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 5 points 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.

[–] Frozengyro 2 points 1 year ago

Inside a black hole is in theory timeless, so HL doesn't have any relative meaning to us.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My guess is the event horizon has always been viewed as this perfectly spherical (or oblate spherical) construct - I bet it is much more messy than that. I bet the event horizon moves around and the movement allows for materials to be ejected.