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:: There is no theoretical limit.
: "AA Institute" <abdul.ahad@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
: I wonder what the equations are that leads one to that conclusion?
You seem to be thinking of it as a fixed-sized door, through which
objects pass. That turns out not to be the case.
: Isn't it a wonderful puzzle when we speculate that limitless amounts
: of mass can disappear through these things, without knowing where it
: all goes to...
The mass doesn't "go anywhere". It's still right there.
The notion of a black hole as a portal to another universe,
or to another part of this universe, is the notion of "wormholes",
which aren't quite the same thing as a black hole.
: If memory serves me right, I seem to recall from one of the 'Space'
: series (with Sam Neill), a while back, that a black hole gets bigger
: and more powerful as more material gets sucked into it.
In the same way that a planet's gravity gets stronger the more
material has fallen upon it. This is hardly a mysterious and
strange thing. The "equations that lead one to that conclusion"
are basically those that show that the more mass an object has,
the "more gravity" it has.
One way of thinking about black holes is to look at them as drops of
fluid, enclosed in a "membrane" which is the event horizon. The more mass
inside, the bigger the membrane. This can be misleading in detail, since
after what's inside isn't realy a "fluid", but as a simple mental model
describing how they interact with other objects, I've seen it recommended
in various popularizations... I think in a Scientific American article
of a few years ago.
Wayne Throop throopw@xxxxxxxxx http://sheol.org/throopw
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