Electrical Resistance
Thorne (1994) relates that this approach to studying black holes was prompted by the realisation by Hanni, Ruffini, Wald and Cohen in the early 1970s that since an electrically charged pellet dropped into a black hole should still appear to a distant outsider to be remaining just outside the event horizon, if its image persists, its electrical fieldlines ought to persist too, and ought to point to the location of the "frozen" image (1994, pp. 406). If the black hole rotates, and the image of the pellet is pulled around, the associated electrical fieldlines ought to be pulled around with it to create basic "electrical dynamo" effects (see: dynamo theory).
Further calculations yielded properties for a black hole such as apparent electrical resistance (pp. 408). Since these fieldline properties seemed to be exhibited down to the event horizon, and general relativity insisted that no dynamic exterior interactions could extend through the horizon, it was considered convenient to invent a surface at the horizon that these electrical properties could be said to belong to.
Read more about this topic: Membrane Paradigm
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