(Submitted March 14, 1997) Just curious about Black holes, and I
wanted to know if the gravitational field of a black hole would
pull an object in faster than the speed of light. If I
understand correctly objects cannot go faster than the speed of
light our they would be going back in time. If the acceleration
of a black hole is constant, would an object that got sucked
into a black holes velocity increase beyond the speed of light
the closer it got to the black The answer to your question is
that the motion of a particle near a black hole is not governed
by Newton's laws of motion in the familiar sense. The correct
equations for motion near a black hole predict that an object on
a radial path into the hole will have a velocity which
approaches the speed of light as the object approaches the event
horizon. For more information, I can only refer you to a
textbook on general relativity, such as the one by Steven
Weinberg ("Gravitation and Cosmology..." 1972 (Wiley: New York).
I hope this is of some help.