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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Can Black Holes initiate matter creation?
« on: 06/08/2008 19:26:24 »
It seems to me that a photon intersecting the event horizon of a black hole at a perfect tangent should go into orbit around it, at the radius of the event horizon. If there should happen to be two suitable photons in such orbits, and they eventually collide, it could result in the creation of a matter/anti-matter pair where, unless the two particles were perfectly aligned along the event horizon, one would fall into the BH while the other could escape it.
At first thought, it might seem that the number of photons hitting the event horizon at a perfect tangent would be vanishingly small but if you think of the photons as a wave front it then seems inevitable. Every wave front that passes over a BH should result in a 'ring' of photons going in to orbit around it (or alternatively, at least one photon being captured in orbit).
As the BH is floating in space, and surrounded by stars, it therefore seems that it should have quite a lot of photons orbiting it, in it's event horizon, and in view of this, matter/anti-matter producing collisions should be quite common.
If we then say that the BH has a charge, it seems to me that if the particle (of the pair) that is created outside the event horizon has the opposite charge to the BH, it'll be even more likely to escape. If this process actually occurs, a side effect would be to reduce the charge of the BH.
There's also the issue of time dilation at the event horizon and how this might affect the energy of the photons, but I haven't thought about that very much yet.
At first thought, it might seem that the number of photons hitting the event horizon at a perfect tangent would be vanishingly small but if you think of the photons as a wave front it then seems inevitable. Every wave front that passes over a BH should result in a 'ring' of photons going in to orbit around it (or alternatively, at least one photon being captured in orbit).
As the BH is floating in space, and surrounded by stars, it therefore seems that it should have quite a lot of photons orbiting it, in it's event horizon, and in view of this, matter/anti-matter producing collisions should be quite common.
If we then say that the BH has a charge, it seems to me that if the particle (of the pair) that is created outside the event horizon has the opposite charge to the BH, it'll be even more likely to escape. If this process actually occurs, a side effect would be to reduce the charge of the BH.
There's also the issue of time dilation at the event horizon and how this might affect the energy of the photons, but I haven't thought about that very much yet.