How can light be trapped by the gravitational pull of a black hole if light has no mass?

Answer 1

When photons pass by a black hole, nothing happens, except gravitational lensing, wherein the photon is taking a shorter path due to the mass of the singularity more or less "stretching" space. Photons have no mass, so they are not affected by gravity at all. However, that is not necessarily true, I will follow up on this in a second. When a photon passes through the event horizon of a black hole, then it is caught within forever (Or at least until the singularity evaporates). A logical followup question would be if gravity doesn't affect photons, why can't they escape? Back to photon mass. Photons have momentum, so they must have mass but it's not regular mass. They have relativistic mass (Which is basically the same as Newtonian mass) which is dependent on the photon's wavelength and gravity doesn't care. Mass is mass. So now we've figured that photons do in fact have mass. Since a gravitational singularity in essence is nothing more than just an unimaginably dense object with extremely high mass, it effects gravity just like everything else but since it is so compressed into a tiny point. When you squeeze anything down past what is called the Schwarzchild radius (Which is proportional to the object's mass), you have a gravitational singularity and a black hole around it. If you were to compress an average human being down to about the size of 0.1 yoctometers (1x10^25 meters), that person would now be a black hole.

Back to the point: Once you pass that radius, the escape velocity is faster than the speed of light and it is impossible to go faster than light. If you have any real mass, you can't even travel at the speed of light because time essentially slows down so you cannot go faster. Therefore when photons pass through the event horizon, they are trapped because photons only travel at the speed of light, no faster but they can travel slower.

Answer 2

Even though light has no mass, it still has energy and momentum. When light comes near a black hole, the extreme gravitational pull warps space and time, causing light to curve around the black hole in a way that it can't escape. This effect is known as gravitational lensing, where light effectively gets trapped in the black hole's gravitational field.

Answer 3

The rim of the actual hole records memory in a sense. anything that was sucked into it has a small part left behind and if their was some way to harvest this knowledge their would be no end to what we could learn. It is unknown what happens to the objects that are sucked into the black hole but it is thoerized that they end up in another dimension or region of space. Most scientists believe you go nowhere... you just become a highly compressed plasma that is forever trapped in the black hole.

a black hole is formed by a star that implodes and the core collapses completly. at the moment of complete collapse, time appears to 'halt', and everything beyond that point is unobservable. but the core continues to collapse, creating a singularity (a point that has 0 volume, but almost infinite density. smaller than sub-atomic particles). the amount of gravity created by such an event, sucks almost everything around it towards the singularity(if a black hole has rotation, an accretion disc is formed around the equator, where the gravity is the strongest). normally, not even light can escape a black hole(if it has rotation, the gravity on the poles is weaker, and high energy particles and waves[such as gamma and x-rays] shoot out from the pole).

some people believe that some black holes(ones with rotation) can be traversable wormholes. but if it was, the Eintsein-Rosen bridge would always close before the moment you crossed. so you would be able to see into another time/universe, but not be able to travel to it. It s*** across the f******

it will disorentate the central diplo difection compose of gravity and create a vertex in space where it rips the fabric of time and disconcludes light into a paranormic satage of mater wich will invert a person into pure neurons and warp you to another dimension. Feb 23,2015

Answer 4

It doesn't make much sense if you apply it to a Newtonian point of view, but in an Einstein point of view, with the theory of relativity, specifically the idea of gravity stemming from spacetime.

I'm pretty sure most of us have seen the grid analogy of gravity, with a picture of Earth and a grid dipping around it.

While we don't entirely understand black holes, in the theory of relativity, light would normally just go through the dip and back up, with little curvature. In a black hole, the light travels over that dip, but the exception is with black holes, is that it isn't just a dip, it literally makes a hole in spacetime. The light will travel into it, and be well, dissolved by the black hole.

This probably isn't a fully scientific explanation, but this is how I see it, from what I have read it.

Answer 5

To answer this question you must first understand light. It is right to think light is a mass-less wave but not in the sense of an 'actual' wave. This is because photon particles are emitted as light and they have infinitely small mass, and as they are a particle, when emitted they travel in that direction alone (without interference). This is why light travels in straight lines, because it is a particle. The odd thing about light is that the boson particles (photons) behave as waves as well. This is a special particle duality which occurs frequently in quantum mechanics. As many people may ask, how can it be a wave and a particle at the same time? Well, it isn't a particle and a wave at the same time, depending on the point of view of the observer, it is either a particle or a wave at any specific time.

Another thing to consider is that the unmatched gravitational pull of a black hole is so massive it dramatically warps the fabric of space-time itself. The warping of space actually causes a change in which time passes so when light passes the event horizon of the black hole (the point where even light the fastest phenomenon cannot escape) even the minute mass of the photon is unable to withstand such an immense pull to the singularity point at the centre of the black hole.

Answer 6

Light is affected by gravity much like ordinary matter is, but it is moving so fast that the effects are small for most object. The path of light will be bent toward a massive object as it passes. A black hole has so much mass compacted into a small area that the path of light is greatly bent. At such close distances the mass of the black hole greatly distorts space and time. Within a certain radius the distortion is so severe that all paths forward in time go toward the center of the black hole. Nothing within this radius can escape, not even light.

Answer 7

Gravity. It seems a bit strange, but even light is affected by extreme gravity.

Edit : The basic idea is from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. According to

this theory mass causes "curvature " in space (and time). The "bending" of

"spacetime" causes light to be "sucked in" towards matter.

Answer 8

It swallows up light. Does not allow light to pass through, eating up anything in its path.

Answer 9

The gravitation is so strong nothing normal can get out of a black hole past the event horizon - everything there and below is in a falling orbit of the singularity below.

Answer 10

Light passing near a black hole is bent toward it in an effect called gravitational lensing. Light that crosses the event horizon cannot bass back out.