Spacetime inside the horizon of a black hole

black-holesevent-horizongeneral-relativitysingularitiesspacetime

According to Susskind a bit of information crossing the event horizon of a black hole instantaneously encounters the singularity. Also, time appears to gradually slow down for an object approaching the horizon. Is this tantamount to saying that the curvature of spacetime approaches and becomes vertical exactly at the horizon? Or could you say that the curvature just becomes close enough to vertical at the horizon to trap light/information?
If the latter is true then there is finite spacetime inside the horizon. This spacetime could not be observed by an observer outside the black hole. Again, referencing Susskind, black hole complementarity suggests that an observer passing into the horizon would not experience anything and that the observer would hit the singularity. Yes, but not instantaneously that would be paradoxical to experiencing nothing. The question then is when will the observer hit the singularity. And furthermore, could the space time inside the horizon be very large to the internal observer when you consider a variable transformation for the ratio of the speed of the clocks for the internal and external observers?

Best Answer

The general understanding is that inside a black hole space and and time change their places, see for example explanation here: https://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlight/changing_places/ . If I understand it right, one should correctly speak about distance and not time for reaching the singularity. Another interesting and unconventional explanation I have heard is that if you crossed (without noticing) by car the event horizon on your Monday, then no matter where you go, how you drive, cross and across, back and forth, it comes Friday and you cease to exist in the singularity. It came me in mind that it is the best description of live, too. You are born without noticing, do a lot of things, driving, too, and on some day you cease to exist. Nice, isn't it?

A more enlightening explanation I have heard from Gerard t'Hooft is:

... . "An exact solution helps: consider a black hole formed by matter that goes in by the speed of light. Doesn't change the physics very much but makes it easy to understand. If all particles (basically without rest mass) would enter in a spherically symmetric mode then you can write the solution exactly. One finds that the horizon already opens up at a space-time point at the center (but no singularity there or anywhere else). As soon as the matter passed the horizon the outside world is in the Schwarzschild metric. Now you have to understand that in the inside region, surrounded by the horizon, space and time interchange roles. What you thought is space (such as the r coordinate) is actually time and what you thought to be time (the t coordinate) is actually space. The singularity is at r=0 but that is actually in the future. Not only that, it is, in a sense, the infinite future because outside observers will never see anything that has passed the horizon. For the outside observer, that never happens. For a black hole formed by matter, there is no past singularity. For quantum mechanics however, everything has to be reformulated. Singularities disappear or become physically immaterial. There are many more such things that people fail to understand, while it isn't difficult.

G. 't Hooft"

I hope, I could help.

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