I’ve been meaning to explain my black hole hypothesis for some time now but there is always something more important to do. But David and Say Uncle posted about it so it’s time I elaborated.
I tried to leave a comment on David’s post last night but the blog software rejected it as spam. David posted my comment in a separate post a few minutes ago. Here is the comment:
Actually my hypothesis was formed almost exactly 1.5 years ago.
See here and here.
I did a little bit of math on the topic but to say my cosmological math is weak would be a gross understatement. What results I did come up with seemed plausible though. That is–the “background radiation left over from the big bang” appears to have a similar temperature to that of the event horizon of a black hole composed of all the matter of our known universe.
I recently listened to the book Parallel Worlds and was surprised and pleased to hear that others had explored the same hypothesis–at least part of it anyway. No mention was made of the direction the black hole being on the time axis. This is a critical component and the easiest thing to prove as being consistent with the known facts.
I will now elaborate further.
My first “Ah hah!” moment was back in February of 2009 and I posted a couple of Tweets about it:
I’m listening to The Black Hole War. This inspired me to explore the hypothesis that our universe is a black hole.
We are rushing toward the singularity at the speed on light on the time axis.
Since then I have made casual references to my hypothesis on my blog (here, and here) and I think a comment or two on other people’s blogs.
Our experience with time dilation and length contraction is the best support for this hypothesis. Starting with the equation for time dilation we can rearrange it as follows (brother Doug pointed this out to me a couple decades ago, I have not read or heard it expressed this way before or since so a great deal of credit, or blame, for inspiring this hypothesis goes to Doug):
DeltaT’ = DeltaT/(SQRT(1 – v2/c2))Â Where DeltaT’ is the elapsed time for the moving, at velocity ‘v’, object and DeltaT is the elapsed time for the stationary observer. ‘c’ is the speed of light.
SQRT(1 – v2/c2) = DeltaT/DeltaT’
1 – v2/c2 = (DeltaT/DeltaT’)2
1 = (DeltaT/DeltaT’)2 + v2/c2
c2 = c2 (DeltaT/DeltaT’)2 + v2c2 (DeltaT/DeltaT’)2 is the square of a velocity. Hence we could substitute a symbol for this expression. Let’s let ‘t’ = c (DeltaT/DeltaT’).
c2 = t2 + v2
What this says is that as a moving objects velocity, ‘v’, increases the velocity ‘t’ must decrease such that the sum of t2 + v2 remains constant. This gives us time dilation. But what is the less obvious observation is that as ‘v’ goes to zero our velocity in the ‘t’ direction becomes the speed of light. Hence stationary objects in our frame of reference are actually traveling in the ‘t’ direction at the speed of light.
Inside the event horizon of a black hole all objects travel at the speed of light. If they move off of the straight line toward the center of the black hole the sum of their velocity components still must be precisely equal to the speed of light. Hence if they take on a velocity vector perpendicular to the straight line to the singularity they move slower in the direction of the singularity. This is exactly our experience with time. Our time “velocity” decreases when we increase our velocity in any other direction. Hence, I hypothesize that, we are inside the event horizon of a black hole moving toward the singularity which happens to be in the direction of the axis we call ‘time’.
Further support for this hypothesis is length contraction. We know that as the velocity of a moving object increases the observable length (it doesn’t actually contract, only observations of it’s length decrease) of an object decreases. At the speed of light the length of an object is zero (I suspect it actually becomes the Planck length, but this is just a guess on my part). Since we (according to my hypothesis) are traveling at the speed of light on the time axis we can only observe a single instant of time.
Of course the first question that comes to mind is, “When do we get ripped apart by tidal forces and our subatomic components get sucked into the singularity?”
I don’t know the answer to that, but it is something to think about isn’t it?
Have a nice day.
I suspect that the answer is never. This universe will experience infinite elapsed time before it reaches the singularity, though in an instant viewed from an external frame.
Well, if our universe were in the event horizon of a black hole in a larger universe we could expect a few things based on assumptions about gravity.
Gravity is acceleration, and acceleration requires mass. So we should see effects on mass to illustrate the hypothesis.
Such as an assymetry towards the singularity, ie multiple parts of the observable universe being accelerated away from the observer. No matter where the observer is in the universe part of the universe should be pulled away and “squished together” while the part of the universe further away from the singularity appears to expand.
From our current perspective we view the universe as expanding, possibly only because the rest of the universe is falling faster down the asymptotic “gravity well” and our velocity is not accelerating on pace. By the very nature of a bottomless pit our universe will be stretched forever and never reach the bottom.
If we view our universe as finite, a discrete unit in a larger universe, then the exterior shape of our universe will be squished towards zero and lengthened towards infinity the deeper into the event horizon our universe falls.
From a perspective inside the universe, this stretching will be viewed as an increase in the area of the universe. If we use the “Big Bang” as the start point, entering the event horizon, then the end of our universe will be when there is infinite distance across the length of the universe due to “stretching” as the leading edge continually descends further into the gravity well than the trailing edge.
Which means our universe will “die” in darkness as infinite space causes entropy to make everything cold…
Well, I betcha the Heechee know the answer to that, and lotsa other questions.
If time is just a direction in a multi-dimensional (more than three anyway) black hole then shouldn’t we be able to move backwards as well as forwards in that direction?
James,
We can’t see the squished part because we can’t see into the future. Only into the past–where things are “expanded”.
Once inside the event horizon everything “falls” at the same rate–the speed of light.
Alan,
No. The gravity of the black hole prevents anything from going in reverse. If we could then it wouldn’t be a black hole because things could escape by reversing. You can stop your forward movement on the time axis, by traveling the speed of light in a direction orthogonal to the time axis, but you cannot go backward.
Ah! To go back in time would require exceeding the speed of light in the opposite direction. I get it.
But if it’s squished in the future why does the universe appear to be expanding now?
My understanding of the theories is that those inside the event horizon would live out their lives and even many, many millennium blissfully unaware of the impending doom they are headed into. Not necessarily being ripped apart but being stretched into long, spaghetti like shapes. Life in all likelihood would never actually see the changes happening to itself because it would happen over such a long period of time as to be undetectable to inside observers.
To an outside observer however, they would enter the event horizon and then into the singularity within a matter of seconds.
Ninth Stage and Chris,
Further thoughts on the topic… I think that is only going to apply to black holes within our black hole. Any black hole that we fall into on our trip along the time axis will pull us in a different direction, at the speed of light, and stop time for us giving the conventional answer you guys did. But since we are traveling at the speed of light in the time direction already time (just another physical direction like in the X, Y, and Z axis) doesn’t stop for us. We are moving at the speed of light toward the singularity. If it is a billion light years from where we are now then we will reach it in a billion years.
If this is the case, shouldn’t we see weird visual feedback effects when we look toward the center of the universe and pass through images which are stuck in time? Or maybe this would explain things like deja vu..
I have always believed that the reason for the time differences was the immense gravity effects not the speed of travel. Though now that I think about it, I believe I got the dilation effects backwards. Time would pass normally for those inside the event horizon, just as it would for those outside of it. The outside observers would see those inside as almost stopping in time and literally taking forever to reach the center while those inside would simply see time pass normally.