I took a physics course at a community college over 20 years ago and one of the things that stood out to me was the professor telling us not to overthink or assign too much romanticism to the idea of black holes.
His message was basically “it just means the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light… if you plug the size and mass of the universe into the escape velocity formula, the result you get back is greater than the speed of light, so our entire universe is a black hole.”
If this was being discussed at a community college decades ago then I think the new discoveries aren’t as revelatory as they would at first appear to the general public.
Nah really it was probably some small thing the media got a hold of and just ran with. I think you’re spot on
And a relevant smbc for good measure.
Smbc is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, but what does xkcd stand for?
Xaturday Korning Creakfast Dereal
Xerry kible cellow dip
It’s a random unique string, chosen to make the comic easily searchable.
Where’s PBF?
On the contrary; while I have heard the explanation that the commenter you replied to has said I have also heard a slightly different theory:
Our universe is the 3 dimensional event horizon of a 4th dimensional black hole. By extension we may find that black holes in our universe have similar funky 2 dimensional areas at their even horizons.
I am sure clickbait articles are part of it but there also seems to be several actual theories surrounding the idea of the nature of our universe relating to black holes.
Our universe is 4 d not 3 d
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YOU can’t move freely in time. Don’t speak for me.
Ok, I can’t either. But still…
I think I can move freely in time, just not voluntarily…
Sometimes I go through a whole day in like a minute, sometimes I blink and it’s Monday already.
Or maybe it’s working nights has that effect?
So, I can freely move through time if I consider alcohol as my time machine.
lol everything is relative.
You move through time every second…
Walk in the other direction then, let’s see how that goes.
That not how you do it. Watch a documentary called edge of all we know. Someone much smarter then you has that opinion.
Nah, this universe is 3d.
I’m assuming you are thinking that time is the 4th dimension and we have time here so we are 4d?
Time may be the 4th dimension, but in our universe, time doesn’t actually behave like a proper dimension. For one thing, dimensions should be spatially perpendicular to each other and time is not. We also seem to only be able to move one way through time whereas we can move back and forth through the other 3 dimensions.
Dimensions get weird and complicated. For the intents and purposes of this conversation it’s correct to say that the universe were experiencing now is 3 dimensional.
That’s actually a crazy take that time isn’t a dimension. We’ll if someone say the sky is purple who am I to argue?
Like I said, time is likely a dimension. It just doesn’t behave like a proper dimension in our universe / reality.
Neither does light…
Yes, but if you’re beyond the event horizon of a black hole time becomes basically* irrelevant. You could literally turn around, look back out towards the rest of he universe, and watch all of time play out in the blink of an eye.
You know that scene in Interstellar where they land on the planet for 5 minutes, but 20 years passes for everyone else due to the planet’s mass? It’s the same thing, but a billion-billion-billion times more severe.
Scientist: Scientific discoveries are meaningless when taken out of context.
Journalist: Scientific discoveries are meaningless.
Journalist: What is context?
Context is text that served time in prison.
It balances out protext, figure it out rookie
Protext is what the really good journalists are writing.
another thing I learned at some point: Just because a physics formula returns a result, doesn’t mean that it’s reality
TBF black holes themselves were originally just the result of a Physics formula, but they eventually turned out to be a “reality”. Sometimes that shit happens, yo.
Orr, you’re missing the obvious alternative here - the guy was a legendary level scientist, but the government stole his research and threatened his family and sidelined him into being a community college professor so that no one pays attention to his “drivel” so that they continue to control us into being workers for the capitalist pigs
I mean, the model was first developed in the 70s so maybe not that specific guy
Theory is one thing.
Observation is the next step.Absolutely. I don’t want to minimize the importance of the new discoveries in any way; I’m just saying this isn’t the great surprise the original post seems to think it is.
Interestingly, galaxies at the edge of our ability to perceive are in fact receding away from us at velocities greater than the speed of light.
Maybe it’s because they are outside the black hole and aren’t time dilated.
Wouldn’t that mean if we can see them that light can enter/escape a black hole?
Entering and escaping are two wildly different things.
It can enter, but not escape.
So that’s what Hotel California was about all along?
Why is there a warm smell of colitis in the air?
Light can enter a black hole perfectly fine - we would be able to see things outside of it, because the light is still following us. No light leaves the black hole (if it’s past the event horizon), so you can’t see into it.
When I first saw pictures of galaxies as a kid I noticed they all looked like black holes.
In a way we’re all just bits of organic matter mid-flush, waiting for the Drainpipe of Destiny
In a way we’re all just bits of organic matter mid-flush, waiting for the Drainpipe of Destiny
Word
Okay, so now you can barely afford your rent inside a black hole. Enjoy the enhanced granularity of your desperation!
That would explain why it feels like my bank account is being sucked dry.
What is this black hole, my ex-wife?
tugs collar
And since you’re in a black hole with your unaffordable rent, you can’t escape it!!!
Evict horizon
Fuck that’s funny!
I can barely afford rent!
Well… the good news is you can stretch your income a bit further with spaghettification!
Beans are economical too
paying rent sometimes feels like throwing money into a black hole
The same for mortgages too really. All these people out there toting new construction and how it’s good for property values seem to forget that higher property values means 1) higher property taxes, and 2) higher priority values, for when you sell your home and need to buy a new one.
Not to mention mortgage rates are so damn high that your mortgage payment is basically like paying rent to the bank because you’re barely touching the principal on the loan
This is part of why I’m planning on over saving for my downpayment. If I’m not paying less than my rent there’s no way in hades I’ll ever be able to afford repairs
I just bought a house, and honestly, dont even try to get a above 20% to knock off pmi (assuming thats a thing where you are). When we sold our previous house and did a recast with the proceeds, the difference between hitting 20% and hitting the 20% + $50k was about $200 in monthly payments
Only sometimes?
It’s actually throwing money into BlackRock.
Don’t worry, the money goes to paying your landlord’s mortgage.
This is a postulation not a discovery.
Someone did a weird math thingy that gave a word result and this was how they tried to explain it. There’s been zero confirmation this is actually the case. Just like they can’t decide if dark energy/matter is a thing.
We have a theory for expansion of the universe. It is called “the big bang theory”.
However according to the math our universe should slow down expanding, but we can observe it is speeding up. Solution? Dark Energy.
There are models that try to simulate the orbits and shit of things we can see. Now those models aren’t working however… Solution? Dark matter.
This is very run down concept of what dark matter and energy is. Basically shit we need for the math to work out to the observation we make.
However I don’t think we are inside a black hole. This would mean that instead of mostly nothing our universe would be cramped with matter…
If you take all the mass in our universe and run it through the Schwarzschild equation, you get a black hole with about the same radius as our observable universe.
Things don’t need to be tightly packed to be a black hole, there just needs to be enough stuff in an area.
How do we predict the total mass of the universe?
I think it’s a combination of at least three things.
Cosmic Microwave Background radiation gives us a pretty good idea of the energy/mass density in the universe at a fixed point and age of the universe. If you take the densities estimated from the CMB and multiply it by the estimated size of the universe at the time the CMB (380k years after the Big Bang), then you get the total mass.
Second, we can just look for what we can see. I think there have been large-scale surveys done to estimate total mass/energy in the universe.
The third estimate has to do with something called ‘critical mass’ - we observe the overall ‘curve’ of space to be very close to flat. I’m talking the geometry of space; two parallel rays of light do not ever cross or diverge. For this to happen, there needs to be a certain average density of mass.
Wikipedia has the mass of the observable universe listed as 1.5×10^53 kg, although this can go up to 10^60 kg at the higher ends.
If we plug the Wikipedia numbers into the Schwartzchild radius formula: r = (2GM) / (c^2)
Where G is the gravitational constant, M is our mass, and c is the speed of light:
r = (2 * 6.67408 * 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 * 1.5*10^53 kg) / (299792458 m/s)^2
r = 2 * 10^43 m^3 s^-2 / 8.988 * 10^16 m2/s2
r = 2.225×10^26 meters
r = 23.52 billion light years
Wikipedia lists the radius of the observable universe as 46.5 billion light years.
So… given the Wikipedia numbers, the universe would need to be half the size it is now to be a black hole. At these scales, being within an order of magnitude is… fine.
If we bump up the estimate of mass to only 3x10^53 kg, then the Schwartzchild radius equals the size of the observable universe.
So it’s within the margins of error of our current estimates that the Schwartzchild radius of our universe would be the current size of our universe.
Approximately
Light from stars tells us how big they are then adjust for things that don’t emit light by looking at how objects move (i.e. gravity). Objects in this case not necessarily being single entities but often groups of things like entire galaxies. This is basically how dark matter became a thing. Scientists were like “hey theres waaaay more gravity moving things around but we dont see any objects causing it…”
There’s also been some major leaps in dark matter physics in the last few years. Revisiting primordial black holes using lasers and microlensing might actually be able to get supporting evidence here before long if the hypothesis holds.
PBS Space Time has a good video breaking this possibility and methodology down.
Difference being that we understand dark matter exponentially more than dark energy. We can actually observe it’s gravity affecting light.
There’s also cyclic conformal universe theory, put forth by Penrose.
Where once you have an empty enough space… its mathematically indistinguishable from a singularity.
So, if its true, then yeah, we could be inside of a blackhole/singularity.
At this point, that doesn’t really matter.
So, dark matter and energy is the Universe’s theorized version of the Kelevin (from The Office).
Dark Matter/Energy is just a placeholder for stuff we can detect or see influencing things we can detect but have no friggin idea what it is yet. It could be many different things all at once; or nothing and we just got some other things about what we observe wrong. It’s just a symptom of taking what we know from observing the universe and reconciling it with what we know about math, and trying to make a mathematical model that recreates the universe as we have observed it.
What if we’re not in a black hole, but in the aftermath of a vacuum decay event?
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But is your refrigerator running?
Haven’t been able to get the fucker to stop after storing my meth in it!
I think she’s on lap 24,512 now.
That is literally what the current big bang theory says! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflationary_epoch?wprov=sfla1
Look up vacuum decay. It’s theoretically a thing that can rewrite spacetime at a lower energy level, and would expand out from a point in a bubble. The expanding bubble would erase and rewrite everything it touched into the lower energy level.
Yes I know what vacuum decay is, and the thing I referenced, the inflaton field, is a hypothetized false vacuum near the very start of the universe, that went through this exact process, giving rise to our current vacuum and ending the hypothetized inflation era
I know there’s a hypothesis that our current vacuum could be metastable as well, but that’s a seperate thing
Yeah, I believe the Higgs field showed us to be metastable, unless new findings have invalidated that.
Well, that might suck slightly less in the long run?
That depends. The chances of finding other life are lower. That would also make a cosmic horizon that we would never be able to see beyond. It would make us unable to find the beginning of everything.
Those are all really interesting factors to consider and I appreciate the response!
I’ll come clean, when I wrote it, I was just making a funny, like… A “decaying vacuum” would suck less over time. . .than a black hole. Lol XD
To your point though, less likelihood of finding other life is such a wildcard, for sure. (Less likelihood of meeting cool benevolent spacefarers…but also less likely to be spotted by something like Mass Effect’s Reapers, or accidentally bring home Xenomorphs or extragalactic pathogens lol)
And…not being able to ever see the beginning of everything…my curious mind says that’d be such a bummer but also…oddly beautiful? I’ll have to ponder that…
Frankly, I’d love to be able to explain how the universe started. That would be the final nail in the coffin for religion.
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We’re inside a dust cup?
Ok I’ve been meaning to ask this in the Space community or the NoStupidQuestions community. I’ve seen this news circling around the past 2 weeks and have been watching videos of people talking about it.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I think the gist is that astronomers discovered with the JWST that some galaxies at the end of the observable universe appear to be younger than they are supposed to be. So it kinda blows a hole in the big bang expansion where objects farther away should be older. And that somehow ties in with the theory that our universe is inside a blackhole.
It’s fascinating but I don’t know what to do with that information other than just be fascinated. I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who said “So what does this new discovery matter to us? Nothing”, because us being in a blackhole doesn’t change anything in the grand universal scheme of things.
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I’ve always liked this theory, imagining the cosmos is just a series/web/tree of black holes draining into the next. Everything gets recycled eventually.
It meshes well with my occasional feeling that reality is just circling the drain.
note that we’re all circling the sun but still not getting closer an inch per year
actually, we are inside the dream of someone else, and that one too is again in a dream …
Am I a man dreaming I’m a butterfly?
It doesn’t answer where it all came from. Whatever theory or religion you choose, there’s no answer to this question apart from it suddenly appeared which implies something can be created out of nothing and that creates a whole lot of new questions and possibilities.
It’s also just whitehole theory which is possible but we’ve never seen one and we likely should have by now.
the network of causality is like a big river, and if you follow individual lines, they either lead in circles or they stretch infinitely into the past and future or they spring out somewhere spontaneously
only in the third case is there a “spontaneous creation”
Another big part of it is that if the big bang happened evenly then galaxies and other objects should be spinning in random directions. So far that’s not what’s been observed. There seems to be a preferred direction everything spins in.
The direction the black hole “toilet” flushes as it sucks stuff in and smashes it against each other?
Maybe there’s a parallel universe called Astraliastra where the black hole flushes the other direction!
It’s amazing to me that an episode of the Simpsons like 30 years ago created such a widely believed completely made up fact.
That fact wasn’t as cromulent as they made it out to be.
ETA: also, the myth about birds exploding by eating rice. An entire generation used bubbles at their weddings instead, in part because Lisa didn’t fact-check a myth. (Not complaining about the result though: bubbles are lovely floating orbs of happiness, whereas thrown rice is a messy waste of food.)
The bird myth predates the Simpsons though. I did hear it was greatly spread by all the churches\wedding venues because they all didn’t want to keep cleaning up all the rice.
For sure, Lisa doesn’t tend to make up such ideas whole-cloth. It was just the first place I heard the myth and I remember kids at school spreading it after that episode. So it definitely spread the idea.
There seems to be a preferred direction everything spins in.
I’m sorry but i think that’s just not true?
Inside the solar system, yes, planets more or less spin around the same axis than the whole solar system does.
But the axis of the solar system and of the whole milky way are like 63° towards each other. Source So, not the same direction at all.
I don’t think they meant everything literally goes in the same direction, but more like what is discussed here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-inside-a-black-hole/ (this article was shared elsewhere in this post)
Maybe the far away galaxies are just the close galaxies seen from the other side?
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I was joking. Unless it was genius of course.
I seem to remember that the science isn’t totally settled on the distance to stars in our own galaxy so I am quite chill about cosmology.
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The Hubble radius of the universe is also equal to its Schwarzschild radius, which is a requirement for any “we’re inside a black hole” theory.
That’s not an empirical observation nor a new discovery though. It just an analogy that leans on the definition of Schwarzschild Radius. No one is seriously implying, that we’re somehow trapped in the very center of a black hole with the Hubble limit as the event horizon equidistant around us.
In fact, the analogy only holds, if the Hubble parameter is not constant and this new result, if it holds up, would still indicate, that it is not constant. As was expected by the standard model of cosmology. If the Hubble constant is decreasing, and consensus is that it does, than the Hubble radius is also different from an event horizon in the following way: light reaching us from more than 5 billion years ago comes from regions that have always been receding from us at speeds faster than light.
We also have to remember that we can only see a bounded sphere of the universe from our frame of reference.
If we were to move our observation points to elsewhere in the universe, we’ll be able to see more of the universe and challenge our current theories.
The JSWT sees only what it can, and our theories about the universe can only extend as far as that evidence. Those galaxies might appear to be younger, but the science is never finished!
Probably goes without saying
Tax breaks for the rich is the only solution
Wouldn’t it even be more helpful to just relieve the ultrarich from taxes? So they could better pay their rent too. I’d throw in one or two moneyz to help.
I suddenly feel something trickling down from above. Is this what they were talking about all these years? Is this a good thing? It smells bad, like really bad. Like somebody is cooking meth while they have a near fatal case of diarrhea. What am I supposed to do?
Get hooked on meth, it’ll wildly change your priorities.
(This is a joke, please do not do this)
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so basically We’re out in butt fuck no where in space and the aliens aren’t coming any time soon cause they essentially live in New York City and we’re in a town in Iowa that no one has ever heard of.
typical.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy.
Wait, we’re the hicks?!
Actually, that explains so much.
It’s entirely possible that there are no aliens in the “New York City” part of the universe.
Dense regions of space will have much more interactions between stellar systems and may not be stable enough for life to evolve. It could be why we haven’t seen anyone else, they’re all in their own little pockets of peace.
Being from Iowa, I take offense to that… But yes, you are correct.
Flyover state.
I’ve been here, I don’t blame them for not stopping by.
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But then there’s the guy who added all the mass and energy of the observable universe, calculated its’ Schwarzschild Radius, and came up with 13.8 billion light years.
There’s also how our observable universe’s Hubble Horizon acts like a black hole event horizon, the way in which even the speed of light is insufficient to escape beyond.
A lot of the math inside a black hole is eerily similar to the math of our own horizon, as traced by the age of the universe plus the speed of light.
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Nah, there’s been a bunch of discussion about our entire universe being inside a black hole.
There being a “bunch of discussion” doesn’t prove anything?
I believe MotoAsh was talking about the local hole which is different from the more recent we’re in a black hole discussion.
I was not stating that the unprovable is actually fact.
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Anyone got a link to either nasa or a good article explaining it?
Scientific American points to an important fact.
"With our latest surveys, such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and Euclid, by my very rough estimation, we’ve taken pictures of somewhere around 100 million galaxies out of the two trillion or so estimated to exist in the entire observable universe.
Shamir’s paradigm-shattering conclusion relies on 263 of them."
They are discussing bias in the selection.
“Unfortunately, this kind of extreme selection introduces many opportunities for bias to creep in. When we test a new idea in cosmology—indeed, in all of science—we work to make our conclusion as robust as possible. For example, if we were to change any of these filtering steps, from the selection of survey region to the threshold for deciding whether to include a galaxy in the analysis, our results should hold up or at least show a clear trend where the signal becomes stronger. But there isn’t enough information about such methodological checks in Shamir’s paper to make that judgment, which casts doubt on the validity of the conclusions.”
Both are fair and valid.
Peaceful science & good housing should go hand in hand.
I mean, we can talk about it for a bit, Angie, if it’d make you feel better, but that’s really about it, honestly.
Considering NASA could be canceled by an ass hole, I think we have other problems.
You better start believing in compression systems you’re in one
May be that’s why it sucks to live here… It’s related
