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The center of a black hole...

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If nothing can escape from a black hole, and everything is crushed to an infinite density, what about the heat?

Heat cannot escape, and certainly matter is probably fusing together at an enormous rate creating untold amounts of energy and more heat. So my question is 2 fold:

1) Is the heat in the center of a black hole finite or infinite?
2) Does the fusion process (if there is one) continue past all known elements ad infinitum?

If i am wrong in my assumptions, please explain why. So much i want to know, so little time.
 
In all honesty you wont get a correct answer to your questions, you will get theory fused with best guess - or theoretcial physics to give its proper name. Until a black hole is found/discovered/investigated you will only ever get guesses. Mine would be finite and no.
 
Remember that in a black hole, matter is in a degenerate state, so there is no concept of atoms or even nuclei - so there are no "elements" there. There will not even be any protons or electrons as these would have been brought together as neutrons earlier in the process - hence a "neutron star". The neutrons themselves then disappear as entities as the collapse to a black hole continues past this point - albeit the critical collapse happens so fast that there is little or no concept of the time taken for collapse.

Therefore you cannot talk of fusion carrying on as conventionally understood e.g. two hydrogen nuclei fuse to give a helium nucleus.
 
The core of a black hole is believed to be the remains of a star severat thousand times the size of our sun that has collapsed in on itself. This creates an imense mass in an alost infinately small area, thus changing the space time at that point. We know from immages sent back to us from the Hubble telescope of apparent black holes jetesoning significant quantities of gama radiation into space through an axis that is perpendicular to the rotation of the black hole. Thus we can hypothisise that all matter and energy is broken down into it's constituen parts, similar to the very hot soup imedialty after the big bang, before being converted into gama radiation before being jetasonned into space.

Thus in answer to your questions, due to the consiuderable ammount of energy being released as gama radiation, the energy would be finite, and in answer to your other question the reverse could be true as matter is broken down.
 
it's not infinitely dense, and its not infinitely small. IF our sun was to become a black hole, current estimates are of one with a diameter of less than 3 km. some blackholes emit high energy gamma radiation which obviously has enough energy to escape the gravity. we dont know anything that happens in a black hole. the massive gravity does not allow classical mechanics to work. i would hardly say that anything "exists" in a black hole except for matter. it's ultra dense core is just a lump of matter. it's structure supercedes any definition of states of matter that we have names for.
 
All of these discussions are quite good and well thought out. I agree with everyone here that black holes are very theoretical entities and you cannot get a hard and fast answer to the questions. I think it is interesting that gamma radiation (photons of radiation) can escape a black hole while light (also photons of radiation) cannot. It almost gives warrant to the dual nature of light in that it is particle-like and wave-like. For if light is particle-like, then it would definately not be able to escape the intense gravity well generated by a black hole. But I digress, there is not enough known about black holes and other space phenomena at this point to draw any hard and fast conclusions about specific behavior. However, quite a lot on general behavior has been deduced such as the points about a large (finite) amount of mass occupying a very small (finite) amount of space.
 
I always thought that the gamma ray bursts were emitted from matter as it was drawn through the event horizon rather than being emitted from within. I think that once you have passed the event horizon, that's it as far as emissions (in the conventionally understood sense) are concerned. The reason that the gamma emissions are seen as relatively tight beams coming from the poles are due to the matter that is being pulled in spiralling down the magnetic field of the black hole - these field lines (as on Earth) converge on the poles.
 
Originally posted by: NickE
I always thought that the gamma ray bursts were emitted from matter as it was drawn through the event horizon rather than being emitted from within. I think that once you have passed the event horizon, that's it as far as emissions (in the conventionally understood sense) are concerned. The reason that the gamma emissions are seen as relatively tight beams coming from the poles are due to the matter that is being pulled in spiralling down the magnetic field of the black hole - these field lines (as on Earth) converge on the poles.
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I think according to hawking, it comes from within, eventually leading to the collapse of a black hole, or rather its dissapearance.
 
There is "Hawking Radiation" which is trivial in any large size black hole and there is gamma radiation which is what we use to find black holes. Gamma radiation is caused by the intense friction of matter that is being sucked into the hole. Hawking radiation is caused by the fact that there is a constant stream of virtual particle/anti-particle pairs being created at the event horizon. Every once in a while, a particle/anti-particle will be sucked in while the other one does not, leading to a net loss of mass in the black hole. What is really happeneing is not that energy is escaping, its negative energy being sucked in.
 
The gamma rays are emitted on impact of the surface of the black hole...
What is happening is the atoms and subatomic patricles themselves are being crushed and destroyed. the gammay rays are the energy of the strong & weak nuclear forces as well as the unnamed force holding the quirks together to make (protons and neutrons) being released. The strong and weak nuclear forces are the strongest and highest energies known to us at this point.

The reason they escape at the poles...is exactly what you said...the only place that has a straightline unaffected by the gravitational and magnetic fields are the poles.
 
While we can develop all the theories we want, the inside of an event horizon is unobservable, so Hawking Radiation is the only way we know that anything is even in there. Shalmanese is right about the Hawking and Gamma Radiation, and nothing really escapes the hole, but by a wierd twist of fate its mass can decrease.
 
set mass proportional to the change in the velocity of time and time as a function of the change in entropy and it all makes perfect sense....







unless that mushroom i just ate wasn't an ordinary mushroom...
 
All that can be said about a black hole inside the event horizion is that it is a singularity. This is the Physicist/Mathematician way of saying, "We do not, and cannot know" There is no mathematical model on which predictions can be based so there is nothing that can be said.

I did say INSIDE, Hawking radiation occurs just at the event horizon, when a virtual partical passes the event horizon, it must cancel itself out by recombining with a real paricle, thus the Hawking evaporation of Black Holes.
 
Originally posted by: NickE
I always thought that the gamma ray bursts were emitted from matter as it was drawn through the event horizon rather than being emitted from within. I think that once you have passed the event horizon, that's it as far as emissions (in the conventionally understood sense) are concerned. The reason that the gamma emissions are seen as relatively tight beams coming from the poles are due to the matter that is being pulled in spiralling down the magnetic field of the black hole - these field lines (as on Earth) converge on the poles.
Click to expand...

I was going to say something like that, though if I remember right, most of the radiation emitted by matter approaching the event horizon is in the form of X-rays.

There was a Scientific American article recently, and some new theory is that black holes are actually a sort of bizarre frozen matter. Ok, as the particles are approaching the event horizon, they're smacking into each other like crazy, get incredibly hot, and emit radiation as they are torn apart and sucked in. But then what? They might be merged together, and unable to move at all - absolute zero maybe?
 
it's not just gamma radiation, it's high energy gamma radiation. what is the difference? more energy... basically, we know nothing so all they say is high energy gamma radiation... EMR is EMR, refer to your EMR graphs for details. gamma rays have more energy than visible light.
 
I have two somewhat related questions about black holes as well (well one isn't really):

1. If the black hole singularity can "punch a hole" through space, with a sort of wormhole effect - I think I got this from Hawking - could it punch a hole through a dimension? And if so, could gravity in general affect another dimension? And if so, could this explain dark matter (reverse in this situation of course)?

2. If a photon has no mass, how is it affected by gravity? I know this is only slightly related, but still it's puzzling - I think the last I heard on it was that photons do have mass, but a mass so small it was unmeasurable (or about so), but I think that may have been just theory.
 
Heat would only be generated if the compression of mass were an exothermic reaction. I see no reason why this would be the case, especially since all molecular bonds, the transducers of infrared radiation, would be non-existent. The destruction of these bonds during assimilation would be expected to release heat, but to what medium or vehicle would the heat be transferred? The black hole, by virtue of what it accomplishes, must then be thought to consume heat radiation as it does mass, leading to an entity with no thermal properties (Temperature does not exist unless a medium is present to absorb and transfer infrared radiation).
In essence, to your first question, there is no heat.

I would imagine that, as others have suggested, that the condensed matter of a black hole is that of a dynamic, super dense matter in flux consisting of every conceivable and unconceived sub-atomic particle. No atoms would exist.
 
Originally posted by: DKlein
I have two somewhat related questions about black holes as well (well one isn't really):

1. If the black hole singularity can "punch a hole" through space, with a sort of wormhole effect - I think I got this from Hawking - could it punch a hole through a dimension? And if so, could gravity in general affect another dimension? And if so, could this explain dark matter (reverse in this situation of course)?

2. If a photon has no mass, how is it affected by gravity? I know this is only slightly related, but still it's puzzling - I think the last I heard on it was that photons do have mass, but a mass so small it was unmeasurable (or about so), but I think that may have been just theory.
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it's "spacetime" not space. space is "nothing". a black hole forms a high gravity area which greatly distorts spacetime itself. the results are unknown. some physicists theorize about the concept of a wormhole since they dont really know what happens to matter that enters a black hole. we dont know enough to truly understand black holes to speculate anything. the matter can just as well just sit there.

photons must travel. since gravity distorts spacetime, and photons travel through spacetime, then it is this reasoning which causes photons to be affected by gravity.
 
Originally posted by: DKlein
I have two somewhat related questions about black holes as well (well one isn't really):

1. If the black hole singularity can "punch a hole" through space, with a sort of wormhole effect - I think I got this from Hawking - could it punch a hole through a dimension? And if so, could gravity in general affect another dimension? And if so, could this explain dark matter (reverse in this situation of course)?

2. If a photon has no mass, how is it affected by gravity? I know this is only slightly related, but still it's puzzling - I think the last I heard on it was that photons do have mass, but a mass so small it was unmeasurable (or about so), but I think that may have been just theory.
Click to expand...

1. That could be interesting - the punched holes from black holes in other dimensions could be drawn to the gravity wells of matter in this dimension. Maybe.

2. I'd move toward the notion that it just has an absolutely incredibly small amount of mass.
Also, gravity has been described as a curvature of spacetime. So the photon is still travelling in a "straight" line - that line is just curved by gravity.
 
2. I was always under the impression that Photons had mass when in motion, but have 0 mass at rest. which leads into the theroy that Matter and Energy might be interchangable because a photon only has mass because it has energy, and when the energy is absorbed the mass is removed.
 
I think you got it backwards.

The particle properties of light (photon state) could only be observed when the energy interacts with another particle (IE reflected, refracted, etc.) so at the point when the photon collides with another particle, it has mass and momentum. (which at some instant, it would be at rest)

when energy is traveling through a medium it usually has its wave properties (when it is moving).
 
http://dnausers.d-n-a.net/dnetGOjg/Black/Holes.htm

"Holes with a larger mass will have an even longer lifespan as the larger the hole the lower its temperature and surface gravity and therefore the more weakly it emits particles.

When the black holes mass reduces to a figure of below 100 million tons, with its event horizon now smaller than an atomic nucleus, the hole will be then be at a temperature in the order of a trillion to 100,000 trillion kelvin. Reasonable speculation suggests that it is now so hot that it will finally explode in a final burst of energy. "


Interesting...
 
Originally posted by: gururu
http://dnausers.d-n-a.net/dnetGOjg/Black/Holes.htm

"Holes with a larger mass will have an even longer lifespan as the larger the hole the lower its temperature and surface gravity and therefore the more weakly it emits particles.

When the black holes mass reduces to a figure of below 100 million tons, with its event horizon now smaller than an atomic nucleus, the hole will be then be at a temperature in the order of a trillion to 100,000 trillion kelvin. Reasonable speculation suggests that it is now so hot that it will finally explode in a final burst of energy. "


Interesting...
Click to expand...

whoa??

So who is correct here? And why is the hole colder when its larger and has more mass?
 
Originally posted by: gururu
http://dnausers.d-n-a.net/dnetGOjg/Black/Holes.htm

"Holes with a larger mass will have an even longer lifespan as the larger the hole the lower its temperature and surface gravity and therefore the more weakly it emits particles.

When the black holes mass reduces to a figure of below 100 million tons, with its event horizon now smaller than an atomic nucleus, the hole will be then be at a temperature in the order of a trillion to 100,000 trillion kelvin. Reasonable speculation suggests that it is now so hot that it will finally explode in a final burst of energy. "


Interesting...
Click to expand...

OMG! We're all dooomed! 😛

That is interesting though, wouldn't that imply that the larger a galaxy is, the less stable it is (thinking about the theory that there's a black hole at the centre of each galaxy)? Hmm...
 
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