[Physics] Where does the matter and energy go in a black hole

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Is it possible that when matter and energy enter the singularity inside a black hole, that it all re-appears at the big bang?
Some say that black holes will eventually swallow all the matter in the universe, so if it appears at the big bang, the universe will thus recycle itself…..

Best Answer

The matter, from the point of view of the external observer, never even reaches the event horizon. Watch your hypothetical astronaut fall towards it, with your hypothetically perfect telescope, and the astronaut's watch just clicks slower....and slower........and slower...................

You get the idea.

From the point of view of the astronaut, they're spaghettified (sooner or later, depending on the size of the black hole) - and this is the crux of the matter, and your question.

It's relatively well accepted that black holes do, eventually, evaporate due to Hawking radiation. This generally takes a Very Long Time though...and the bigger the black hole, the longer. Anything astronomically observable to us probably has an evaporation time of many times the age of the universe, in the hundred of billions of years and upwards.

But they do evaporate. And the mass-energy of everything that fell in, comes back out. The big question is whether there's any information preserved - does the astronaut's mass come out as anything other than (by definition) unencoded "junk" data in the form of black body / thermal radiation, or is there any trace of the original structure?

It's likely (and a tad depressing) that it's the former, the astronaut simply becomes a bunch of randomly dispersed photons....but it's still an open question.

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