Quote from: Sukey on June 27, 2013, 06:49 pmQuote from: SelfSovereignty on June 26, 2013, 09:02 pmSo here's a question for you people that I've never been able to come to a satisfactory conclusion about: what happens if you try to pull someone that's right outside a black hole (not past the event horizon) back out with a rope?What would happen? As you approach the black hole, time dilation becomes more and more extreme. The different parts of the rope are going to be experiencing time dilation at different rates. So the part nearest the black hole is going to be moving unbelievably slowly compared to the part way, way out where you've got somebody pulling on it (pretend it's Hercules pulling some unbreakable rope or something, whatever). But the part of the rope way, way out where you're pulling it is going to be moving very quickly in time as you pull it relative to the part the guy close to the black hole is holding on to.... so wtf happens as you pull the thing? I've never been able to figure it out. I suspect my problem is that I'm trying to fit time dilation into some modified intuitive sense of absolute time, and that there really isn't any paradox at all because there is no absolute time... but I've never really been sure.The rope would look as if it were being "stretched", just like all the other objects, when observed from the outside. It only just looks very distorted because of the different speeds of progression of time, depending on which side you observe it from.Actually I was referring to what would happen to the rope sections themselves. Since time is moving more slowly toward the black hole, pulling the rope from far out would... snap the rope? Behave as normal? The problem I have is making sense of what would be happening at both ends of the rope "simultaneously." I really think it's just an issue with my conception of the situation: there is no absolute time... so time could flow normally at all points on the rope, even though comparatively it's flowing faster far out than it is toward the black hole, without there being any actual contradiction. I think, LOL?It's just... fucking weird. How can time flow faster toward the guy pulling the rope, and still have that coincide with it moving more slowly toward the black hole? It just seems like the rope would break or... something. The section toward the guy pulling would be moving faster than the section toward the black hole, and yet... I mean you can't magically create more rope to fill in the space as you pull it apart, so... well I really just don't know. I've always had a great deal of difficulty really deciding what would happen.