Rethinking the origins of the universe

No, any photons that are emitted from matter close to the event horizon and travel toward the distant observer will be redshifted. Photons falling into the potential well of the black hole will be blueshifted. Of course, the distant observer is not able to directly detect photons falling into the black hole because he is far away from it. All he can do is calculate what he would expect the energy of the photons to be. This calculation gives an infinite energy as the photon approaches the event horizon, but it's not a "real" energy, so the black hole doesn't gain an infinite amount of energy.

An analogous effect occurs for an observer stationed at rest, hovering above the event horizon. Such an observer will observe the photons from afar to be blueshifed in agreement with the distant observer. Moreover, as this stationary observer gets closer and closer to the event horizon, the photons will be blueshifted to infinitely large energies.

related tidbit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#Evaporation

"A stellar black hole of one solar mass has a Hawking temperature of about 100 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Stellar-mass or larger black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and thus will grow instead of shrink. "

> I think it's a bit naive to say that science doesn't turn on belief.

That depends entirely on what we mean when we say "science". If by "science" we mean as defined and as practiced when it's done right, then no, belief plays no part -- it can't. If it did, it wouldn't be science.

> Scientist aren't robots, mechanically and dispassionately ingesting evidence and spitting out theory.

Scientists aren't robots, but they are also not hothouse orchids.

> They're humans with imaginations, beliefs, agendas, and egos, guided (hopefully) by a methodology that leads to discovery.

You have left the topic of science. The reason science exists is precisely because people are the way you describe them. Science is meant to be a counterpoint to natural human instincts, beliefs, passions, and other logical failings.

> I think belief is what drives science, and it's not all that bad of a thing.

You're now confusing science with religion. In religion, you let sincere feelings guide you to a conclusion. In science, you let logic guide you to a conclusion.

In religion, something is true until evidence proves it false. In science, something is false until evidence proves it true -- exactly the opposite.

Much of scientific discipline is meant to guard against what we believe is true or want to be true. Experimental and control groups, the classic double-blinding precautions in human studies -- all are meant to minimize the corrosive, undermining influence of our beliefs.

The perfect religious follower is guided by belief, hoping only that his work reflects his passion. The perfect scientist doesn't care what conclusion his work comes to, hoping only that it reflects reality to the best of his ability.

Belief and science are in absolute opposition.

Conservation of energy

> FWIW, it's always been easier for me to think of it as 'moving' more quickly along the time axis - which would appear slowed down to someone farther away from the source of the gravity.

In reality, it's the other way around. At the bottom of a gravity well, time passes more slowly. An astronaut on the moon observing a laser beam from earth's surface would see it as red-shifted compared to a local reference, reflecting the fact that time passes more slowly at earth's surface than it does on the moon. The other equivalent interpretation under GR is that the light loses energy climbing out of the gravitational field and is therefore red-shifted. One of the beauties of Einstein's theory is that, if you do the math using either assumption (slower time or lost energy), the result comes out the same.

The classic confirmation of GR conducted in 1919 during a solar eclipse showed that the paths taken by starlight near the temporarily blocked sun were curved toward the sun. This is consistent with the idea that time passes more slowly near the sun. Consider that a light beam a bit closer to the sun would have a longer transit time (because of slower time passage) than one farther away, which would have the effect of curving the stellar light wavefront toward the sun.

This article has some graphics and deeper explanations to assist in understanding these ideas:

http://arachnoid.com/relativity