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by pdonis 2751 days ago
> the time and space axis gets flipped at the event horizon. This also happens to a fast moving objects due to relativistic effects

Neither of these things are true, and I have no idea how you are getting either of them from the Wikipedia article you linked to. Penrose-Terrell rotation, which affects how objects appear to observers when they are moving at relativistic speeds relative to those observers, does not "flip" the time or space axes; it's an optical effect due to the finite speed of light.

As I noted in another post upthread, the "flip" of time and space axes inside a black hole's horizon is a property of a particular choice of coordinates, not of spacetime itself.

> This kinda implies time and space are the same thing

No, they aren't, because there is still a fundamental difference between timelike and spacelike directions in spacetime. That is true regardless of how you choose coordinate axes.

1 comments

People often mistakenly try to map space time onto an ether-like flat background, treating spacetime like a drawing where the paper is the background. It's not an uncommon kind of fumbling as someone tries to grasp these things.