I read the wikipedia article for sonic black holes before reading this article, and got a decent understanding. Then I came back to this article and just wanted to comment that the graphics are really good and nailed my understanding in an even better way.
My current question about black holes is:
It is usually reported that the electron is a dimensionless point, with no extent. But it has mass. Why is it not, then, a black hole? A black hole with the mass of an electron would have an event horizon, which is not a dimensionless point. If it is a black hole, how does the charge "get out" to affect the outside world? If a black hole were given a charge, e.g. by injecting a stock of electrons, would it respond to magnetic fields, as an electron does, without being able to exchange photons with anything?
Or, if the electron is not a black hole, why isn't it?
An electron and positron annihilate on contact producing a pair of photons, which seems incompatible with their being black holes, unless maybe anti-particles have negative gravitational mass, so that contact gives the pair zero gravitation. Does it make sense to have positive inertial mass, but negative gravitational mass? I don't think that other particles (e.g. neutral, or positively-charged) smashed into electrons are known ever to get absorbed, as we might expect if it were a black hole.
If the electron and positron are both dimensionless points, yet somehow not black holes, how do their paths ever succeed in intersecting? If there is some minimum distance where they annihilate, why isn't that the size of the particle?
Is there a good word that describes the somewhat uncomfortable feeling one gets in their stomach when thinking about the magnitude and complexity of reality? Is humbled a feeling? I can't thinking of anything good in English, wondering if any other languages have this word (like how Saudade is in Portuguese)
I have a (probably stupid) question - are the tunnels (https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/science-and-future/ear...) the solar system is currently in - connected to black hole at the heart of our galaxy?
Like do black holes extend enormous magnetic tendrils into the surrounding space similar to neutron stars?
Absolute pure amateur here with no expertise or special knowledge, but could this work lead to new insights about the emergence of turbulent flows, or is thaat currently very well understood?
It's extremely aggravating that this article assumes the existence of Hawking radiation directly implies the real loss of information in black holes. There's been some work, probably covered in this magazine, on how information may escape black holes via Hawking Radiation.
Ed: for instance, https://www.quantamagazine.org/netta-engelhardt-has-escaped-... or https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-most-famous-paradox-in-ph...