<p>How many of you are fascinated by this topic?</p>
<p>One of the primary reasons that I want to be an astrophysicist is research photons in context of the universe. Light, to me, is the most fundamental force, being able to curve even spacetime. </p>
<p>My ultimate goal in learning astrophysics is to fully understand what happens: 1) beyond the event horizon, 2) deep inside a black hole, 3) when something moves faster than the speed of light, 4) can time be manipulated using light, and 5) is moving at/faster than the speed of light the equivalent of being a "god."</p>
<p>I’m interested in the concept, but I wouldn’t say I’d like to go into the field. Are you a part of the NASA INSPIRE program? I’d recommend you for it.</p>
<p>Definitely interested. If I wasn’t going into aerospace, I’d be a theoretical physicist. Here’s what I’ve got so far on a few of the questions you posed. It’s not mathematically rigorous, but it’s still something lol.</p>
<p>1,2. Objects are spaghettified but still observable to observers outside of the event horizon, their atoms ripped into their constituent particles (perhaps into strings, if you buy into that), and then compressed into a gravitational singularity of zero volume and infinite density where the spacetime curve hits infinity. Then energy shoots out in the form of jets, the event horizon grows, and entropy increases.</p>
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<li><p>Processes such as universal expansion and “information” transmission (it’s not quite truly information) as quantum entanglement can all travel faster than light (in a vacuum) without violating special relativity or messing with causality. Hypothetically speaking, matter (like tachyons) can travel faster than light, but not at or below it (they also can’t carry information). General relativity and aspects of string theory suggest that faster than light travel should allow for time travel to occur, although some believe that future theories of gravity will ultimately disprove these, as there’s always the problem of causality (there are also other hypotheses, both in physics and in logic, that suggest ways to deal with these problems). </p></li>
<li><p>I’ve actually never thought about this in this way. I think time stands still from a photon’s point of view. But can light manipulate time for outside observers? </p></li>
<li><p>Just my opinion based on cursory knowledge, but according to our current understanding, I don’t think so. The problem lies in that things moving below the speed of light can’t transmit information to things moving faster than the speed of light and vice versa, as that would require the information itself to travel faster than light, which is, as far as I know, impossible. So if you’re moving faster than the speed of light, you’re not transmitting any information, and so you don’t fit the qualities ascribed to a god.</p></li>
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<p>String theory, the elementary particles, and gravity all interest the hell out of me. I guess it’s that whole “theory of everything” search that makes me want to believe that everything in the universe is fundamentally mathematically connected.</p>