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Thread: spin off from the "Speed of Light thought experiment" thread

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
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    spin off from the "Speed of Light thought experiment" thread

    on the first page there was a bit of a discussion that basically boiled down to a geostationary orbit that is also at light speed.

    I realise there is a photon sphere around a BH where light can orbit in theory ....but for that to also be "geostationary" to the BH wouldn't the BH have to have a spin that is many magnitudes faster then what would be needed to rip it apart?

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Regular objects can have photon spheres too, they just need to be very massive. You have a good point however-- the photon sphere is only 1.5 times the event horizon radius, and so to not be a black hole, the surface velocity of the object would need to be at least 2/3 the speed of light for the photon sphere to be geostationary. That seems pretty physically far fetched. With classical gravity, there's nothing impossible about that-- any speed less than the geostationary speed right at the surface is a possible rotation speed. But I've not included the spin in the gravity, which at 2/3 c is a rather important omission, so you might be right after all.

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