Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   Matter degenerates under that much gravity. They are not "particles"
> > anymore.

> Err, what are they, then?

  How should I know? I'm not an astrophysicist.

> >   Besides, it doesn't really matter what happens to them. You would have
> > to prove that there exists a phenomenon or force in physics which makes
> > matter overcome the gravity and stops it from collapsing into a singularity
> > inside a black hole. I don't think any such phenomenon or force has been
> > observed or even plausibly conjectured.

> I would think Pauli exclusion would be a possibility.

  That kicks in up to a certain point. It's what happens in neutron star
cores, where particles are as close to each other as they can be without
breaking the Pauli exclusion principle.

  However, even this exclusion principle doesn't exert an infinite force
on particles, and if the gravity is larger than the critical limit, the
matter just collapses and there's nothing to stop it. (AFAIK according to
the relativistic equations you would need literally an infinitely strong
force to keep matter inside the event horizon from falling into the
singularity. Thus no kind of non-zero-sized shape can be maintained in
there.)

> Or something like the 
> quantumness of spacetime. Can you actually fit multiple particles into one 
> plank-length of space?

  Since there is currently no unifying quantum theory of gravity, nothing
definitive can be said about that, I think.

> >   You would need to explain what stops the matter from collapsing into a
> > singularity. It certainly cannot be a physical force.

> I think first you have to define what you mean by a "singularity", then by a 
> "force", given that gravity isn't a force per se.

> I think once you wander outside the area where the math actually is known to 
> work, you need some actual experimental evidence to base conclusions on. I 
> don't know that it's valid to say "that must behave *this* way, because 
> otherwise we'd divide by zero" (or "because we divide by zero"). The math 
> only summarizes what we know of physics. It doesn't define how physics works.

  The math seems to work everywhere else, so without evidence of the
contrary the simpler assumption is that it works everywhere.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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