• subignition@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I wonder if it’s going to turn out to be analogous to throwing a ball into a cylinder, where some of the matter enters at a precise trajectory that basically causes it to bounce back out? Assuming nothing is actually exiting from the event horizon, maybe there’s some sort of stratification of the elements within the accretion disk? Or maybe there are oddly hyper-stable orbits, why they’re lasting years, and it’s analogous to the way a coin can take a very long time to settle when falling on its side.

    It seems less likely that there’s a mechanism by which something can actually cross the event horizon from inside, but who knows, new physics might be out there to have something to say about it.

    Edit: I’d be REALLY curious to know whether the time interval of the delay is correlated with the half-life of any radioactive elements that would be present in the devoured star.

    • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      The consumed star is no longer a gravitationally bound object, it is torn apart by tidal forces. She says the disk is supposedly unstable and half should disperse within hours and the rest within a month or so, so this delay is odd.

      There is no way to return across the event horizon. You’d have to go faster than light and all timelines lead to the singularity inside the EH.

      There is no such massive reservoir of unstable isotopes in stars and even if there was it wouldn’t all decay in a single event.