The Anatomy Of A Black Hole

[EcK]

That's not a stupid question at all, it's the central question, the holy freaking graal of physics.
Gravity is the reason why quantum physics and einsteinian relativity (assumption of space time etc) can't manage to be unified into one theory that'd work for both particles and large scale objects.

Which is why black holes are so fascinating, as they have alot of the properties of a gigantic particle like Jock(tm) said, yet are clearly macro scale objects.

 

[EcK]

Let me expose one of the incompatibilities of the two models:

basically in particle physics you have to accept the premise that everything is particle/virtual particle/field interactions. You don't take any 'space time' into account.

While the einsteinian view uses curved space time to explain gravity.
Effects have been observed directly (gravity lensing: how huge masses modify the observed position of stars etc.)

So now in particle physics we uses a set of values to explain the physical properties and behavior or particles. One of these value is the spin of a particle.
One issue is that, the way the spin is transfered from one particle to another only works in models where you consider space time to be flat.

 

[Asterion]

This stemmed from equations done that predicted there were really two regions of spacetime connected with the black hole. One region was said to be out universe, and the other said to be another universe connected through a wormhole. There would also be a white hole in the "past" section of the Schwarzschild geometry. The entire object is really a "grey-hole".

You can see the process at arriving at this conclusion here:
Schwarzschild Geometry
http://www.math.ksu.edu/~westmore/PenrosediagramsTALK.pdf
Transition from Schwarzchild single-universe view of black hole to Kruskal-Szekeres two-universe view:
http://www.jessemazer.com/images/p835Gravitation.jpg

I've heard that the idea of a white hole wont work because it violates the second law of thermodynamics... I can see how that law is related... but I have no idea how that works. The source I used didn't actually explain it.

And I think this only applies to a certain type of black hole, but I'm not sure of that.

 

[uumlau]

Anatomy of a Black Hole

I thought it was pretty cool, though I don't think it covered even half as much as it could/should have.

Interesting link, but very incomplete, and misleading/incorrect in some places. It doesn't even mention that black holes are at the center of the debate on how to deal with quantum gravity. I wrote a more complete paper including Hawking's pre-1980 findings in the 8th grade.