why can't light, which is massless, escape the gravity of a black hole?

Answer 1

Nobody has answered this correctly yet. Light does not have any rest mass. The reason why it cannot escape a black hole once inside the event horizon is that the gravitational fiels is so intense that it warps the fabric of spacetime. At the event horizon, if you were to turn tangent to the event horizon and shoot a laser beam out straight you would hit yourself in the back. Any light inside the horizon just spirals in, to where IDK.

Answer 2

To say that light is massless is not exactly accurate. Light does indeed have mass, it is just very, very minute. Light is composed of particles known as photons which do have a certain amount of mass, though that mass is nearly immeasurable. That is why light is bent when passing near larger objects in space, and also why light can not escape a black hole. The gravity of a black hole is so intense that it bends space and time around it, pulling everything, including light, inwards towards it.

Answer 3

Light IS made of photons and while they have such little weight, they still have atomic mass which gets sucked into the black hole. The black hole then spits out two plumes of material and gamma rays from the stellar north and south poles of the black hole.

Answer 4

It is theorized that even time is bent around a black hole.

Nobody really knows anything about black holes. We only theorize that they exist because there are moving points in the universe which light goes into and does not come out of.

Answer 5

OMG, you are all wrong ... light is massless. I can't believe every single on of you got that wrong. Electromagnetic energy has zero rest mass. It is still subject to gravitational effects however.

Since photons contribute to the stress-energy tensor, they exert a gravitational attraction on other objects, according to the theory of general relativity. Conversely, photons are themselves affected by gravity; their normally straight trajectories may be bent by warped spacetime, as in gravitational lensing, and their frequencies may be lowered by moving to a higher gravitational potential, as in the Pound-Rebka experiment. However, these effects are not specific to photons; exactly the same effects would be predicted for classical electromagnetic waves

Answer 6

LIGHT IS WEIGHTLESS!

Theoretically, it cannot escape a black hole because the escape velocity of a black hole is the speed of light. Light does have energy (measured in photons) and black holes alter the trajectories of light.

Answer 7

I think light is made of photons which aren't massless. When light hits a surface it pushes against it. I can feel when a laser pointer is shined on my skin I can feel it. Not regular flashlights though. That sounds crazy but its true.

Answer 8

PHOTONS DO NOT HAVE REST MASS.

Conceptually, all mass bends the space-time around it. When a photon is near a large mass it starts to follow this bend. Like a curved on-ramp.

I don't know the mathematics of this but if photons had mass it would violate Einstein's laws of relativity.

Answer 9

it can be due to gravatational pull, which counteracts the gravity of a black hole, a case of a negative against a positive. The gravity of a black hole is renowned for its inability to absorve light, which is why it is a black hole.

Answer 10

Weight isn't the only issue. Look what simple water does to light at the right depth.