The Contraction Of Space In The Formation Of A Black Hole Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Hawking (1988: 88):

This scenario is not entirely realistic, however, because of the following problem. Gravity gets weaker the farther you are from the star, so the gravitational force on our intrepid astronaut’s feet would always be greater than the force on his head. This difference in the forces would stretch our astronaut out like spaghetti or tear him apart before the star had contracted to the critical radius at which the event horizon formed! However, we believe that there are much larger objects in the universe, like the central regions of galaxies, that can also undergo gravitational collapse to produce black holes; an astronaut on one of these would not be torn apart before the black hole formed. He would not, in fact, feel anything special as he reached the critical radius, and could pass the point of no return without noticing it. However, within just a few hours, as the region continued to collapse, the difference in the gravitational forces on his head and his feet would become so strong that again it would tear him apart.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, according to General Relativity, gravity is manifested as the relative contraction of space intervals with proximity to the centre of mass of a material body.  On this basis, in both of the above scenarios, the space intervals at the astronaut's feet are relatively more contracted than the space intervals at the astronaut's head.  This means that, in the gravitational collapse in the formation of a black hole, the astronaut in the region of collapse is relatively crushed from the feet up.