I am thinking along the line of the second concept that you list at the end. The photon would cease to exist at any energy if allowed to continue by itself from the spaceship that is infinitesimally close to the boundary. So, instead, the second ship intercepts it and any modulation it contains and then uses a new transmitter at a higher frequency to begin the path back to us. The main point is that if they had tried to use the original frequency that they received from the first guy, it too would have gone away by the time it reaches us. The magic is in the fact that more energy is available to complete the path.
I believe that this technique makes good sense and would allow the first ship to communicate back home. It still remains to be seen whether or not we receive the message before a very long time has elapsed. consider that the first guy has virtually stopped moving as far as we are concerned and it seems possible that the second ship would see him moving pretty slowly, but not as slowly as we observe. My intuition is that the second spaceman would very quickly reach a state of extreme retardation as he approached the boundary and that there would be a short time window during which he could send a signal before he also froze. This is heavy. For some reason it reminds me of the guy that covered half a given distance in a certain amount of time. He never gets there as a result since distance can be halved forever. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>; vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Wed, Dec 26, 2012 11:13 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:[OT]:Question About Event Horizon At 07:17 PM 12/26/2012, David Roberson wrote: >Well, this was a type of trick question. I agree that from the >perspective of an observer far away out of the influence of the >imaginary black hole boundary the probe ship would never appear to >breech the boundary. We would see any light emitted from this ship >very red shifted as the ship proceeded forward from our >perspective. Eventually, as after an infinite amount of time the >ship would become invisible entirely since no energy is left within >photons that arrive at our location. If you can explain that, great. (That "infinite amount of time," i.e., the slowdown, fries my brain at this point. Yes, at the limit, no photons can reach us, but this doesn't match the description of the event horizon.) As the ship *approaches* the event horizon, it is still outside of it. And the light still travels at the speed of light, it is merely redshifted. >Now, here is my thought experiment. Take another probe ship and let >it follow the first one toward the boundary. It is closer to the >first ship than us such that it perceives the boundary as nearer to >the black hole center than us. It therefore remains in contact with >the first probe and can receive transmissions from it after we can >no longer receive significant energy. We readily pick up signals >from the second ship since it is a safe distance from the boundary >that we perceive. We obtain status from the first probe via the second. This is roughly the paradox that I came across, the "rat" I smell. >I wonder if this is a hypothetical technique that would allow >information to be obtained from objects such as our first probe ship >as they arbitrarily approach a black hole? Could a chain of relay >stations defeat the lost information problem? If this is possible >then a lot of interesting questions arise. Perhaps information is >not lost as it enters a black hole after all. Or perhaps, far more likely, we are not understanding black holes. I'm not seeing any clear explanations out there, with an easy search. That's puzzing in itself. I found plenty of articles that say "this is how it is" or "that is how it is," but very little explanation that actually leads to understanding. When that happens in schools, it's a sign that the teacher doesn't really grasp the subject.... or, alternatively, is knowledgeable, but clueless as to how to explain it. I'm suspecting there is a problem with relativity here. If a photon can travel from spaceship A to spaceship B and from B to our outside observer, why can't the same photon just travel from A to the outside observer. It makes no sense, David. Okay, here is how it could make sense. The photon from A to B is redshifted. If it continued to travel it would be redshifted out of existence. However, B emits a photon that is back at a starting frequency, so it can make it. But this is all totally contrary to other explanations.
