Where Nature Hides the Darkest Mystery of All - Issue 35: Boundaries
▻http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/where-nature-hides-the-darkest-mystery-of-all
No known object in existence has as clear a division between “inside” and “outside” as a black hole. We live and see the outside, and no probe will bring us information about the inside. We can send radio messages or robotic spacecraft, but once they cross over into a black hole’s interior, we’ll never get back those emissaries … or any information about what happened to them. The boundary of a black hole is its event horizon. It’s not a surface in the usual sense—there’s no physical barrier—but it’s very much a real thing. Outside the horizon, an object can escape the black hole’s gravitational pull if it’s moving sufficiently fast; inside, it would need to move faster than light-speed, something forbidden by the laws of nature.In a meaningful sense, a black hole is its event horizon, since we (...)