[Sir_Cmpwn]

It's a lot more complicated than this and a lot of your assumptions are not true. So far as our universe is concerned, the inside of a black hole literally doesn't exist and events in there literally don't happen. Once you get inside, spacetime is warped so severely that a lot of our fundamental assumptions about how space and time work change. It's not reasonable to assume that normal processes observed outside of the event horizon are still happening inside (plus, black holes form from supernovas, which happen precisely because fusion ceased in the star (simplified explanation)).

[coryfklein]

> So far as our universe is concerned, the inside of a black hole literally doesn't exist and events in there literally don't happen.

Except our universe _is_ affected by what happens inside a black hole via Hawking Radiation [1], where energy from inside the black hole does make it out and interacts with the rest of the universe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

[Retra]

Obviously the inside of a black hole does exist on account of the fact that it is able to warp spacetime in an externally detectable manner. If the interiors of black holes didn't exist they would be indistinguishable from empty space, and not seem so remarkable as to be called "black holes."

Either way, we do not know what processes occur inside because we lack any theory which could describe it. This certainly doesn't mean nothing happens in there or nothing exists in there.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

From my earlier comment:

>So far as our universe is concerned, the inside of a black hole literally doesn't exist and events in there literally don't happen.

It would probably be easier to get this across if I substituted "So far as our universe is concerned" with "From our perspective outside of the event horizon". Remember that a singularity doesn't just "pull" light so hard that it can't escape - they warp spacetime around them, so much so that the space and time within the event horizon ceases to be meaningful from our reference frame. The only way to go is down - literally. If you turn 360 degrees in a black hole you will never face the outside.

Also, we definitely have theories that describe what could happen inside an event horizon. General relativity, for example. It's from these that we can establish that space and time "switch" within, for example. We can solve general relativity for the conditions within an event horizon and make some pretty strong predictions about it (it's from these predictions that I conclude elsewhre in this discussion that fusion is unlikely).

[qubex]

The inside of a black hole doesn’t exist as far as our universe is concerned. Even the ‘gravity’ isn’t ‘emanated’ by the mass ‘inside’ the event horizon; rather it is a ‘recursively’ generated field (remember: gravity is generated by mass-energy curving space-time, gravity is a form of energy, and so gravity begets gravity in an entirely self-sustaining manner).

[thathappened]

This is a misconception of spacetime. The object exists, it just consumes faster than it dissipates mater. Just because there's no discoverable interaction between the consumed matter doesn't mean it doesn't happen, which is all time really illustrates.

[Sir_Cmpwn]

From our external perspective, they never happen. The time they use to happen in doesn't exist.

[wruza]

So, in our reference frame, black holes never grow from original collapse and remain in that same state, tiny mass and size, no matter what falls into it. Wait, no. It loses mass through particle emission, which is assumed to actually happen. This puzzle was worth investigating when I learned this topic (not sure I understood all math and concepts correctly though).

[Sir_Cmpwn]

I mean, the real answer is "black holes are very complicated" and a full explanation is out of scope for a HN comment. Hawking radiation requires a lot of background knowledge to understand (and I have to admit I still don't fully understand it). The pop-sci explanation of particle/anti-particle pairs appearing on either side of the event horizon is incorrect.