Ask Ethan: What's It Like When You Fall Into A Black Hole?
“[W]hat is it like to be/fall inside a rotating black hole? This is not observable, but calculable... I have talked with various people who have done these calculations, but I am getting old and keep forgetting things.”
I get a lot of questions that people submit for Ask Ethan, but only rarely do they come to me from other scientists who tower above me in the field. This week’s question, from Event Horizon Telescope scientist extraordinaire Heino Falcke, asks me to help him visualize what it would look like if you fell into a black hole. Not just any black hole, mind you, but a realistic, rotating black hole. There’s really only one person on Earth who understands this well enough: Andrew Hamilton, who has devoted the last 15 years of his life to figuring out what it looks like and what it means when this actually happens.
So what did I do? I went and met Andrew, interviewed him, read his papers, and used his simulations to give everyone the best answer I could. I hope you love it, and I hope (even moreso) that I got it right!
