From: Fred lunnon <fred.lunnon@gmail.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tue, July 20, 2010 6:02:18 AM Subject: Re: [math-fun] A Scientist Takes On Gravity Mind-expanding moment #1 --- instead of the customary hocus-pocus about what happens to an object falling through the event horizon, its information simply merges with the hologram at the surface (which expands to accommodate it). Mind-expanding moment #2 (in response to a listener who incautiously enquired how we know we are not at an event horizon) --- we _don't_ know that we are not at an event horizon. I'm suffering overload at this point --- time to take a break and start again later --- from the beginning, I think! Fred Lunnon _______________________________________________ This idea of merging with the hologram can only apply to the observation of an infalling body as made by an external observer. Signals from the body cease, an infinite red-shift as it approaches the event horizon, and information it contained becomes encoded in the quantum state of the surface, to be resurrected in the detailed state of the Hawking radiation as the black hole decays. To the infalling observer, nothing special happens when passing through the event horizon. This observer continues to receive signals from the external universe, even when trapped, until hitting the physical singularity. The spherical light-shell that reaches the singularity along with the observer is the final received signal. Extended backward to the external universe, it marks the boundary between events received by the infalling observer and those that arrive too late. Suitable observations may reveal that one is trapped inside an event horizon, but these cannot be entirely local, and could not be discerned from inside an opaque box. The question "how do we know we are not at an event horizon" might well be replaced by "how do we know we are not merged into the hologram". The answer again is "we don't know". Perhaps this can be made into a sequel to the "Matrix" movies. -- Gene