where does light from a torch go?

This sounds like a very smart energy efficient flashlight to me, It won't emit photons if it knows there's nothing to illuminate.

Indeed, and we know the universe is a very smart place, or at least weird.
 
"The energy does not leave the black hole and the battery depletes."

Where does the energy go then? What absorbs it? it's facing outwards.
 
OMG WE HAVE AN ENERGY LEAK.

Now everybody gets to guess what happens at inifinity. :rolleyes:
 
Interesting. I can't think of how it could do that without using photons. :D

Me neither. Perhaps it is already connected in some way prior to releasing energy. Could that be possible? Spooky action at a distance and all that.
 
How do we know that a photon doesn't only appear as a photon, so to speak, before it interacts with an observer (or any other form of receiver of the energy/information)?

How do we know that?

"Nonsense. You're saying that if you don't see something, it doesn't exist."

Not exactly. But if you are affected in no way, shape or form by an event, either directly or indirectly, then yes, it doesn't exist until you can measure it and draw data/information from it. Even if it does exist, it may as well not exist, at least until it affects you.

But this is as pointless an argument as that of Bishop Berkeley. If the photon behaves as if it exists whenever it is measured, then to speculate as to whether it may cease to do so in between is utterly moot.

To put it another way, if, to borrow a legal phrase, it exists at all material times, then that's what we mean when say it exists.

This can be seen as the Occam's Razor principle, yet again. Since all observations can be explained by postulating continuity of its existence, addition of a further postulate, that perhaps it ceases to exist when not observed, adds nothing. It is against science to add unnecessary postulates.
 
Me neither. Perhaps it is already connected in some way prior to releasing energy. Could that be possible? Spooky action at a distance and all that.

That takes spooky to the level of superstition.
 
To understand the universe means we may have to delve into the undelvable.
 
"But this is as pointless an argument as that of Bishop Berkeley."

...and almost as pointless as the Universe.
 
"The energy does not leave the black hole and the battery depletes."

Where does the energy go then? What absorbs it? it's facing outwards.
 
But I want to know where the light goes to. Where does it get absorbed once it's left the flashlight in order to satisfy conservation? It can't escape the black hole and it doesn't get bent along a parabolic path or anything like that because it is perpendicular to the centre. So if the battery depletes, where does the light energy end up?
 
It can't escape the black hole and it doesn't get bent along a parabolic path or anything like that because it is perpendicular to the centre.
It starts out pointed away from the center, but the extreme gravity warps the geodesic the light follows, and it just goes round and round.

Where does it get absorbed once it's left the flashlight in order to satisfy conservation?
It doesn't have to get absorbed by anything to conserve energy, it just keeps traveling round and round.
 
Kind of like this thread.

And all the while the local path is a straight line. There have been sci fi dramatizations of this in which a person exits Door #2 of a room to find he just entered Door #1 of the same room.
 
But I want to know where the light goes to. Where does it get absorbed once it's left the flashlight in order to satisfy conservation? It can't escape the black hole and it doesn't get bent along a parabolic path or anything like that because it is perpendicular to the centre. So if the battery depletes, where does the light energy end up?
What does a parabola with zero width look like?
 
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