Slashdot Mirror
How an Astronaut Falling Into a Black Hole Would Die Part 2
First time accepted submitter ydrozd writes "Until recently, most physicists believed that an observer falling into a black hole would experience nothing unusual when crossing its event horizon. As has been previously mentioned on Slashdot, there is a strong argument, initially based on observing an entangled pair at the event horizon, that suggests that the unfortunate observer would instead be burned up by a high energy quanta (a.k.a "firewall") just before crossing the black hole's event horizon. A new paper significantly improves the argument by removing reliance on quantum entanglement. The existence of black hole "firewalls" is a rare breakthrough in theoretical physics."
The nearest black hole is 1600 light-years away
Famous last words...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Interstellar racism, you think?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Black hole firewalls don't really exist.
Indeed. A firewall would be useless. Any virus trying to penetrate the event horizon would be turned into harmless spaghetti code anyway.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Well, the firewall rules for a black hole are easy: You let every packet in, but none out.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"Well, the thing about a black hole - its main distinguishing feature - is it's black. And the thing about space -- the color of space, your basic space color -- is it's black. So how are you supposed to see them?" - Holly