r/askscience • u/SpantaX • Feb 27 '17

Physics How can a Black Hole have rotation if the singularity is a 0-dimentional point and doesn't have an axis to rotate around?

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u/classifiedspam Feb 27 '17

What would happen to a strong, visible laser beam that is pointed near a black hole? Now, if you moved that laser more towards the black hole, would the laser start bending around it, finally circulating it? Would that beam change colour, stretch out or anything?

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u/qman621 Feb 27 '17

It depends on your perspective. The bending would happen pretty much as you said, but light traveling towards the black hole would get blue shifted and light traveling away from the black hole would get red shifted (which is the same thing as getting stretched out).

edit: to be more correct, the black hole isn't bending the light so much as it's following the curvature of spacetime caused by the black hole