And another estoric question from the ever thinking lion.

[lionkingcmsl]

I wonder what happens when anti-matter is "sucked" into a black hole.

If you have it in a magnetic containment vessel and that is "lost" down the black hole, the containment vessel will fail and then the ant-matter will be "free" to interact with the material in the black hole.

So, what does happen when anti-matter interacts with "normal" matter in a black hole?

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

antimatter is no different than regular matter; it simply has a different electrical charge.

case one: containment lost before event horizon

In this case the antimatter will contact the matter around it and annhilate, releasing a huge burst of energy. Due to time dialation effects approaching the event horizon, this pulse will not be seen all at once, but as a long pulse over time.

case two: containment lost inside event horizon

We don't really know for sure what's inside. But whatever it is, we won't care -- whatever happens will be lost forever to the universe and will never be seen.

case three: containment not lost and the whole thing goes in intact

This one is extremely unlikely. as you approach a black hole, differences in gravity cause anything approaching to be torn asunder as they approach. Consider a man falling in feet first. The head will be at 1G while the feet are at 10; body torn in half. Then the hips are at 10 while the feet are at 20; legs torn in half. Etc etc. You finally get gravity differences so intense that molecules themselves are torn apart and only raw atoms are left. Your containment vessel will be destroyed long before entry is possible.

If you could find a black hole with nothing around it and simply shoot a stream of antimatter at it, it could go into the hole. The results would be nothing of interest as any interaction within the black hole would not be visible to us.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

It goes crunch like everything else!

-TG

[herveus.livejournal.com]

The anti-matter cancels out the appropriate matter, decreasing the mass of the black hole. For a sufficiently small black hole, this is a mechanism that can lead to the evaporation of the black hole as it sucks in one part of a virtual particle pair repeatedly.

[nekura-ca.livejournal.com]

Actually, the energy that is released by the annihilation of the matter and anti-matter would still be contained within the black hole, and still contribute to it's mass (as E=mc^2). Everything that enters a black hole increases it's mass, even light.

Black hole evaporation caused by virtual particles is a different mechanism. The one that escapes (matter or anti-matter) steals energy from the black hole to become real. The in falling essentially has negative mass. Anti-matter still has positive mass.