Wet1's and Thed's posts in another thread got me wondering about the specifics of black hole mechanics. As I understand it, within a certain radius, event horizon or whatever, you go in and nothing comes back out. Beyond that radius, it's really strong gravity but not necessarily too strong to escape. That point, at the edge of the two regions - escapable and inescapable - it seems to me would collect massive amounts of matter and energy, and it is this collection region that would cause those big jets of energy shooting out like we see from either pole of some galaxies. So, we have these regions: - Inner, no damn escape at all. - Middle, stuff getting sucked in and blasted out. - Outer, stuff getting sucked in. I'm not saying these boundaries are clearly defined, with edges or borders or whatever. Just wondering about the general layout of a black hole (given that they are, I believe, still only theory). It also seems to me that the amount and velocity of energy/matter we see blasted out from these things should give us some idea of the mass or power of a black hole, although I'm not quite sure how to define why it would.
