• Question: my question is are black holes hold 2 dimension or a 3d

    Asked by to Sam, Roberto on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sam Connolly

      Sam Connolly answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      No one is really sure what goes on inside a black hole, because the fact that it is impossible for light to escape also makes it impossible for us to see what’s happening inside. But current theories suggest that it would be 3D inside, with all the matter concentrated at a tiny point in the centre. Black holes are sometimes shown as 2D circles which are sucking things through in one direction, like a hole in a piece of paper, but this is wrong. Black holes are actually perfectly spherical and pull things towards themselves from all directions, due to gravity. The ‘surface’ of the black hole, called the ‘event horizon’ is actually just the distance from this point in the centre where gravity is too strong for light, or anything else, to escape any more.

    • Photo: Roberto Trotta

      Roberto Trotta answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      There is also a mathematical result that says that apparently black holes can save 3D information in 2D: it’s like taking a 3D movie and then saving it on the surface of a 2D CD, but black holes somehow can do this without loosing any information. So the black hole is in 3D, but the information it stores inside it (ie what kind of particles it has eaten up in the past) would actually be saved in 2D without loss of accuracy.

      It’s fair to say that black holes are very strange beasts indeed!

Comments