4.12 Fourteen Questions People Ask About Black Holes

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1. Will a black hole eat an entire galaxy?
2. No. Even a hungry black hole waits for supply, which is scarce; accretion is inefficient, and much of the heated gas is expelled by winds and jets.
3. Keywords: gating by the tension skin, energy divided across three escape routes.
4. See also: 4.1, 4.7, 4.8
5. Will our Solar System be affected by a black hole?
6. Extremely unlikely. At typical distances, the guiding pull is far weaker than the Sun’s gravity, and tidal effects are negligible.
7. Keywords: range of the tension landscape, weak-field limit.
8. See also: 4.1, 4.3, 4.9
9. What happens if we get close to a black hole?
10. Time slows markedly; light paths bend strongly; tidal gradients stretch or crush; cross a point of no return, and turning back becomes impossible.
11. Keywords: comparing required outward speed to the local propagation ceiling, pull from the tension gradient.
12. See also: 4.2, 4.3
13. How do you view the information paradox and “firewall” debate?
14. The boundary is not a smooth line but a breathing skin. Energy escapes via gated channels; records are preserved and diluted statistically; no rigid firewall is required.
15. Keywords: dynamic critical band, statistically faithful boundary.
16. See also: 4.2, 4.7, 4.9
17. Can black holes enable time travel or traversable wormholes?
18. Not supported. Nowhere can signals exceed the local propagation ceiling, and stable, traversable wormholes do not appear in this framework’s feasible set.
19. Keywords: consistent local ceiling, causality intact.
20. See also: 4.2, 4.9
21. What did the Event Horizon Telescope images actually show?
22. The bright ring near the shadow, fainter inner sub-rings, long-lived bright sectors, and accompanying polarized bands.
23. Keywords: imaging by fold-back accumulation, fine striations of the tension skin.
24. See also: 4.6
25. What are a black hole’s “voice” and echoes?
26. Not sound waves, but timing signatures: common steps and echo envelopes—packs of rises that start strong, weaken, and spread in time.
27. Keywords: piston-like storage/release in the transition layer, temporal fingerprint of skin breathing.
28. See also: 4.6, 4.10
29. What follows the gravitational waves from a merger?
30. The near-horizon region reshapes. Short-term skin echoes appear; the load allocation rebalances; jets and disk winds can swap dominance.
31. Keywords: re-equilibration after the threshold is pressed, multi-line concurrence.
32. See also: 4.6, 4.7, 4.10
33. Can we extract energy from a black hole?
34. In theory yes; in practice it’s hard. Nature already exports energy via jets and disk winds; human engineering can neither approach nor carry it easily.
35. Keywords: axial perforation and edge bands, allocation by least resistance.
36. See also: 4.7, 4.10
37. Is Hawking radiation observable?
38. Not for astrophysical masses: temperatures are too low today. Only very light primordial black holes—if any—might be detectable.
39. Keywords: observability vs. energy budget, weak-signal backgrounds.
40. See also: 4.1, 4.10
41. How do black holes grow so large?
42. In high-supply eras, jets live long, edge bands spread wide, and reprocessing and accretion proceed in parallel, so mass grows steadily.
43. Keywords: coexistence of three energy channels, scale effects shape temperament.
44. See also: 4.7, 4.8; see also Chapter 3, Section 3.8
45. How do black holes and galaxies co-evolve?
46. Disk winds heat and clear gas; jets plow directionally; star formation is regulated; the galaxy’s form and black hole output sculpt one another.
47. Keywords: feedback via tension-guided pull, wide-angle outflows and reprocessing.
48. See also: 4.7, 4.8
49. How accurate are black holes in the movies?
50. Some scenes capture lensing and time dilation well; others ignore ring and polarization subtleties and the complexity of energy allocation.
51. Keywords: main ring and sub-rings, bright sectors, integrated jets-plus-disk winds.
52. See also: 4.6, 4.7
53. Can a backyard telescope see a black hole?
54. Not the object itself. You can image host galaxies and large-scale jets, and you can “listen” in time using public data to track echoes and steps.
55. Keywords: how to read image and timing fingerprints for the public.
56. See also: 4.6, 4.10