That’s pretty much it.
Is the mass merely converted into one immensely [infinitely] dense point of energy? Or might we have reason to believe baryonic (et al) matter survives somehow, and maybe is siphoned off or transitioned into [theoretical] higher dimensions?
Although, IIRC, subatomic matter are thought to be point particles of pure energy as well. E=Mc[sup]2[/sup] and all that.
What’s the most current popular theories along these lines?
Short answer is it is called singularity because no one knows what it is and laws of physics as we know them do not apply.
Even in some string theories with additional (not higher) dimensions, the only thing that leaks through is gravity. Higher dimensions haven’t existed since 1930s science fiction. Matter doesn’t go anywhere. Even whether the singularity is a one-dimensional point or a planck volume or something else is disputed. That’s why it’s a singularity.
I realize the laws of physics break down at this level, but that doesn’t mean there are no laws to hypothesize and theorize over.
As far as I can tell, under the Standard Model, a singularity defined in the sense of a black hole should be a dimensionless point in space, that contains the energy of the star that was once there. Matter and energy are equivalents, and can be converted from one to another, of course, so if its gravity is so strong to overcome all the other fundamental forces (ironically, it being the weakest force know of), then it would seem to me all protons, neutrons, electrons, etc., are being shredded by the gravity, all quarks, leptons, bosons and fermions etc. lose their charges, flavors and colors and are concentrated into a point of pure energy, shackled by gravity, whatever that turns out to be (Hello, Higgs? Are you there?).
It feels unsatisfying; alas, the universe doesn’t care about that.
Black holes are like Las Vegas.
Perhaps a bit of semantics, but why couldn’t there be a 4th, macro, spacial dimension, and perhaps even a 2nd time dimension perpendicular to our own?
String Theory seems to correct for a lot of mysteries in the Standard Model with it’s curled up quantum-level dimensions and Calabi-Yau spaces, but is still almost as convoluted as QM, if not more so, and quantum gravity still has its nasty problems.
Not that I expect some unified theory between GR and QM to be elegant and pretty, but nature has a long history of surprising us this way (at least until QM).
Except for what stays there, when you play:
You can’t win.
You can’t break even.
You can’t even quit the game.
Don’t go near them if you’ve got money in your pockets?
LOL. No. What happens in a black hole, stays in a black hole.
Eww, gross!
Actually, at the Susskind Casino, anything that happens in a blackjack hole is smeared holographically over the topology of the game’s event horizon.
Hit on 16. They payout in bitcoins.
There are indeed phenomenological models (the so-called Randall-Sundrum models) with macroscopic extra dimensions, which ordinary matter can’t access because of the extremely warped geometry there; similarly, Itzhak Bars has proposed a theory with an extra time dimension.
One of the most popular views on black holes from a stringy perspective is the so-called fuzzball: basically, the entire interior of the black hole is actually just a great big ball of strings, so there is no singularity, and well, that’s where the matter goes. But even within string theory, this isn’t the only proposal, and as far as that goes, whether string theory has to say anything about the real world is still up for debate, too…
I think Stephen Hawking stopped claiming this in 2004.
Si
Yes, in the neutrino thread I just posted a link to one of his papers on 2-T Field Theory.
I’m becoming a bigger fan of this particular theory than most others, but I haven’t seen them all. One reason, might be because I sort of independently though of spacetime working as 4 spacial dimensions, and two time dimensions when thinking about the singularities of a black hole.
Feel free to skip next next couple paragraphs, just me waxing theoretic:
In visualizing a star collapsing under its own gravity, I got to thinking about a 4th holographic dimension, and as gravity takes over, the matter/energy shifts into this hidden dimension so what we perceive as a singularity, would be how flatlanders might perceive a sphere, were it sitting on their flat universe: a point.
I began to think about the poles on Riemann spheres and other topology, and began to think there might be another dimension of time as well, perpendicular (but still sensitive to spacetime curvature), where anything crossing an event horizon will shift into the 2nd time dimension, inaccessible from our outside view, since from our perspective, such things would seem timeless and their clock stopped; as a one-dimensional line, perpendicular to our own, would appear as a point… a singularity.
Anyhow, I was pretty jazzed when I found some serious research had gone into the idea (and I didn’t seem as crazy, being a layman).
I’m sure my initial thoughts vary (probably wildly) from the actual research and details, but it seems like a good fit in explaining singularities and other quantum/gravity weirdness.
Here’s a link to the 2-T paper, FWIW. Warning PDF.
Right, I’ve heard this as well. A pity any practical experimentation or testable predictions don’t seem within our grasp yet.
As Si points out above, black holes have hair (Stephen Hawking) and evaporate over time.
Yep, right at the horizon where QM and GR meet. As I understand it, it loses energy, and therefor mass due to blackbody radiation.
Also, Leonard Susskind was able to provide a theory for holographic information conservation as I mentioned in post #10.
If the 2-T field Theory is onto something, I can see gravity turning spacetime inside-out, like rotating a hypersphere. Everything is still there, it’s just the event horizon could be the 4D holographic shell containing the matter/energy inside; seemingly stuck in time on a 2nd time-like dimension—which appears as a singularity to us; however, I suppose it would take accelerating to c or diminishing to infinity (or Planck length) to get there.
Gravity effects time and space, so if there’s a “plane” of time and a 4th extension of space, couldn’t spacetime itself have a real axis, and an “imaginary” axis, just like complex spaces, that gravity can cause matter to cross on some sort of complex origin?
It doesn’t seem to conflict with current QM/GR models, either.
Sorry for all the ruminatin’.
Orbits aren’t stable in four spatial dimensions. That’s a killer.
String theory is much more convoluted than QM. Pretty much by definition, any more inclusive theory has to simplify to QM and GR but have extra pieces that explain what they can’t, just as relativity simplifies to Newtonian mechanics at low speeds. How is GR pretty or simple? The value of string theory to theorists is that QM falls out of it automatically. The hope that the “real” theory of everything can be printed on a t-shirt should have be given up on long ago.
Huh. I did not know this. Why so?
Sure it can. You just have to come up with new notation, here:
ə = e
Where ə stands for all the equations for a unified theory, and e is everything! 
And it’s an ambigram, so it’s super symmetrical, aestheticly pleasing and is still legible when drunk, passed out and hanging upsidedown from your chair.
Feynman already beat you to that one (scroll down to equation 25.30).
For the WIN !!!
damn you feynman!