How can stars collapse to black holes when time dilation increases with gravity?

Question

Time dilation is the phenomenon whereby an observer finds that another's clock which is physically identical to their own is ticking at a slower rate as measured by their own clock. (wikipedia).

Essentially, a clock on the surface of the earth will go slightly slower than a clock on the moon where there is less gravity.

What I don't understand is how a black hole can collapse to an almost infinitely small mass when the time dilation would become increasingly high. I mean wouldn't time go so slow that matter falling in would completely stop?? Would an object falling in ever find the center before the end of the universe?

Time dilation is the phenomenon whereby an observer finds that another's clock which is physically identical to their own is ticking at a slower rate as measured by their own clock. (wikipedia).

Essentially, a clock on the surface of the earth will go slightly slower than a clock on the moon where there is less gravity.

What I don't understand is how a black hole can collapse to an almost infinitely small mass when the time dilation would become increasingly high. I mean wouldn't time go so slow that matter falling in would completely stop?? Would an object falling in ever find the center before the end of the universe?

More specifically, how can the black hole form in the first place, if we cannot witness anything falling in within our lifetimes (or that of the universe)?

Answer 1

No argument with the other answers, but try looking for references to "frozen stars"

Answer 2

Time dilation is relative. An observer far away would see the time slow down on an observer's watch that is near a black hole. However, the observer wouldn't see his own clock going slower; he would see it ticking at the same rate it always had. So if the star were "alive", it would see itself collapsing into a very small volume but an observer far away would probably see it reach a certain point and then freeze. This is why we never visibly witness things falling into a black hole. We can see things approaching a black hole but once they get close enough to the black hole we would see them freeze and fade away even though they might have already passed through the even horizon.
An observer would reach the center in a finite amount of time but would certainly be crushed beyond belief. Small black holes have stron tidal forces at and around their event horizons so and observer that gets too close would be streched and compressed in different directions (we would die). However, supermassive black holes have a larger schwarzchild radius which has a more uniform distribution of force and could therefore possibly allow us to pass through the event horizon safely. However, in both cases we would reach the center in a finite amount of time.

Answer 3

If you were observing an object falling into a black hole from a reasonably close proximity, it would never appear to fall all the way in for that reason. Remember that relativity is very much about point of reference.

Answer 4

Black hole - Wikipedia, the free...
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_holes
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