okl......I think you may be mistaking on your visualisation of a blackhole (as far as dimensions go). If I were to take a stab at what's going on in your head, I'd say that you probably see a giant rubber sheet with a funnel dipping downward and this is representing a blackhole. This funnel is sucking things in like a vacuum and they dissapear in the depths, never to be seen again. Is this somewhere in the ball park.....??

I think the best possible visual representation of a non rotating blackhole is a sphere, in which the surface of the sphere is anologous to the "mouth" of a funnel that dips downward in the direction of a fourth dimensional axis.

Hard to picture?? Well you already accomplished this picture in three dimensions, and I couldn't expect you to accuaretly visualize four dimensions (I dont think that is possible for any human being). But what you want to do is think.....higher dimensions!!! Don't think of this little primitive funnel sucking things out of the sky, think of a more complex four dimensional dip in the "fabric of spacetime" that many objects tend to "roll into" so to speak. A blackhole is definitley not a pipe either.....

• RE: RE: question - okl - October 28, 2000 - 14:09 UTC