• Question: How can a black hole bend the rules of physics?

    Asked by anon-219678 to Nicolas, Laurence, Emma, Declan, Bella, Ali on 17 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Ali Hussain

      Ali Hussain answered on 17 Jun 2019: last edited 17 Jun 2019 3:12 pm

      More than 150years ago we didn’t have a model for the atom. We are still learning about black holes. Classical physics state that we can’t bend light but in theory, if certain conditions are met, we can. Some of these conditions are present in black holes.

    • Photo: Nicolas Bonne

      Nicolas Bonne answered on 17 Jun 2019:

      Funny things can also happen with time when we go really really fast (close to the speed of light for it to be really noticeable), or get close to something that’s really really massive. For the person travelling really fast, or close to something really massive, time will seem to go much slower.

      We actually have to think about this when we put satellites in to orbit to help us use GPS. If we didn’t correct for the tiny difference in time that the satellites experience, all of our GPS coordinates would be wrong, and they’d just keep on getting more wrong the longer we left things.

    • Photo: Laurence Datrier

      Laurence Datrier answered on 17 Jun 2019:

      They don’t! The laws of physics are not like human laws. If we see something that seems to break the laws of physics, it means we don’t really understand the laws of physics.
      We understand a lot about the physics of everyday life, but our laws are approximations that can become bad approximations in certain circumstances. We still don’t have a complete understanding of all the laws of physics! We know a lot about black holes for example, but we’re not too sure what happens at the centre.

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