More About Black Holes...

Hi, super website. Gotta love the internet if you know how to use it. I actually have 3 questions, the first one is related to an older topic: http://van.physics.uiuc.edu/qa/listing.php?id=2605 If light is travelling at a constant speed, being the lightspeed, what would happen if light was shot right into something as a black hole. Will it accelerate beyond the lightspeed? Second question is kinda linked. It's about black holes. Are there variations in the gravity between black holes, ie. stronger and weaker ones? And my final question is not really about the same subject but i still gotta ask. Is it possible to force an electron extra into an electron shell, to get a 1s3 instead of 1s2 2s1 configuration? Same goes for higher shells. And would this be good for anything? Thanks and hope this will get some gears cranking.
- Anonymous

#1.   No.  The light beam would be gobbled up by the black hole at the speed of light
(or at least going at that speed as measured by someone in the vicinity of the light ray/mw)

#2.   Yes.  Black holes have varying mass, hence, varying gravity.
This can be determined by observing the orbits of nearby stars surrounding
a black hole. This has been demonstrated by looking at our own black hole at the
center of  the Milky Way.  See 

#3.   No.   That's just the way things are.  The phenomenon
is called the Pauli Exclusion Principle.  Physics, and life, would be completely different if the Pauli Principle were not true.

LeeH

(published on 03/11/2008)