
Originally Posted by
rodsky
When you mention things like "true", you're talking about absolutes, which is a no-no in the relativistic universe we live in.
A black hole actually has no "hole"...what you will just see is a dimple/distortion in space. Imagine you're looking at a metallic mirror. You can see your own reflection and everything behind you because the metal mirror is so flat and shiny. Now take a sharp icepick and make an indentation on the metal surface. Now look at the mirror again...you now see that the shape of your face, or the things behind you, tend to "curl" or "curve" around the dent you made in the metal. This is precisely how one would see the black hole--it's just a dent in 3D space, as compared to a dent in the 2D surface of a shiny, reflective metal sheet.
So going back to your question, how far back in time? Since those distortions you see still "belong" in this dimension/universe (the proof of this is that you can still see them, right?), they are still subject to the same measurements we give any celestial objects, and thus if it has been determined that the black hole is say, 1000 light years away, then the "light" (or x-rays or other forms of radiation) you see from it (the light that just fell on your retina) is 1000 years old, with the exception of the light around it from other stars that got "bent" (the warping around the hole)--the age of light of course depends on the source star behind the black hole.
So there is no confusion--you deal with the black hole using known values and parameters because it still exists within the framework of something we can still measure.
-RODION