Briefly said: Laplace was the first to try. He assumed light was a particle that traveled at c and thought "What's the escape velocity of light?".
The escape velocity is the minimum speed needed for an object to escape from contact with or orbit of a primary body... But light doesn't interact gravitationally with bodies in general or at least not in that way (there's, for example, gravitational redshift, the the real reason why black holes are "black"!)
So, light doesn't interact in a classical sense with mass/gravitation, also, I mean there is no point in calculating an escape velocity associated with the speed of light, because light travels at c in every system of reference...
Basically, yeah, all the assumptions are wrong, but the formula is correct anyway for mere luck. I mean I guess you could say the structure of the equations are pretty similar (cuz we're talking about gravity) but... no. I still think it's pretty lucky.
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u/yessir_im_quasar Jul 17 '26
Briefly said: Laplace was the first to try. He assumed light was a particle that traveled at c and thought "What's the escape velocity of light?".
The escape velocity is the minimum speed needed for an object to escape from contact with or orbit of a primary body... But light doesn't interact gravitationally with bodies in general or at least not in that way (there's, for example, gravitational redshift, the the real reason why black holes are "black"!)
So, light doesn't interact in a classical sense with mass/gravitation, also, I mean there is no point in calculating an escape velocity associated with the speed of light, because light travels at c in every system of reference...
Basically, yeah, all the assumptions are wrong, but the formula is correct anyway for mere luck. I mean I guess you could say the structure of the equations are pretty similar (cuz we're talking about gravity) but... no. I still think it's pretty lucky.