nothing can escape a black hole, but when something is traped in it, why is it stretched like a rubber band?

Answer 1

Well, first things first. Things can escape a black hole. The most notable is Hawking radiation, named after Stephen Hawking. In 1976, Hawking calculated that after a black hole forms, it starts to lose mass in the form of radiation. This highly energetic radiation does in fact escape the black hole intact, if perhaps not a little worse for the wear.

As for the second part of your question, perhaps a primer on general and special relativity would be appropriate. Check out Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" (it's quite a good read). Ok, without the relativity background, the object (like a spacecraft) would only seem to be stretched to an observer outside of the black hole's event horizon. To them, as the spacecraft was accelerated into the black hole, they would appear to elongate and flatten. This is due to the extreme tidal gravitational forces that are pulling the spacecraft in several directions. If you are interested in black holes, check out the second reference.

Answer 2

What was said about the radiation escaping the blackhole is incorrect, because that radiation escapes from the edge of the black hole, not from the inside. Just wanted to clear that up. Theoreticaly, nothing can escape the black hole since the acceleration towards it, once inside, is faster than that of the speed of light, and nothing can get out. Why things are stretched like a rubbber band, well here goes:

They are not realy stretched like a rubber band, but that is the way it would look like to you if you were the person watching. What happens is, that the closer it gets, the longer it takes the light (or the image of what is happening) to get to your eyes, so it gives the effect that it is stretching, because the light is taking longer to get to your eyes. At one point, it would just reach a situation where it would stand still, stretched to the edge.

Answer 3

When you get close enough to any powerful gravity source the difference in the force at your feet becomes significantly stronger then at your head because they are 5ft closer to the gravity source then your head. When this happens you get a tidal force, which is responsible for the tides on earth. At some point this tidal force is enough to rip you apart. This does not necessarily happen before you enter the event horizon, in a super massive black hole you could fall through the horizon and would not notice anything special until 40 years later when in the course of 10^-8 seconds you are pulled apart into a string and then compressed back together into a point.

That was all for a non rotating black hole. In a Kerr black hole with an angular momentum something far more funny happens. It is believed that spacetime is unstable around the inner horizon; an astronaut falling past it would see the entire future history of the universe pass before his eyes in an instant before being engulfed by a wall of infinite mass density.

Answer 4

Hi Ana,
listen to the rocket scientists will ya? Think of standing on an imaginary ladder. A ladder that does not stop your downward motion, only holds you temporarily at each rung (or level).

At the top, where you are to start your journey into the black hole, there is a force pulling on you toward the bottom of the ladder. Now imagine that each rung downward represents that same force only 100 times stronger than the rung above it. On the third rung down, that force is 10000 times stronger than the top rung and so forth. Imagine this force behaving the same way, all the way down to the bottom.
As you begin to move down this imaginary ladder, your feet are moving into a zone where the force is greater than where your head is located. This pulls on your legs and you start to stretch at a greater rate compared to your torso, which has yet to experience the strong pull your feet are experiencing. Your head, on the other hand, has yet to feel any pull other than the original force you began with. Now imagine falling through these zones, feet first.

In a very short time, as observed by others (time has ceased to exist for you), the molecules of your feet are shooting away from your body at extremely high speeds. The rest of your body is also being stretched while it unfortunately, tries to catch up to your ever accelerating feet molecules...Hence, the rubber band, or spaghettification.

Answer 5

When you stand on the surface of the earth, your feet are closer than your head to the center of the earth. Also, gravity is weaker the greater your distance from the center of gravity and in fact varies in accordance with the inverse square laws. The effect is hardly noticeable on earth but black holes are perhaps not much larger than the earth but contain so much mass that matter is reduced to a singularity in which the mass of the earth could occupy less space than the following period"." Therefore, the difference in the pull of gravity between someone's head and feet would be so great that their body would be stretched more and more as they approach the singularity. Of course time is also distorted so that it is difficult to imagine the entire process. Similar (but far less) tidal forces also exist on small but massive collapsed neutron stars.

Answer 6

its b/c the force of gravity is greater at the center of the black hole...along the edge the pull of gravity is not as strong therefore as something gets closer the end closest to the black hole is being pulled on more than the opposite end, which results in the object stretching

Answer 7

The object in question hits the varying degrees of gravitational pull at different times causing the matter to stretch out in a long ribbon and eventually break apart into the parts of atoms.

Answer 8

The pressure decreases, causing it to expand...i think

Answer 9

well really u get flat like a pancake