On the Local Detectability of the Passage Through the Schwarzschild Horizon

Using the property of the simplest invariant built from the covariant derivatives of the curvature tensor to change sign on the Schwarzschild horizon, and the relativistic quadratic geodesic deviation equation to express the invariant in terms of locally measurable quantities, viz., separation, relative velocity and acceleration of test particles, a scheme is presented which can, in principle, be used by an imaginary observer to detect by local measurements the passage through the event horizon in the Schwarzschild spacetime.