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What Happens to Matter that Falls into a Black Hole?

-- | July 30, 2014

Question: So a question from the uneducated. If all matter at the beginning was in one infinitely small point so incredibly charged with energy would that weight punch through space creating a hole in the universe thus creating the first black hole perhaps the backlash of the initial tearing of space created such an explosion that the matter known and still unknown is the blowback from such an immense explosion? Also does a black hole act like a tunnel through space or the inbetween space dumping its matter out in nonspace slowly filling the nonspace with matter or does it tear through another location in space erupting the energy into space thus recycling the the energy? Or is a black hole an infinitely deep pit in the space as we know it and just continuously sucking in all matter and energy? — Sean

Answer: Based on current accepted theory of the structure of black holes all we can say is that matter eventually falls onto the singularity, or point where the gravitational force is infinite, and is therefore compressed to a single point. Your last suggestion is the one most consistent with what theorists believe is the structure inside a black hole. As you can probably imagine, it is very hard to obtain measurements of black holes that we can use to better constrain these theories, making them rather open to interpretation.

Jeff Mangum

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