The Destruction Of Material In A Black Hole Singularity Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 840-1):

… the collapsing physical material simply falls across the horizon, taking all its ‘information’ with it, to be finally destroyed at the singularity. Nothing particular, of local physical importance, should happen at the horizon. The matter does not even ‘know’ when it crosses the horizon. We should bear in mind that we could be considering an initially very large black hole, perhaps like the holes that are believed to inhabit galactic centres, which could be of a million solar masses or more. As the horizon is crossed, nothing particular happens. The spacetime curvature and density of material is not large: only of the kind that we find in our own solar system. Even the location of the horizon is not determined by local considerations, since that location depends upon how much material later falls into the hole. If more material falls in later, then the horizon would actually been crossed earlier! 

I find it inconceivable that somehow ‘at the moment just before the horizon is crossed’ some sort of signal is emitted to the outside world conveying outwards the full details of all information contained in the collapsing material. In fact, simply a signal would by itself not be enough, since the material itself is, in a sense, really the ‘information’ that one is concerned with. Once it has fallen through the horizon, the material is trapped, and is inevitably destroyed in the singularity itself. … According to this picture, the material in the collapse is destroyed (and its ‘information’ is destroyed) only when it enters the singularity, not when it crosses the horizon.

Blogger Comments:

The event horizon of a black hole, according to the General Theory of Relativity, is circumference around a singularity at which the curvature of spacetime is such that light cannot escape. As physical material falls with the event horizon, therefore, it ceases to be observable.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, it is the geodesic that is curved, not spacetime. This curved trajectory results from the relative contraction of space intervals in the direction of the singularity.

In this view, just as gravity is the relative contraction of space intervals, it is also the relative expansion of time intervals. This means that processes take longer and longer to unfold in the direction of the singularity. If the time intervals near the singularity approach infinity, then, relative to observers outside the event horizon, physical material falling towards a singularity, as space intervals contract towards zero, never actually reaches it.