Question: how do you think we can figure out what happens inside a black hole?

Jessica Marshall answered on 11 Mar 2014:

It is quite difficult to predict what happens inside a black hole, as a lot of the laws of physics begin to be pushed to the boundaries and strange things begin to happen. Most of what we know is derived from mathematicians and physicists using physics and working out what will happen – they then look to experiments and observations to help prove those theories to be true. For example, the size of black holes and how they consume stars was predicted before we had telescopes powerful enough to observe them. When the telescopes now look at black holes, they are finding many of the predictions are correct. So, this gives us some confidence in the theories of what happens inside the black holes. So, more data for the scientists to put into their models will help them. The nearest black hole is 6000 light years away – so it would take something travelling at the speed of light 6000 years to get there, so that isn’t really an option.. Instead, using experiments on Earth like the Large Hadron Collider will give scientist better understanding about how some particles interact and a glimmer into black hole theory and then putting it to the test with observations in space.