Quote of the Day
Following the line upwards we learn that the entire observable universe – the area that sits within the “Hubble radius” is also on that line. In other words, if a black hole was as large as the universe we can see, it would have the same density as the universe. Is the universe then a black hole? And if so, what does that mean?
Lineweaver noted to IFLScience that he and Patel are not the first to ask if the whole universe could be a black hole, although others have reached the idea through different means. The idea seems improbable, but the pair note the universe has always been on the line. Their measure of mass includes dark matter and dark energy (since energy and mass are interchangeable). As the universe within the Hubble radius has grown in size, so has the total mass/energy thanks to increasing dark energy. The fact the universe was also on the line billions of years ago when the Hubble radius was much smaller makes it less likely its position on the line is a coincidence.
Lineweaver notes there is an event horizon around the observable universe, just as there is around a black hole, and this is just one of the parallels between them.
Stephen Luntz
October 19, 2023
The Observable Universe Might Be A Black Hole, Suggests A Chart Of Everything | IFLScience
Interesting.
I wonder who the others they refer to who have asked “if the whole universe could be a black hole.” I first suggested this in February of 2009. See here and here. And I elaborated on it in July of 2010: Our universe is a black hole. I also pointed out Others who say our universe is a black hole.
Implying then, that there is a larger(?) universe outside our universe, in which we may be only one of millions of other black hole/universes, each of which may contain its own black holes.. Research by Augustus de Morgan suggested this back in 1872:
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
The problem I have with this stuff is they speak about thing in “certain” terms while they are very much uncertain.
I’m not an astrophysicist so maybe it’s just my ignorance…but as far as I know, ephemeral things like “dark matter” and “dark energy” are just inventions that the scientists came up with to explain holes in their theories.
“Dark Matter must exist because without it our theories about gravity and quantum mechanics don’t work”.
Um…maybe your theories don’t work without “dark matter” because your theories are wrong.
Just a thought.
I think there are still many fundamental things abut the mechanics of the universe that we simply don’t understand. I think scientists limit the scope of their research by assuming that their made up mechanisms and entities are factual and correct. What if they’re not? Then all the other theories and conclusions drawn on the backs of those assumptions are also wrong.
Does gravitational lensing actually work the way we think it does? It must because it fits the theories right? But until we can physically send a probe our scout out there to find out, we really don’t know. So saying with confidence that x is true because of our theories about dark matter, or dark energy, or gravitational lensing, or whatever, is nothing more than conjecture.
That’s fine by me, conjecture is a necessary part of the scientific process; but don’t phrase your conjecture in terms that imply you are imparting factual information.
It’s no different that the claims that “anthropogenic climate change is real because our models (that have never and can never successfully predict weather systems anywhere) say so.
These aren’t scientists, they’re prophets of sciencism. As real science progresses, some will go the way of Aristotle and some will go the way of da Vinci.
History is littered with Aristotles but only a very small handful of the caliber of da Vinci, Tesla, and Einstein.
I majored in physics back in the 1970’s, before I thought better of it, and tried to follow new developments for a while. An old and unsettled question back then was whether the universe was “closed” or “open”. Open means that on a large enough scale gravity bent a plane into a saddle-shape, and also that the universe would remain a lot of separate masses drifting apart forever. Closed meant that a plane bent into a sphere, and that in the very long run the expansion of the universe would reverse and all the mass would fall back together in one big clump in a reversal of the Big Bang. And closed means that nothing gets out of our universe – that is, it _is_ a very large black hole already, and in a very long time it will collapse back into a very small but incredibly massive one.
What distinguishes between the two is the overall mass density. As best they could measure it – and the accuracy of such measurements is very poor – it was at the balance point between closed and open, where the universe is “flat”, and in infinite time each mass would asymptotically approach a fixed final position. In spite of all advances in physics, this measurement always stayed that. Or perhaps astronomers and physicists had come to _assume_ flatness and tuned their measurement techniques to keep giving this result.
So if you wanted to prove it was closed, which some preferred, you needed more mass. Invisible mass. Dark matter or energy… I don’t know of any actual evidence of such, except that calculations of the early parts of the expansion after the Big Bang seem to require extra energy to push things apart faster. So you can assume “dark energy”, or you might think they guessed wrong about the speed of the expansion or the initial conditions.
So…if our universe is a black hole, and is a black hole that exists within a larger universe, is it reasonable to assume that there may be multiple “black hole universes” within that larger universe? And, as markm posits (above), based on what we may know about black holes – assuming however much we do know is accurate – there’s seemingly little to no possibility of exploration beyond our universe because nothing escapes a black hole. (Maybe.)
Which, if that’s the case, probably isn’t very important because whatever “black hole universe” we’re in seems, at least for now, to be sufficiently large that humans will spend a nearly infinite amount of time exploring it.
But, it does raise questions about, first, other “black hole universes” with which we may be sharing the larger “parent universe” that spawned them, and the possibility that there may be ways in which travel, of some sort, may occur between this multitude of inverses, someof which may be older, or younger, than our black hole universe” and possess different physical properties and operate under different “laws of physics.”
Then again, Elon Musk, who has offered that “there’s a 99.999% chance that what we’re living in is a sim” might be onto something.
Lots of interesting concepts. Film at eleven, maybe?
Why must it be within a larger universe? Why can’t it be the only one?
Our universe could very well be the only one. Defens (above) brought up that there may be a larger universe in which our black hole universe exists, which seems neither unreasonable nor reasonable based on our knowledge state. And, if there’s another universe, there’s no reason to assume there are only two, ours and the other one. Could be hundreds (what would an infinite number of universes look like?).
But, if there’s a chance that there is another universe, and, maybe, that it doesn’t have any democrats in it, we should go find out posthaste before they beat us there.
What, you saying I live in a vacuum? My ex used to tell me that all the time.
Seriously, if the universe is expanding. How could it be doing that while it’s being sucked into a maelstrom?
It seems far more important to find the true nature of matter. Is it a wave formation or an actual particle? First. As that would fundamentally change what we are observing?
It would also change the nature of causes, and ultimate effects. As waves have to be continually generated, vs. particulates being driven out, or sucked back?
But I probably shouldn’t even be chucking in an .02 on this one, because it’s way over my head.
Another “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” conversation subject.
Interesting but not really relevant to every day life. Some day in the very very far future such things may become directly important to the human race. But the odds are we will self immolate long before then.