Even Einstein and Schwarzschild showed that the space around black holes is curved. But a new perspective revealed: this curvature doesn’t suck cosmic dust in but flings it away — like a trampoline.
In the rotating disk of dust and superheated gas (a model developed by Sunyaev), particles move chaotically. Closer to the hole, space seems to stretch, even accounting for dark energy, and time slows down: the particle almost hangs in place.
This explains why the X-ray flickering of Cygnus X-1 looks different. Computer calculations of millions of trajectories showed: the radiation fluctuations smooth out at low frequencies — exactly as observed by telescopes. An additional contribution comes from gravitational stretching of light. Thus astrophysicists got a tool to test strong gravity directly through observations.
Because of space stretching, it's easier for a dust grain to fly away from a black hole than to fall into it — as if the cosmos works like a trampoline.