Is matter conserved in some form when it is devoured by a black hole?

Question

I saw this in the news yesterday: "NASA telescope sees black hole gulping remote star"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061206/sc_nm/blackhole_dc

Does the Law of Conservation of Mass apply when something is consumed by a black hole?

What happens to a star that is devoured? Is it completely annihilated, or will it still exist in little particles floating about inside the black hole?

Answer 1

Conservation of matter/energy still applies. The matter is still there in some form, otherwise we would not feel the gravity of the matter outside the black hole. Some scientists believe the matter is compressed into other dimensions not accessible to us.

Answer 2

A black hole is still just a very massive star. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't act that much different than any other object with mass, it just does it all on a much larger scale.

A black hole has SO MUCH mass that its gravity is too strong for things to escape its gravitational influence, even light. Thus it is considered "Black" because all light that hits it is absorbed by it and can not deflect or escape its gravity.

SO, to answer your question, if a star is consumed by a black hole, then the black hole basically becomes that much more massive. The mass of the start is immediately crushed by the gravity of the black hole and distributed almost uniformly among the surface of the black hole.

It would be like if a meteor hit the earth. The earth would simply weigh just a little bit more. However, because of the high gravity of a black hole, there wouldn't be an visable explosion, because the high gravity would keep the actual explosion from haveing anywhere to explode to, i.e., it would be sucking the contents toward the center of the black hole with so much strength that the explosion itself would be contained within the mass of the black hole and have no where else to go.

The MYSTERY is what state that mass is in once it comes to be a part of the black hole. Because the black hole is so massive, its gravity pulls in other masses at nearly the speed of light. Thus, it is compacting on itself with a pressure that is unfathomable, and the mass of the engulfed star is instantly disentegrated into a plasma form or even an unknown form even hotter and more chaotic than plasma. Also, because of the intense pressures and reactions, the mass of the black hole is deconstructing and reconstructing the atoms of its mass into heavy elements that we likely have never seen before, which have properties that we certainly can not predict. Think uber-nuclear material with billions of times the chaotic, unstable properties of our nuclear materials.

But in the basic sense, a star falling into a black hole is just a gravitational event, and the star does not "exist in little particles floating around inside the black hole," it settles into a state as a normal part of the black hole.

Answer 3

Mass is conserved, by the hole's gravitational field and the diameter of it's event horizon, the more mass falls in, the stronger the field and the bigger the hole.

There is nothing inside a black hole, it is completely empty except for the infinitesimal singularity at it's center, that's where all the matter that fell into the hole goes, so from the event horizon to the singularity, there is nothing, black holes are empty.

Answer 4

a black hole consume whatever goes near it. Nothing can escape or survive a black hole. So the answer to your question is no. The black hole you read about devoured a star that "strayed" too closely to the balck hole, it gave off a huge light show which indicated it was literally being torn apart. once this happnes everything getts "sucked" into the hole and gone forever.

Answer 5

on an identical time as prevalent relativity describes a black hollow as a area of empty area with a pointlike singularity on the midsection and an experience horizon on the periphery, the define variations whilst the outcomes of quantum mechanics are taken under consideration. learn in this situation shows that, quite than preserving captured remember perpetually, black holes could slowly leak a variety of thermal power called Hawking radiation.inspite of the undeniable fact that, the perfect, perfect description of black holes, requiring an concept of quantum gravity, is unknown.

Answer 6

Black holes do have mass, with the mass of the black hole being the sum of the masses of objects passing into it.

In the same way, they have angular momentum and charge.

Answer 7

i guess