chIno said:[quote author=seoguy link=1237870126/0#3 date=1238432020]If I remember correctly, virtual particles do not mess-up the conservation of mass/energy because they pop "out" of existence as quickly as they pop in. But when the pair gets separated by being on opposite sides of the event horizon, that forces it's twin in the "outside world" to become a "real" particle, instead of a fleeting virtual one. The energy for this particle has to come from somewhere, so it is debited from the mass/energy of the black hole that ate it's twin, kinda like a withdrawal from it's Paypal acct!
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Actually, I believe the more accurate way of looking at this is that space-time is so warped that there is no path that will lead out of the event horizon - every path curves you back in![/highlight]
Actually, I believe the theory prevents a particle from "crossing" the lightspeed threshhold, i.e. - going from subluminal to superluminal speeds. From what I've been told, there is nothing in Einstein's theories that prevents a particle from traveling faster than light (i.e. - the theoretical "tachyon" particle, which can travel faster than light, it just can't go any slower!)
Also, remember that this speed limit applies to particles moving through space. There is no such FTL "speed limit" for how fast the fabric of space itself can move! For example, I believe during the "inflationary period", the universe is thought to have expanded much faster than lightspeed! This also explains why there is a limit on the "observable" universe, and why we cannot see galaxies that exist beyond it. This "no speed limit for space itself" is also the basis for the hypothetical "warp" drive.
There is also the very interesting "quantum entanglement", in which an entangled particle is somehow able to communicate it's state to it's twin instantaneously over any distance! Scientists are still scratching their heads trying to figure-out exactly how this happens - some have speculated a magical faster-than-light particle is exchanged between the two, another theory has it that the particles actually communicate with each other backwards in time to the point where they first became entangled!
Quantum Physics can be a real mind-blower at times!
wow, never though of it that way!
......[highlight]BUt wouldnt you have a discontinuity in the first place,[/highlight] so how would a particle even go through the event horizon if there is no space-time to travel through???... and thanks guys for all the responses, i thought the post was just gonna die after 2
[/quote]ok so i did more reading and if im not mistaken....(first of all can i quote myself??? :-? :-? :-? cus its kind of weird lol) i guess a better way to see it is that gravity in the first place is just what we feel due to the warping of space-time, because the warping creates a difference in potential energy, and matter wants to be in the "lowest energy state" thats why it "falls towards the largest mass" (think of it this way, if you throw something up, it gains potential energy) and the more massive something is, the more it warps space-time. So for a black hole, the space-time field around it, its warped so much that it creates a huge difference in potential energy that not even light can overcome. And apparently, there is no work done when mass moves through an equipotential field, that is a field that has exactly the same potential all throughout. So thats why stuff moves in outer space without slowing down.... Although there is always gravitational fields everywhere in our universe, but in "outer space", since gravity is proportional to (1/r^2) its negligible.
