You can! Check out Space Engine [0]. It’s... amazing. I’ve spent hours in this game approaching black holes of different sizes and watching what happens to the horizon around me as I get close... it’s loads of fun.
(It also procedurally generates the entire universe, and includes a huge database of known objects as well. It all works in VR, very worth the price.)
Perhaps your terminally ill state will be stored in the black hole somehow and somehow you will be able to experiemce it, just like you wanted, feeling terminally ill, in pain, for an unspeakably long time, until your storage unit, the black hole evaporates finally.
I'm definitely very far from a physics expert, but if I'm not mistaken wouldn't this just be the perspective of a far-away observer watching you fall in? I think from your own perspective, time would pass as you expect both near and beyond the event horizon.
Depending on the size of the black hole, once you're past the event horizon you'd eventually be stretched/torn apart by the tidal forces. But if you could somehow survive this and escape back to Earth (survival long past the horizon is maybe theoretically possible for some entity, though escape isn't), or if you merely get near an extremely gravitationally strong horizon and escape back to Earth, then Earth would indeed have aged perhaps thousands or millions or billions of years, but you still would have aged at a normal rate and would have experienced the passage of time normally, just like you would if you had returned from a trip in a near-light speed spacecraft.
This is demonstrated in Interstellar. When they're near the black hole for a few hours and return, they see their crewmate aged decades despite them aging and experiencing the passage of time normally from their perspective (just those few hours).
If you had a nearby black hole or a fast enough vehicle, you could skip through Earth centuries/millennia in a few hours or days from your perspective, in hopes that a cure would have been developed during that time. Maybe in the distant future, if space travel tech somehow manages to rapidly outpace medical tech, this could be a last resort option for terminally ill people. Kind of like "time travel cryonics". You might return to find Earth blown to smithereens or uninhabitable due to a nanobot war, but if you're terminally ill you've got nothing to lose anyway, so might as well take the risk.
OP might be getting at the question of whether or not the representation of your state matters. Even though your mass is no longer in the configuration you expect perhaps the information still interacts in a way which allows you consciousness.
"Here are Horizon Data we ensure the longevity of your data by implanting it upon the two dimensional surface found beyond the event horizon of a black hole. Retrieval does come at a cost (it's impossible), but knowing that your data is safe is what helps us sleep at night."
One of the fundamental things occurring when getting near or entering black holes is that mass gets reconstituted down to the subatomic level. If you thought chicken nuggets were nasty, wait till you cross that event horizon!
That's kind of how it works. Time will slow down for you as you get closer to the black hole. Everyone you know will die before you get to anywhere approaching the "center." Perhaps by then they'll have a cure and a way to pull you out.
I think there are a lot of people who would readily trade 50 years of life to be the first person to be fired in to a blackhole. You're dying regardless. An illness only affects how long it takes.
When Mars One launched their competition to become the first people to go to Mars, explicitly on a one-way trip, more than 200,000 people expressed an interest. Only 4000 or so actually paid the competition entrance fee though. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One#Astronaut_selection)
How? If i am floating in a frictionless environment the gravitational pull has no opposing force to rip my body apart particle by particle. We are talking about forces stronger than strong nuclear force, but somehow affecting body locally.
Let's say you pencil-dive into the black hole. At first, you fall down with mostly constant gravity acting on your entire body.
But there is some distance between your head and foot, so your foot's gravity calculation begins to yield higher forces than your head as you get closer to the singularity.
As this effect plays out, you get elongated, and the distance from head-to-toe increases even more, magnifying the effect, which in turn magnifies the effect more and more until you're spaghettified.
> We are talking about forces stronger than strong nuclear force, but somehow affecting body locally.
It wouldn't be a black hole if it didn't outmuscle whatever gets close enough.
Some people are willing to trade the risk of death (or even the certainty) for the chance of being first to achieve something notable. Plenty of people would rather live a short but exceptional life instead of an uninteresting long one.
If you throw dying people into black hole, they never die from the perspective of their family. They just move slower and slower.
If civilization builds elderly-home-spaceships that fly into the black hole year after year, they can see all those people still alive in the event horizon.
(Subjectively the elderly just go past the event horizon like it's not there)
There are several assumptions here, mostly having to do with the exterior Schwarzschild solution to the Einstein Field Equations of General Relativity serving as the source of most non-mathematical descriptions of black holes. The crucial assumptions: the black hole is eternal; it is maximally symmetrical (eternal means it's time-symmetrical, and the horizon being perfectly spherical gives spatial symmetries - let's also add in an absence of angular momentum and any non-gravitational charge); and it is the only substantial mass in its universe. "The perspective of their family" needs to be accelerated with respect to the central mass, for example by hovering directly over a point above the (non-rotating, spherically symmetrical, neither growing nor shrinking) horizon. The dying people also have to be in radial free-fall, so "throw" means just that[1], rather than a rocket-powered plunge or an eccentric hyperbolic trajectory.
Breaking these conditions may provide the family of the infaller a very different view (for example, you could rocket the family in question into the same, or another, black hole such that they hit a central mass before light image of their infalling relative does; alternatively you could in principle, by throwing in other matter, make the black hole's mass and/or angular momentum grow quickly according to the watching family's wristwatches).
> like it's not there
The "no drama" conjecture for a freely-falling infaller depends on the global spacetime, and in general requires an arbitrarily large value for the central mass, so that the curvature scalars at the horizon are arbitrarily small. One can construct realistic black hole entries which are promptly extremely noticeable for the unfortunate infaller (or indeed for the black hole; infalling large masses will effectively raise bumps on the horizon that require on the order of a horizon-diameter light-crossing time to settle down by way of gravitational radiation, as is looked for at LIGO and Virgo).
Inconveniently for understandings based on the Schwarzschild solution, lots of astrophysical black hole candidates appear to have enormous angular momentum. Additionally, they certainly aren't alone in our universe. Probably all of them are also still increasing in mass and angular momentum as things including distant starlight, cosmic microwave background and cosmic neutrino background radiation (and in the cases of astrophysical black holes in galaxy clusters dust, gas, stars, other black holes and so on) collide with them. This breaks several of the symmetries that lead to predictions of observations of an arrangement like M<->h<->i<------->a where M is the central mass, h is the horizon, i is the infaller freely-falling towards M, and a is the accelerated observer not moving towards M (it can however move away from M, relativistically if it wants[2]), all of which have Schwarzschild coordinates that differ only in "r".
Finally, it's hard to find an astrophysical black hole without any sort of accretion structure around it, because isolated black holes are so very nearly black. It'll be harder to find an accretion structure which wouldn't obscure the view of the dying people in various ways as they approach the horizon, not to mention that our distant observer would almost certainly see a moving image of them being killed by bombardment with high energy electrons and X-Rays [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OtUVDRL_wM ] well before their well-cooked corpses started to resemble a photograph.
(It's also worth observing that the mass of an accretion structure is going to be much much larger than that of a spaceship full of dying people, as will the flux of mass falling onto plunging orbits. The large mass in the accretion structure will pull points of no return away from where they would be if the black hole were isolated from that mass; this is another aspect of raising bumps on the horizon.
The large amount of inward-plunging mass will grow the horizon beyond where it would be for the case of an isolated black hole into which one throws a ship of sick people, much more quickly than "forever", even for a distant observer.)
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[1] equip yourself with a smartphone with accelerometers, and an application like https://phyphox.org/ and throw your phone, and note what its accelerometer reports when you simply drop the phone versus when you throw the phone into the air, across a room, or into the hands of a collaborator.
[2] You might consider a central black hole in a galaxy cluster at high redshift (i.e., billions of parsecs away), whose surrounding luminous matter is already seen by us as redder and dimmer because of the metric expansion of space, versus flying in an ultra-relativistic rocket towards a nearer black hole. Less extreme interactions of translational, accelerational and gravitational redshift interactions are dealt with in GPS [ http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.... for some numbers especially at footnote 2] and other GNSS systems.
Considering how long it would take to get to the nearest black hole, you're already too dying to get there in time. You should have asked your great great (...) great grand parents to settle closer to one.
I imagine it's similar to having your upper-torso tied to a pole and your lower-torso tied to a car, meanwhile the universe rapidly ages into an ever-shrinking sphere behind you. It sounds nightmarishly painful--physically and existentially
I imagine the tidal forces would not just feel like you're being stretched, but it would also feel like you're hanging upside-down. And this would be independent of whether your head is pointing towards the black hole or away from it; basically your feet and head are trying to "fall" away from each other.
For a supermassive black hole the gravity gradient shouldn’t be all the bad until you’re way past the event horizon. Perhaps it might even be pleasant?
What do you mean with being terminally ill? Statistically speaking your body will give up at 80 years of age. This is without any special condition like cancer at a young age. You can calculate how long you would have left.
When planning your life you better take into account that you only have so many years left and even fewer productive years. Once you are over 25 you can slowly feel how things decay if you reach 40, 50, 60, 70 it goes downhill faster and faster. There may be dozens of years where nothing bad happens and then there are some weeks where your biological age increases by 10 years and it never really gets back to the level where you have been for so long. No matter what you do, no matter how healthy you are, how much care you take of yourself, one day it will hit you, too.
You are writing like a depressed person. I think age is cool patina, you can get wiser, learn to meditate, i love old peoples wisdom and how they get easily emotional, i have upgraded my health several times since my twenties where i didn't eat as healthily as today, i sleep better, i have understood my bodily rhythms, my emotional life is amazing compared to when i was younger.
I know people who who's always had health issues and i have a grandmother who is 96, she loves her plants and her iPad, always tell me about all the books she's reading, the things she's seen on the internet, she cries with joy when she sees her grandkids and still sees her friends regularly. That's how diverse life is.
Your perspective is one of western youth supremacy, in many other cultures being older can be a privilege, you gain something, doors close but others open. That's how it's always been.
I'm in my 50s, and while my body is definitely not as functional in a raw sense as it was 25 years ago, my overall satisfaction with life has never been higher. I know that over the next 30+ years my body will start to fail in more substantial ways, and if I'm unlucky, so will my mind. But that's fine. There's a whole lot of possible awesome between now and then. And even the 'then' will probably not be so bad as to negate the awesome of that time.
My pleasure. I think we are pretty much biologically encoded to "enjoy" keeping stuff, using it, not throwing things away, and enjoying the different ages like seasons.
This is also why i love my old computer, my old scratched up cellphone, a beautiful old car that still runs fine, - the structural integrity of things that has served more than their purpose. I love them even more than "new things". It just feels good to use them on a visceral level.
It's a kind of mindfulness and appreciation for things like the beauty of the stone that has been rounded by the seawater over millennia, or your old trusty body that has more wrinkles but also works like biological magic if you really think about it.
Another iconic "older gentleman" i have met was a meditation teacher in his 80's in SF, still incredibly lucid, still thinking about science, reality dreams and meditation, experimenting pretty much everyday with "being alive" and sharing it with his community.
I don't find your view and threatripper's view to be contradictory. Nobody is perfectly optimized in all categories all the time, so even as the maxima decays, one can find areas to enjoy improving. Still, that does not negate the fact that the maxima is decreasing. Being aware of aging gives the activities an extra edge that being young does not give.
We can argue that it doesn't make sense the part of the phrase about being terminally will. We can argue that it doesn't make sense to be shot to a black hole, because op will not be able to do it. We could argue that it doesn't make sense because of the environmental impact of starting to shoot people to black holes...
Or we could just enjoy the poetic meaning of it, dream it could be possible and imagine how it would be.
The parent used terminally ill to mean; knowing he was going to die; we all know we are going to die, it's just a matter of how soon. We are all terminally ill.
Wouldn't that - theoretically speaking - be really difficult and cost a lot of energy (delta-v), just like how it costs a lot to get closer to our sun?
Depends on the black hole! For Sagittarius A* you’d need about 250 km/s in delta-v. If you’re targeting a supermassive black hole in another galaxy you’ll need at least 500 km/s to leave ours.
FWIW, you would be better off in a stasis chamber near the black hole waiting for 1 MM earth years to pass.
You could then check in with the planet for a cure.
It’s likely better to do it in a ship moving close to the speed of light. That comes back to earth every 1 MM earth years, intercepts pre-sent messages and if you like the state of earth then, get off the ship in an escape pod so the ship will never slow down.
After 70 days 18 hours and 10 minutes at 5g you reach 0.9999c, time dilation at that speed is over 70x. Which means what looks like 30 years for us at earth only takes 30years/70 = ~ 5 months +70 days (if we ignore the time dilation leading up to 0.9999c) for the traveller.
If you have a space ship that can accelerate at 5 g constantly, you can travel to the nearest black hole in lees than a year. In your reference frame
“I have no mouth and I must scream” basically but black hole edition.
Wonder if it’s possible for some type of unique intelligence to live inside a black hole.
There are lots of particles rushing towards the singularity and if there are “holes” small enough in the black where these particles spaghettify maybe some some electrical activity might organize together into some kind of intelligence (for brief moments).
I.e. conscious “beings” spontaneously appearing and disintegrating in and out of existence at these extreme gravitational levels.
For everyone spouting the current theory as to what it will be like: my terminally ill self (I’m not currently dying from anything other than entropy aka time) would be the only person from earth that would really know. Of course I couldn’t convey that knowledge but still. That’s the whole point.
I'm no expert but from what I recall you wouldn't get there: as you get closer you would reach a point where the difference of gravity in the space occupied by your own body is such that you would get torn apart and turned into spaghetti
Incidentally, the bigger the black hole is, the less tidal differences does it have, so a supermassive black hole is safer than an earth sized one (as in volume, not mass). At least from spaghettificiation aspect.
I really want to know what's in there, especially since it's always said if the black hole is large enough, you would only theoretically experience mild discomfort past the event horizon
Also what people are missing is that current theory has us with theoretical models of what experiencing a black hole is like. And I did mention a super massive black hole so tidal forces would be minimal.
Black holes are weird. So weird in fact, that the tidal forces are uneven across your body to the point where you'd black out because the blood had drained into your feet first. You have to go through "regular G force" before you get to the fun part [1]
Then there's spaghettification [2], the fun part, which will squeeze you and stretch you into a paste.
Out of curiosity, what does this look like on the creation end? Is it, a GUI edited scene with shader graphs? Custom C++? Some scripting? All of the above?
It's almost certainly a shader, and using little of Unreal directly. Inside a shader, you can do ray marching for volumetric clouds, and curve space by curving the rays. Some skill is need to make it look good and not show artifacts.
The difficulty I have when doing weird shader stuff like this is almost always working around how UE4 does shaders, i.e. I can write the shadertoy raymarcher but working out how to actually use it is quite hard.
That and Unreal's shader compile process is almost completely undocumented so you have to work out yourself how to bully the RHI etc. into doing what you want.
Here's a similar effect made in Unity (https://mmxxxviii.itch.io/volumetric-blackhole), with a breakdown video about how it was made, for those of you that are curious. It's possible this one uses a completely different technique, but it also appears raymarched to be raymarched.
The coolest things about black holes IMO, is that time becomes "heavier" as you approach them. In this regard, I believe that black holes protect us in a similar fashion that Jupiter does. Jupiter catches a lot of flak for us - remember the comets that bombarded it years back? What if Jupiter wasn't there and those hit something closer to us, such as Mars? If those comets hit a smaller body that was closer to us the toll on human existence could have been complete. It's a moot point, I know, because if Jupiter didn't exist neither would humans.
Back to my point, let's imagine two scenarios:
* a massive body flies past the protective system of a black hole, but does not enter that system and so is not subject to serious changes in spacetime
* a massive body flies directly into the system of a black hole, and it's destination is a specific planet
I will explain how that target planet planet will be protected by the black hole:
In the first example, the massive body flies past the black hole very rapidly. From the perspective of the target planet it was likely too rapid to ever hope to observe, because time moves faster where that object passed.
Before I move on to the second example I have an important point to make - while the distance that the intruding object needs to travel to reach its destination remains the same as it was when they were outside of the influence of the black hole's system (from the perspective of the target planet the intruding object could have travelled that distance in the blink of an eye when outside of the area of influence), the intruding object can no longer travel that distance in a blink of an eye from the perspective of the target planet once it enters the black hole's system - travel become relatively much slower. This is the primary protective measure that black holes provide us - more time.
That's interesting to think about right? Is the intruding object actually moving faster outside of the influencing zone? I would argue that yes, it is, because time flows differently. To visualize this, imagine two cars driving 60mph side by side - and then imagine that for one of those cars, the road also begins to travel forward, quickly propelling the car ahead of the other. While the wheels on the car may not have been spinning faster, make no doubt, it was travelling faster - even though to oberservers who were also on the moving road the car would only appear to be going 60mph.
And so how does "slowing down time for intruding objects" protect us? Well, nothing lasts forever (that we know of... maybe there's a cosmic drain somewhere that should be considered a constant, but we're not aware of that right now). The rigors of space travel and time will wear away at the intruding object more and more as it approaches the target planet which lies much closer to the black hole. There's a good chance that the intruding object will not survive to meet its target.
Black holes are definitely scary, but if you think about it they might just be our friends.
If anyone wants to see it in 360:
https://youtu.be/JDNZBT_GeqU