Gravity, space-time, and black holes?

Hello all.

Just wondering if anyone could clear up my confusion about gravity and
other jazz.

I understand that gravity is the result of relative "distortion" of
space-time, but I'm not quite sure how that ends up making things
(matter, light, w/e) change their paths in space as they travel
through space-time.

Is the distortion in space-time comparable to a change in "density" of
space-time (from the same POV of all those bowling-ball-on-a-blanket
analogies)?


Also, I, like so many others, have some questions about black-holes. I
agree that from the POV of someone watching from just beyond the event-
horizon, someone else entering the black hole would never actually
pass the event-horizon, and that the daring astronaut that went black-
hole diving would appear to be squeezed as he approaches the
singularity after an infinite amount of time. I also accept that from
the POV of the daring astronaut, it would only take him a few minutes
to reach the singularity while time in the outside world appears to be
going infinitely fast. Am I right so far?

But what I don't understand is that from the POV of the daring
astronaut, he would feel any side-effects of actually reaching the
singularity. (Please correct me in my misunderstanding) to an outside
observer, the daring astronaut is getting squeezed into nothing
because the outside observer's units of measuring distance would have
increased infinitely compared to the daring astronaut's ruler. So the
astronaut's space has decreased (compared to the observer), but so did
everything inside of it including the astronaut and his unit of
distance and all his composing molecules, thus looking at himself, the
daring astronaut would not see or feel any change. Does this make
sense?

Now assuming that at least the astronaut's camcorder survives, what
would be recorded after it reached the singularity? Would it do
something cool like pass through some wormhole and come out a white-
hole somewhere? Or would it simply pass the singularity and launch out
the other side of the black-hole with the same velocity that it
entered with (of course after several infinite amounts of the outside
observer's time)? Or is it all guesswork after that, and I don't need
to worry about it because I'll never see anybody black-hole diving
anyway?

I'm also wondering how can there even be a singularity when to an
outside observer, no matter ever actually reaches that point, so a
point of infinite density is never actually created?


Sorry, I'm a newbie
but I appreciate any responses.

thomat65

.

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