I am in an AP Physics class here at my high school. Just recently, one of my classmates said that astronomers have possibly found areas around black holes to where the gravity is substantially less than in other areas. In fact, the amount of gravity in these areas is weak enough for you to orbit the black hole at a very close distance without the normal "side effects". To me, this seems a little too good to be true. Hopefully someone can give some insight on this?
The only way to have a zone like you are describing is to be between 2 (or more) bodies where the gravity cancels out. For example when going from the earth to the moon there is a point where the net effects of the earth and moon cancel.
It isnt like that. There is a thread that cosmic traveler posted about 2 weeks ago that shows a different colored map of the earth. The red areas indicate a stronger source of gravity, the blue areas are weaker. What if a black hole experiences this same phenomena, just on a MUCH larger scale?
You see different gravity on the map of earth because there are variations in the density of the planet. There are no variations in the density of a BH.
It sounds like this fellow was blowing smoke. The gravity of a black hole has never been measured. Steller mass black holes are found by the x-ray emissions or in the case of a binary by the orbit of a star around the unseen partner (the black hole). For black holes inside galaxies the best evidence for the existence of the black hole is the orbit of stars very close the black hole. But none of this data is anywhere 'fine grained' enough to tell if there are ANY gravity variations around a black hole.
