← Theory of RelativityPart 2 — General Relativity · 17

Inside the Event Horizon

▶ DRILL

The closer you get to a black hole, the faster you'd have to go to escape. Right at the edge — the event horizon — that escape speed reaches light-speed, so only light can just barely crawl out, stretched infinitely red. Inside, escaping would need to be faster than light — impossible — so nothing gets out, not even light. That's why it's black, and why “out” stops being a direction you can travel: every path leads deeper in. Use the Explain it for a kid / a grown-up switch to set the depth.

EXPLAIN IT FORsimple words & pictures
DISTANCE FROM ITfar outside
SLOW-MOnormal
🕳️ trying to escape a black holeevent horizonblack holeyou shine a light →✓ escapes0light-speedcan't go here — nothing escapesspeed needed to escape from here:0.77c

The big idea — the closer you get to a black hole, the faster you'd have to go to escape. Right at the event horizon that speed hits light-speed; inside, it would need to be more than light-speed — impossible — so nothing escapes, not even light. That's why it's black. And "out" simply stops being a direction you can go: inside the horizon, every road leads deeper in. (A black hole isn't a hole you fall down — it's a region where the future itself points inward.)

# horizonthe Schwarzschild radius R_s = 2GM/c² — where the escape speed √(2GM/r) equals the speed of light
# real reasongeometric: light cones tip inward until, inside the horizon, every future-directed path moves toward the centre
# redshiftgravitational redshift (drill 16) diverges at the horizon — infalling light is infinitely reddened and fades to black
# speed limitnothing escapes because nothing beats light (drill 12); the escape-speed picture here is a heuristic for the right radius