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Q:
I'm an Associate in Science, and I enjoy reading popular
science books by Physics and Astronomy professors.
Since time slows down in a gravitational field, how would
anything ever cross the event horizon in the life of the
universe?
I can understand that some matter would be inside the event
horizon at the time of a stellar collapse, and possibly pile
up enough outside a black hole to create another larger event
horizon at a later date. But the discussion of falling into a
black hole and being stretched inside the event horizon seems
like so much speculation, since it can't be related to any
real time.
A:
It's all relative, as in Einstein's General Theory of
Relativity. An observer falling into a black hole would cross
the event horizon and experience time as passing at a normal
rate, although many other abnormal things might be occurring,
and he would deduce that events were occurring at an accelerated
rate in the distant universe, with starlight being shifted to
higher frequencies, etc. In contrast, to a distant observer,
events from near the black hole event horizon would appear to be
happening slowly, and light would be redshifted.
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