So I was doing an interesting thought experiment today that I wanted to share with you all. What would happen if you had a minature blackhole next to you and you decided to stick your hand into it? Would you be pulled in and disappear for ever? Would your hand be ripped off instantly? Or would something else happen? A similar situation is to have a space ship just outside a blackhole's event horizion and then extend a rod into the blackhole.
I think that your hand or the rod would be ripped off. As you know (or soon will) once an object or even light crosses a blackhole's event horizon it can never escape. An extremity extended past this point would be spagettified and ripped from your body or spaceship as gravity pulled one way and you pulled the other. If the extended object had a tensile strength great enough to endure the opposing forces then you would also be pulled in.
There would be no escape for the object thus extended. If the object's tensile strength was sufficient and did not break then you and the extension would act as a single body and once it reached the event horizon you would also have reached the event horizon and there you would meet your doom of being stretched into a chain of single molecules. If you were able to escape with the extension then you had not actually crossed the event horizon. There is no return from a blackhole.
This led me to question if the event horizon is really more of a continuum than a single border with snaller objects able to escape with less energy having an event horizon that is closer than larger objects. Though perhaps the event horizon is simply the point beyond which nothing regardless of mass or energy expended can escape.
I think this experiment could be simulated using a very strong magnet and a magnetic material.
At any rate it was fun to think about.
