My two preparatory coppers:
The best broad illustration of gravity is that of the classic "rubber sheet" where something that has mass "deforms" the stretched out rubber sheet. It causes it to "warp" around the mass, right? Forget the bit of stuff rolling to the center of a sheet because it's finite and stretched across a frame or something, just remember that a heavy billiard-ball will make a dent in a rubber sheet and if another one is placed on that sheet near itt, those dents might interact to make both the billiard-balls "fall towards each other."
A good description of two objects interacting through gravity is that they are actually
falling towards each other. OK, so, what causes them to "fall?" That's the warped fabric of the rubber sheet causing that and that rubber sheet is "space-time." Anything that has mass effects that sheet. Yet, everything, even stuff that doesn't have a definable rest mass is effected by it as well. A photon, like a radio signal or a lighwave, has to travel on it too even if it doesn't have a rest mass or can't have a rest mass. So, when we look through a telescope and see a "
lensing effect" that's evidence that some mass (pretty large to be detectable by us) between us and the light we're looking at has bent or "warped" the spacetime around it. That light still has to travel on that sheet of space-time - There's no place else that it could have gone. So, as far as the light is concerned, it's still traveling on in a straight line... cause "straight" is defined by the sheet of space-time. But, by virtue of our point of view looking through the telescope, we know something "warped it."
1. Did he actually say what I thought he did?
Obviously, Redassasin knows the particulars much more intimately. I would say in response to your question "Kinda."
But, it can't just eat up stuff and hide it or erase it forever from the rest of the Universe. That would be bad. What I think is being alluded to here may be matched up more closely with the "falling" analogy of the rubber-sheet illustration. What is happening can be explained by a warped bit of space-time that gets warped so extremely that, in effect, there is nothing that can fall out of such an extreme depression. If you, for instance, dumped a wrecking ball on a big rubber sheet, it'd cause quite a dent, right? It'd be a pretty deep "hole" formation in that sheet and at its edges it would be very, very, "steep." OK, so now you're standing beside that big wrecking ball in a "well" surrounded by a stretched rubber sheet... about a hundred feet deep.
In your hand is a ping-pong ball. A nice light little bit of compressed and formed cellulose. You decide to throw that ball as hard as you can so that it shoots out the top of the depression you're in and is free, once again! And... you can't. A hundred feet is a darn long way to throw a ping-pong ball. In fact, try as you might with all your available energy, you just can't do it. The air resistance is the factor, of course, but here it's just that the ping-pong ball does not have enough velocity to escape the bottom of the hole.
Imagine now that everything is that rubber-sheet and there is no "air resistance." Instead, the particle has to climb up that framework to escape and there is no amount of energy available to give it the velocity necessary to climb up that space-time and escape the doom of the wrecking ball. That constant warping of the sheet by the ball and the constant "falling" bit associated with interactions involving gravity can be somewhat equated to a constant "drain" on the fabric of spacetime. It's not necessarily "static" is what he may be trying to say. (Though, he's smart an' I is ignorant.
Think of a continuous "drain" as water is moving around the hole in a sink, or being "dragged" there in some extreme cases.
2. Did I interpret what he said correctly?
Kinda, but I don't know exactly what he meant and haven't seen the show. The important thing is, though, that there comes a point when no force in the Universe, that is known, can give anything enough velocity to escape a black hole, in this situation, because "The Law Says No."
3. If I did... what does that mean?
As far as I know, he's not saying anything different than what we have already expected. ie: Nothing revolutionary, just an interesting way to re-interpret it for the viewer.
4. Does space time "enter / or be consumed" by a black hole?
The black hole rests on the same fabric of space-time that we do, so yes space-time "enters" it. Is it "consumed?" That all depends on how you define "consumed." As far as we are concerned, where we are outside of the black hole, it doesn't really matter just so long as it's not permanent. (IF space-time is considered, by itself with no further embellishment, "information." If it somehow doesn't exist... then the black hole can eat its fill and it doesn't matter...
)
4a. If it does what does that mean for conservation of energy / information?
Nothing, really. Not unless he's proposing something new. See the famous/infamous topic of T'Hooft, Susskind and Hawking on Black Holes and information theory, holographic universe, etc.. Susskind's book, "
The Black Hole War" is a great, accessible, read.
A vid on the controversy -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR3Msi1YeXQ
4b. Does it occur at the event horizon, or "at the singularity"?
The Event Horizon. The "singularity" is just a point at which, inside the black hole, everything we think we know fails to describe it in keeping with the laws we think we know that enabled us to formulate the ways to describe how to figure out how to describe it... IOW - It's defined as a "Singularity" and that presents itself to us, with our current understanding, as a type of infinitely dense point. But, it could be a lonely whale looking for a petunia bush for all we know. ie: What we know moves from "known" to "unknown" because nothing we can think up can be brought away from collapsing into nonsensical infinities because we just "don't know yet." So, it's a "singularity" in our understanding of the phenomenon that can't be normalized out someway.
5. If it's correct that Cox's view is that black holes are "consuming" space time, what does that mean for our current theories eg special / general relativity and quantum mechanics (and quantum gravity and VSL and string theory and GUTs and....)?
No clue. Not as if I'm qualified to render an opinion in the first place, but I'd have to understand what he was trying to say. I don't know the maths, either, beyond simple stuffs. (Even then, I'd have to look up some basic formulae and couldn't tell you a darn thing about anything more complex than a Schwarzschild radius for xx mass of y material given z.)
Don't
even with "String Theory" yet.
What "would" the implication be? Well, that depends - What if space-time is continually generated? Given the fact that the Universe is expanding what is causing that? Energy, certainly, right? Okiedokie, how is the energy doing that? After the Big Bang and period of rapid expansion, no matter what one thinks or doesn't think there, did we just get one serving of "spacetime" and that's all we can have 'cause we're full... or not?
"Spacetime" isn't an actual "thing" as far as I understand it to be. We visualize it as such and manipulate it as such, but AFAIK it's a theoretical construct. It's not really directly analogous to a "rubber sheet." That's more in line with the Higg's Field reaction to the mass and the consequences of the message carrying Higg's Particle saying "Hey, there's matter here so do something why don'tcha." But, "gravity" (the result we measure coming out of that reaction) interacts with all this stuff like "space" and "time." And, everything else seems to be based on this interaction.
That's pretty much my easy limit on the understanding of "what" space-time
is.
(6. Even more nebulous, and even harder to describe using a non-math language..... what's at the bottom of the waterfall?)
A stream? Not so far-fetched according to some. An infinitely dense point that continually pinches itself off from the rest of the Universe? A much scarier proposition.
Note: There are some very different things going when comparing rotating and non-rotating black holes as redassasin pointed out. Size matters too. For instance, for a small rapidly rotating black hole, one's fate is a lot more... twisted and nasty. Torsion forces would rip you to shreds long before you got near enough to appreciate how neato it all looked. The same goes with a number of other very dense, very dangerous, and very rapidly rotating stellar objects. The kicker is that for the really large rotating black holes? Well, in some cases, if one brought with one enough energy, one may able to intelligently manuever out... even without having to cheat. For nonrotating or small, rapidly spinning, black holes that wouldn't likely be possible. Either way - A Black Hole of any sort is likely a one-way trip without science-fiction kicking in. ("One Way" being loosely described as "what we'd worry about for an extremely short period of time." Or for "forever", depending on your point of view. If your name is "Alice", you're probably screwed no matter what the physicists are talking about.
)
I've google, and tried reddit (reddit is a great resource for many things but.... not for cosmology / astrophysics - those subs have been taken over by... people who aren't physicists
)
Physorg forums are where you want to go. They don't allow psuedoscience in their science threads.
Quora is good for responses from those who's bona fides have been authenticated. Bona fides authentication is, I agree, important. (That's why I always have to say "I know nothing" because, compared to someone who deals with this stuff and related materials, I don't know squat.
)
Sticking with .edu links and .edu Youtube channels is good, too. Susskind's lecture series on a variety of things, including this one and the "Physics for Presidents" series, IIRC, is a good place to sit back and listen to complicated things being simplified. He's a better presenter/lecturer than many in his field. (He's big in String Theory, too, if you like that kinda stuff.)
.
)
