# Is there any matter inside an event horison? [duplicate]

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Consider a feeding, growing black hole. We never observe any matter to cross the event horizon, because time stops there. All matter would be "stuck" in a sphere around the event horizon, slowly approaching it, but it would take an infinite amount of time to actually reach it. On the other hand a black hole can grow in size in a finite amount of time if we feed it. So while particles are "stuck" just outside the event horizon, the event horizon itself will "cross" these particles. Would these particles end-up inside the event horizon? What would happen to them? Which direction would they move or would they stand still at the position they encountered the event horizon?

## marked as duplicate by Kyle Kanos, John Rennie general-relativity StackExchange.ready(function() { if (StackExchange.options.isMobile) return; $('.dupe-hammer-message-hover:not(.hover-bound)').each(function() { var$hover = $(this).addClass('hover-bound'),$msg = $hover.siblings('.dupe-hammer-message');$hover.hover( function() { $hover.showInfoMessage('', { messageElement:$msg.clone().show(), transient: false, position: { my: 'bottom left', at: 'top center', offsetTop: -7 }, dismissable: false, relativeToBody: true }); }, function() { StackExchange.helpers.removeMessages(); } ); }); }); May 26 '15 at 5:57

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• If you can't observe something, does it exist? Not by the conventional definition of science. If you can't determine what's happening inside a perfect black box, can you have scientific questions about it? Not by the conventional definition of science. The good news is that the conventional properties of event horizons are the result of a classical (and false) theory about them. In reality all of this could be very different. We just don't know, because we haven't seen reality up-close, yet. – CuriousOne May 25 '15 at 18:49
• So the answer to my question is: "Your question is meaningless" ? At least until we learn more about reality, something beyond GR? – Eiver May 25 '15 at 18:54
• No, your question is very good, it just doesn't have good answers within the means of experimental physics and astronomy. What we think of as the "interior" of a black hole is a theoretical construct describing a physical phenomenon that we haven't been able to study from up-close. We need to build much better telescopes to find out if our theory actually matches reality. We may have to actually visit the closest black hole to get a definitive answer... that might be thousands of years in the future, if we ever manage the financial effort for that experiment, at all. – CuriousOne May 25 '15 at 19:04