No Way Back: Maximizing survival time below the Schwarzschild event horizon

TL;DR

This paper explores how rockets can extend survival time inside a black hole's event horizon, revealing a maximum limit and challenging the notion that struggling always reduces remaining time, with implications for teaching general relativity.

Contribution

It introduces a simple framework to analyze survival time extension inside black holes using rockets, showing a maximum limit and providing educational insights.

Findings

Rockets can extend survival time inside the horizon but only up to a maximum.

The maximum survival time is independent of initial conditions.

The framework serves as an effective teaching tool for general relativity.

Abstract

It has long been known that once you cross the event horizon of a black hole, your destiny lies at the central singularity, irrespective of what you do. Furthermore, your demise will occur in a finite amount of proper time. In this paper, the use of rockets in extending the amount of time before the collision with the central singularity is examined. In general, the use of such rockets can increase your remaining time, but only up to a maximum value; this is at odds with the ``more you struggle, the less time you have'' statement that is sometimes discussed in relation to black holes. The derived equations are simple to solve numerically and the framework can be employed as a teaching tool for general relativity.