I’m calling Godwin’s on the Grammar Nazis.

It doesn’t do what you seem to think it does.

>38. Semantic Nazi Says:

Somehow, I don’t think “Godwin’s law” (a rather dubious notion in any case) applies here.

Nothing dubious about it – but you also seem to think it says something it doesn’t.

See, for example, Wikipedia, or the Jargon file, or the relevant FAQ.

Yes, the process of spaghettification was explained in the book by Paul Davies. The book went on to elaborate that “it was such stretch-and-squeeze gravitational forces that ripped comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into fragments before it plunged into Jupiter in 1994.” (page 54)

There was also this part about spaghettification being less likely to happen for bigger black holes. Mr. Davies wrote “You could just about survive falling to the surface of a black hole with ten thousand solar masses. A supermassive black hole a billion kilometers across would be no problem, but such an object would have a mass equal to a small galaxy – not a very practical proposition for accessing another universe.”

The physics of black holes are really entertaining, but also quite complicated since they do not only depend on special relativity but strongly on general relativity.
First: Yes, a black hole is defined by the boundary that the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. And since it is, indeed, true that no matter with mass (a rest-mass that is not zero – light has a rest mass that IS zero, e.g.) can reach the speed of light. So a massive particles that once crossed the boundary (called the event horizon) will never come out again!

However, if a particle comes close to the event horizon there are strange thing happening to it. Since you have severe tidal forces acting on the particle it is streched vertically but in the same time compressed horizontally. The particles becomes very streched – a process that is called “spaghettification” .

The matter that falls into a black hole does not necessarily have to travel with the speed of light – it just can’t get out any more. There are also some other weird effects that act on spacetime itself, which are very complicated and probably hard to understand (frame-dragging as a key-word).

I find black holes to be a very fascinating subject. I have here a book by Paul Davies, entitled How to Build a Time Machine, which I acquired many years ago as a gift. It was my first steps into the realm of E=mc² , the relationship between gravity and matter, time/space curves, etc.. And I can tell you, not being a scientist myself, despite my faux nom de plume here, I came out of that book as baffled as when I first began reading it. Nonetheless, it was a pleasurable read, if only to ignite further interest in science and also garner basic knowledge about the secrets of the cosmos.

A recent question that popped up in my head is, if the gravity of a black hole were so strong that not even light could escape, doesn’t that then translate that matter which falls into the hole would also be travelling at the speed of light, if not at greater speeds due to the intense force that even overpowers light?

I’m asking this because I am now aware, after recent visits into other scientific sites, that there are camps out there that say it is impossible for matter to reach the speed of light. They even have Einstein’s equation to back them up. I personally do not know what your take on this is. If you are one such proponent, then I mean no offence. (Though of course, if you are a Star Trek fan, I’m guessing you’re open to the possibility of faster-than-light scenarios.)