The event horizon is the effect of the object not reflecting light.
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Deme@sopuli.xyz 2 months agoThe event horizon isn’t a physical object. Does a singularity reflect light? (I’m guessing it’s still a no)
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Deme@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
No. An object within the event horizon is still reflecting light just as it was before falling in. The only difference is in relation to where that reflected light can or cannot go from there.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Never seen a singularity so would have to agree it doesn’t. Visible Event Horizons are made up of matter that does reflect light, but if there is no matter involved only light you would likely see is distorted as it passes through it from other sources
Deme@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
No event horizon is made up of matter. Do you mean the matter around and behind the black hole, by which the location and size of the black hole can be inferred?
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah that’s what I was referring to
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Once something moves past the horizon any light that bounced off it would be pulled towards the center with it. Effectively making it non reflective. It’s possible all the energy from being crushed into a singularity causes a glow around it, like the disk around the outer area of a black hole. If that’s the case, the glow itself would also be sucked immediately into the singularity.
Most scientists just default to we don’t know anything about the singularity.
ikidd@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The accretion disk would emit light as particles were accelerated into the hole. Plus there would be hawking radiation from the evaporative process black holes have.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 2 months ago
The only form of “light” (it isn’t really light but radiation, which I’d basically the same as light just that it has a different energy value etc) is the hawking radiation.
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Excellent point, thank you.
Deme@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
The event horizon only obscures objects that are inside it, it has nothing to do with reflectivity of the object itself.
An observer situated between the singularity and an object within the event horizon could still intercept the light reflected from said object.
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Light bouncing of an object is what creates reflection. The only way to see reflection past the horizon is to be between the object and the singularity.
Deme@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
That is what I said, yes.
The point being that the event horizon deals with the structure of spacetime, while reflectivity is a material property. An object doesn’t get painted with vantablack when it passes the event horizon.