophysics
literature.
Black Hole Gravitational Intensity

Fig. 2. Two-dimensional sketch of the gravitational field intensity in and

around a black hole. No scale implied. The circular contours delimit a
region in which the gravitational field prevents light from escaping.

To explain this figure, we shall project circles representing Gaussian spheres. A

Gaussian sphere in our figure is a three-dimensional boundary drawn around something
in order to partition the problem space. A Gaussian sphere permits operations such as
surface, line, or volume integration to be carried out conveniently. Such a sphere is a
mathematical construction and has no physical property, including no lower limit on its
size. We can use this approach to develop what we believe to be a correct
conceptualization of the properties of a black hole.
We shall examine the meaning of the figure by centering a Gaussian sphere on the
center of gravity of a black hole, which is projected in Figure 2 to the center of the
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 8

concentric contour circles, at x = y = 0. In three dimensions, this would be x = y = z = 0,

the same as r =0 in spherical (polar) coordinates. The actual shape of our Gaussian
sphere in the gravity-distorted space of the black hole will be symmetrical but otherwise
is irrelevant.
If we let the radius of our Gaussian sphere shrink toward zero, eventually we shall
have a sphere so small that it will enclose part of, but not all, the mass in the black hole.
This could be indicated in Figure 2 by a circle not shown but inside the smaller contour
circle.
After enough additional shrinking, our sphere almost will be a point and will enclose a
negligible amount of the black hole mass. Because the mass outside of the sphere is
symmetrical, its gravitational field will cancel out to zero, leaving only the field caused
by the mass inside of the sphere. Thus, the gravity on the surface of this Gaussian
sphere will be negligibly different from zero. This is indicated by the central minimum
of the surface plot in Figure 2. Light could cross this sphere in any direction.
If we now begin to increase the radius of our Gaussian sphere, it will enclose more and
more mass, making the gravitational field on its surface increase. This is indicated by
the region of the surface plot between the central minimum and the level projecting to
the smaller circular contour. At some point, our sphere will enclose enough mass to
make the field so strong that it will not permit light to exit across the surface of the
sphere. This makes the radius of our sphere equal to the radius of what we shall call,
the internal horizon. This horizon is indicated by the inner circular contour.
If we continue to increase the radius of our sphere, the field strength will continue to
increase; but, eventually, we shall run out of mass, and the field on the surface of our
sphere will begin to decrease. This is indicated by the region outside and just below the
annular maximum of the surface plot. Light can not propagate from the inside to the
outside of this sphere. After further increase of the radius, the field will drop down to an
intensity at which light can exit the Gaussian sphere. Just inside this sphere, then, will
be the event horizon of the black hole. This horizon is indicated by the outer circular
contour.
A Gaussian sphere larger than the event horizon will reside in normal space, familiar
to our common experience but possibly somewhat distorted by gravity. Light can travel
in any direction across this last sphere.

Horizons
A horizon is a local limit on propagation; it does not depend on differences in the
gravitational field but on the intensity of the field. The speed of light, c, also is a local
limit, but on speed of propagation.
In a strong gravitational field, such as that just outside an event horizon, observers
who are not much separated in space will not see much frequency shift or time or length
change in regard to each other. To experience time dilation or length contraction, one
observer must be in a gravitational field which is substantially stronger than that of the
other; this requires significant separation in space, the field being assumed to vary only
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 9

spatially. The greater the (radial) spatial separation, the greater the time dilation and
length contraction.
However, an observer near a horizon will be limited by the horizon no matter what the
distance to it. A photon emitted by an external observer toward the horizon will be blue-
shifted and would vanish if it could reach the horizon, no matter how close the observer
might be. The observer would see the photon as red-shifted, if it was scattered before it
reached the horizon, as previously discussed. Likewise, a photon emitted by an internal
observer toward the horizon will be red-shifted to zero and vanish if it could reach the
horizon, no matter how close the observer might be.
The meaning of "vanish" in this last case is that photons are not massive and have no
inertial frame; so, a photon emitted from inside a black hole toward the horizon would be
red-shifted to zero if it could reach the horizon and presumably would be annihilated.
The total momentum and energy of the original photon then will have been transferred
gravitationally to the black hole. By contrast, a neutrino emitted the same way will be
red-shifted and decelerated to zero speed and a very low quantum frequency but will
continue to exist. The neutrino could not possibly reach the horizon. The neutrino then
will reverse its direction and be accelerated toward the center of the black hole, gaining
speed and increasing in quantum frequency until it eventually is scattered or absorbed.
The question of a photon emitted within the event horizon is a complex one. One
might argue that, as a photon approached the horizon from the inside direction, along a
radius of the black hole, the photon would be red-shifted relative to the frame of the
center of the black hole, the horizon would be more and more blue-shifted, distance to the
horizon would be stretched, and the photon merely would continue with a speed of c
forever, never quite reaching the horizon, but retaining its velocity (and quantum
numbers). However, this argument is flawed, because a photon has no inertial frame
relative to which it can be shifted; in all previous discussions, photons are described as
red- or blue-shifted relative to some inertial frame. A photon has no proper time and
never can reverse its direction or otherwise change the velocity with which it was
created: It can only follow its original path in space, however distorted by gravity that
space might be. So, a photon could be redirected toward the center of the black hole
because of the distortion of space, but not because its speed was just c. There is no way
that a red shift relative to the center of the black hole could be changed into a blue shift
"relative" to the photon. Photons mediate space-time measurements in relativity theory;
they do not obey its transformation laws.
Likewise, a photon approaching a horizon from outside would have been blue-shifted in
the frame in which it was created as evidenced locally by scattering or any other
interaction; but, the scattering would be observed from the location of its creation as red-
shifted by time dilation and length contraction.
A related but equally invalid argument is that gravity stretches space so much at the
horizon, that an upward-directed, internally emitted photon would end up "running in
place", with space (the vacuum) differentially flowing past it at the speed c, continually
being "absorbed" by the black hole. Thus, a photon could reach the horizon and not be
annihilated, but it would be stuck there. This cannot be correct, because the vacuum
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 10

never can have a velocity or direction; if it could, this would imply an absolute reference
grid for the vacuum, and relativity would not work.
In this essay, we prefer the simple argument that internally emitted photons directed
away from the center of the black hole would be increasingly red-shifted in every internal
frame, time would be dilated increasingly in every internal frame, and for this reason,
only, the photon never quite would reach the internal horizon. This argument does not
depend on calculations of general relativity per se.
In any case, approach from inside or outside, we would have a photon changing in
frequency and energy, depending on the location of the scattering interaction of the
photon with something else. Such an interaction would, of course, destroy the photon.
However, it seems unavoidable that, at a horizon, time would be stopped and photons
reaching the horizon, if they could, would be annihilated because the horizon was there.

Horizon Movement
Other things being equal, if the mass of a black hole is increased, the event horizon
will grow in radius. If a substantially massive object approaches the event horizon, the
horizon will retreat, as seen externally, because some of the gravitational field of the
black hole will be cancelled by the oppositely directed field of the other object. At a large
distance, the gravitational field will obey the inverse-square law and will take on a zero
value at some point between the event horizon and the nearby object. As the object
approaches the black hole, the zero field point will shift to the inside of the approaching
object; eventually, there no longer will be any zero field nearby.

Fig. 3. Vector-sum calculation of the effect of a large nearby mass on the gravitational field of a black
hole. Square-law approximation. The zero field between the black hole and the two massive bodies is
on the line between the two centers of gravity and inside the small near-zero ellipse between them. For
simplicity, the surface plots omit the central minimum of Figure 2.

While the very massive object is nearby, other smaller masses which originally were
between it and the black hole and had come very close to the original event horizon will
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 11

continue to be attracted to the black hole and will follow the retreating horizon inward,
as seen externally.
If the very massive object passes away, the event horizon will return to its original
shape. After this, although time in the external frame almost has stopped for the
smaller masses, it has not for the event horizon; the latter then may expand past those
masses, putting them inside the horizon.
This is one mechanism by which a black hole might grow, avoiding the topological
inconsistency described above. Gravitational fields of all external, astronomical objects
continually will cause any event horizon to vary this way, at least microscopically,
allowing time-dilated mass just outside of the event horizon to cross it without requiring
external time to pass through zero. Once inside the event horizon, nothing can exit the
black hole in any direction. The precise ballistic behavior of masses just within the
event horizon is left undefined in the present work, but they might be time-frozen in
place or displaced gravitationally in (external) space toward the center of the black hole.
Speculatively, a massive object which just barely was a black hole might have internal
and event horizons almost superposed. A massive object passing nearby, then,
hypothetically might be able to push the event horizon below the internal horizon,
exposing matter within the black hole to external influences, allowing photons or massive
particles to exit the black hole, and perhaps causing such a black hole to become an object
in normal space.
The central singularity of a black hole will be discussed more below; but, for now,
imagine that the mass of a black hole could occupy enough volume to permit the spatial
arrangement of that mass to change its shape in some meaningful way. Then, even
more speculatively, nearby passage of a massive object possibly might cause oscillations
of the event horizon if the mass of the black hole rearranged itself elastically to
accommodate the local change in the event horizon.

The Home Object Black Hole

Accepting all the previous assumptions and discussion, what would happen if we
changed the Home Object into a black hole?
Our Home Object might be changed into a black hole (a) by making it contract to
increase its density, or (b) by adding mass, for example by collision with a star or other
massive object. Or both. Coincidentally, notice the similarity here between making a
black hole and detonating a nuclear-fission bomb.
Anyway, let us assume that our Home Object instantaneously but gently has been
added some mass in its interior but not too far from its surface. We shall assume that as
a result, the Home Object now is a black hole with an event horizon radius just over 10
km as seen externally, so that its newly formed event horizon is some small distance
above what previously was its surface.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 12

Black Hole View from Outside

Neutrinos, or anything else emitted by the astronaut and massive, would be
accelerated toward the Home Object and also would be increasingly red-shifted in the
frame of the astronaut as they neared the event horizon. Photons emitted toward the
Home Object would be red-shifted in the frame of the astronaut but not changed in speed
(because c is a constant); however, gravitational distortions of space could make the paths
of photons apparently curved, as inferred by the astronaut.
At the event horizon, in the frame of the astronaut, time would be dilated to zero by
the Home Object's gravitational field, and no further change could occur. The thickness
of the event horizon would be shrunk to zero because of length contraction. The event
horizon, or, more accurately, the region just outside of it, might glow because of
interactions among the highly accelerated particles and macroscopic objects attracted to
it and colliding with each other just above it. These interactions could produce photons,
neutrinos, electrons, or other particles; and, the closer they were to the event horizon, the
slower their rates and the redder their wavelengths would be, as viewed by the
astronaut.
As energy from external sources continued to impinge upon the event horizon, the
gravitational field would strengthen, and the diameter of the event horizon would
increase. As mentioned above, the event horizon is just a particular value of the field
intensity; it can shift in and out, depending on changes in the black hole's gravitational
field. Thus, physical entities, particles or fields other than the gravitational field, can be
moved between the inside and the outside of the event horizon because of changes in the
horizon radius. We shall treat this effect as negligible, for our purposes. In all other
respects, once the black hole had been formed, it would appear about the same to the
astronaut for an indefinitely long period of observation.
The time dimension is measured as a scalar, and all scalar zeroes are the same; so,
time would be dilated to zero at the event horizon not only for the astronaut but for
anyone in any reference frame.
Keeping all this in mind, let's see how our internal observer has been doing.

Black Hole View from Inside

At the moment the Home Object became a black hole, assuming the additional mass to
have been added near the outer regions of the Home Object, our observer still would see
the neutrino-luminous internal lumps and layers of the Home Object as before, but they
would be increasingly blue-shifted in neutrino color until they almost reached the
internal horizon, the radial distance from the center of the Home Object at which the
gravitational field shifted light to zero frequency. For the new black hole, this distance
now would be astronomical, because of length stretching in the regions farthest from the
observer. At the distance of the internal horizon, time would be dilated to zero, as at the
event horizon, and nothing more could change there in any reference frame.
Notice that our thought experiment for this moment implies two horizons, an external
event horizon and an internal horizon, both outside the observational realm of the
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 13

internal observer. This is because of the way we are assuming that the black hole was
created. There is some controversy over how any black hole might be created, but we
shall ignore this in the present essay, although it raises questions concerning the
consistency of the mathematics applied.
In general, in an external frame of reference the same as that of the astronaut, the two
horizons would be at different radial distances from the center of our black hole at the
moment of its formation. See Figure 2 above. The event horizon would be located at
the (approximate) square-law distance from the center of the black hole at which light
almost can escape. The internal horizon would be located at the radial distance inside
the black hole at which light first ceases to be able to escape. The internal horizon
obviously can not be located at the center of the Home Object, because the total mass
between there and the center would be zero by definition. However, mass or density
must have been increased in the regions inside the internal horizon, or a black hole could
not have been formed.
Because neutrinos are not massless, like photons, time compression affects their speed
as well as their quantum frequency. So, as she looked closer and closer toward the
internal horizon of the Home Object, not only would our observer see the Home Object's
neutrinos shifted increasingly to the blue, but they increasingly would be originating
from more and more distant sources and speeded up. The neutrino flux per unit visual
angle from distant regions, near the internal horizon, would be reduced greatly, because
length stretching would reduce the apparent density of the matter of which the Home
Object was composed. Neutrinos can't move quite at the speed of light, so, momentarily,
just inside the internal horizon, no emitted neutrino could escape upward, and they all
would be drawn downward. The distance to the internal horizon itself effectively would
be infinite, and everything there would be featureless neutrino blackness.
If this state could endure long enough, a neutrino beam directed upward by the
internal observer would be red-shifted down to zero speed just inside of the internal
horizon; the neutrino particles would fall back toward the center, the same way that a
ball tossed into the air falls back to the ground. If upward-directed neutrinos were
reflected by some feature inside the internal horizon, the reflected neutrinos would be
red-shifted on the way up and then blue-shifted by the same amount as they returned;
thus, they would be detected at the same energy (= same wavelength and frequency) as
that at which they had been emitted.
No light or neutrinos from beyond the internal horizon could be seen at the center,
because time at that horizon would be elapsing at zero rate both in the frame of the
observer and of the astronaut -- and of anyone else.
However, in the observer's view, time just inside of the internal horizon would be
compressed to an enormous rate, speeding up the rate of neutrino production and making
that region of the Home Object briefly very neutrino-bright. Very soon though, whatever
reaction(s) had been producing the Home Object's neutrinos would have died out because
of limited half-life(s), and neutrino blackness would begin to spread inward from the
internal horizon, at a rate declining with the decline in time compression as the distance
to the center became smaller.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 14

The respective rates of passage of time for the internal observer and the astronaut
shortly after formation of the black hole are sketched (not to scale) in the next figure:

Fig. 4. Time, sketched after formation of the Home Object black hole. Left figure, for the internal observer; right
figure, for the astronaut. Areas respectively not visible are shaded. Time unaffected by gravity is at the
horizontal dotted line, but the relationship between the clock rates is arbitrary, because of the discontinuities
which make communication or normalization impossible across the horizon(s).

Telescopic Catastrophe
Upon creation of the black hole, the astronaut would see a red shift to zero at the event
horizon. In his reference frame, just after the Home Object had become a black hole, the
matter in the Home Object located between the two horizons would be frozen
permanently and never would change again. Light could not propagate; all the exchange
bosons which mediate the fundamental forces of physics would be stopped. This idea of a
timeless zone between the horizons extends the boundaries of the zone to its interior and
is quite arbitrary: At a minimum, because each of the horizons creates a zero-time
boundary, nothing happening between them could have any effect anywhere else, except
gravitationally to move the horizons themselves.
But, there would be the mass of a black hole inside the internal horizon. Everything
so far described has been referred to a brief period, in the frame of the astronaut, after
the Home Object had become a black hole. However, immediately thereafter, one must
consider the effect of the mass inside the internal horizon. In the view of our internal
observer, there would be a tremendous flux of radiant energy, followed by an infalling of
all the matter inside the internal horizon, possibly initially as a shapeless waterfall of
blue-shifted quarks and leptons. The distance from the center almost to the internal
horizon, although vastly expanded, eventually would allow a violent pressure wave to
propagate throughout the Home Object, destroying its preexisting structures, but
bounded by the internal horizon. Although no further change would be visible to the
astronaut; in the frame of our observer, she would be killed and her telescope ruined.
The actual process would be somewhat as follows: Just inside the internal horizon, the
force of gravity would be so great that nothing massive could support itself. The
material of the Home Object just inside the internal horizon would be compressed by
gravity, causing the internal horizon to contract. The annular timeless region between
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 15

the event horizon and the internal horizon would grow downward. Probably, some
massless or very light particles -- photons, gluons, maybe neutrinos -- previously inside
the internal horizon would be left behind in the growing timeless region. But the
contraction would continue almost without limit, the contents of the internal horizon
being compressed physically like a reversal of the cosmological Big Bang, and total mass
of these contents decreasing somewhat because of particles stranded in the timeless
region.

The Result
The internal horizon would reach a collapsed state. As the radius of the internal
horizon, in the frame of the astronaut, shrank gravitationally to a far smaller size, its
contents would become a soup of energy; and, whether this soup included massive
particles would be irrelevant.

No Singularity
Mathematically, many authors have used general relativity to infer that the center of
the black hole quickly would become a "singularity" -- in other words, a gravitational
intensity effectively equal to infinity and perhaps limited in spatial volume only by
quantum uncertainty. Applying this argument to the present approach, these authors
would assert that Pauli exclusion would fail and only the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle could prevent further increase in the extent of the timeless region. The
internal horizon of the black hole would reach a microscopic but more or less stable size
but would not quite collapse to a point.
However, this assumption seems physically very unlikely, because it presumes no
increase in entropy during the collapse. In other contexts, increasingly extreme
conditions begin to evoke new, usually nonlinear, physical processes which cause the
primary driving cause, in this case energy density under gravitational force, to become
less and less effective. Probably, as the inner horizon shrank, other effects not seen in
normal space would prevent the physics from collecting all the energy at a mathematical
point, even one limited to a finite extent by quantum uncertainty.
One possible nonlinearity might be caused by gravitons. These are hypothetical
exchange particles which mediate gravity. They cause, or perhaps are equivalent to, the
distortion of space in strong gravitational fields. If they exist, in extreme energy density
or in extremely intense gravity, gravitons might begin to scatter off one another,
decreasing the gravitational coupling to the rest of the energy and thus limiting the
collapse. Or, maybe some threshold density of gravitons would begin pulling virtual
photons or neutrinos out of the vacuum, again causing the collapse to stop before it was
limited by quantum uncertainty.
Gravitons themselves entail conceptual difficulties. For example, if they are massless,
they should be limited to propagation at the speed of light. But, then, how would a black
hole exert a gravitational force beyond its event horizon, if gravitons were prevented by
its gravity from leaving it? Or, does the speed of light not limit the speed of a graviton?
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 16

Do gravitons somehow not couple to gravity either as energy E or mass m -- does E = mc2
not apply to them? After all (see next paragraph), the speed of light, c, is used to define
only the electromagnetic properties of the vacuum; gravity is not electromagnetic, so
perhaps there are other vacuum properties which govern the speed of gravity?
Do gravitons propagate in a flat space, subject to special relativity but undistorted and
unaffected by gravity?
Another possible nonlinearity might be caused by changes in the properties of the
vacuum itself. For example, by definition, the speed of light c=1/ 0 0 , in which the
right side represents vacuum electromagnetic properties. Under increasingly extreme
conditions, these properties might change, and the speed of light suddenly might
increase, as it is guessed to have done during the similarly extreme inflationary period of
the early phases of the Big Bang model of the formation of the universe. Such an
increase might restore Coulomb repulsion or Pauli exclusion disproportionately and halt
further gravitational contraction.
Something physical surely will arise which would dull the point of the mathematical
singularity.

The Rest of the Catastrophe

Anyway, regardless of the final volume occupied by the central minimum inside the
inner horizon, in the frame of the astronaut, after the black hole had settled down, one
could ignore quantum effects and imagine a new, now very small, internal observer.
This observer again could be located at the center of gravity of the Home Object, with a
newly rebuilt telescope. But, it couldn't be a neutrino telescope, because the region of the
black hole inside the internal horizon would have been compressed and contracted into a
tremendously concentrated energy bath; neutrinos probably could not propagate if they
could exist, and the entire black hole, everything inside of the event horizon, would be
impenetrable to photons.
The astronaut could not see inward past the event horizon, and there would be nothing
for the new observer to see at all. For the new observer, the internal horizon would be a
black nothingness located effectively at infinity, surrounded by indescribably intense
energy. The gravitational field of the Home Object, changed into a black hole, has
divided the universe into two partitions, separated by timeless walls, which no longer can
communicate with one another.
Inside the Home Object, our new observer might conclude that she, her telescope, and
the inner layers of the Home Object were being expanded outward, causing features at
more distant regions to be increasingly blue-shifted. The concomitant length-stretching
would make the Home Object radius appear limitless. She might conclude that her
Home Object was undergoing an unknowable transformation which she might call, the
Big Bang.
J. M. Williams 2017-05-31 page 17

References
Ethan Siegel. "Nothing Escapes From A Black Hole, And Now Astronomers Have Proof".
Online at https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/05/31/nothing-escapes-
from-a-black-hole-and-now-astronomers-have-proof/#2d0d7eb6692a .