Did Some Black Holes Survive the Big Bang? 188
astroengine writes "Could anything survive from one universe to the next, through a Big Crunch and resulting Big Bang? According to two researchers, a special class of pre-Big Bang black hole may have the ability to traverse the Big Bang singularity. The upshot is that there may be black holes that existed before the Big Bang knocking around in our modern universe. What's more, we might be able to detect them through the theorized gamma-ray burst produced when these pre-Big Bang black holes evaporate out of existence. But how would we distinguish between these black holes and the primordial black holes thought to be produced after the Big Bang? Well, that's just too confusing right now."
Easy to distinguish... (Score:5, Funny)
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So you're saying that for contractual purposes, all black holes pre-existed the universe?
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Bad for cryptography ! (Score:2)
That will really put a nail on the coffin of people saying that brute-forcing the most advanced forms of cryptography will require more processing time than the life expectancy of the universe.
Now, all the NSA needs to do is to put their brute-force cluster inside a black hole and wait for it to survive for the next 10^n big-bang cycles !!!
Current theory says the universe expands forever (Score:3, Informative)
So there may not be multiple big bangs. In which case their ability to survive is moot.
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Current theory relies on very limited information. http://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com]
Limited how?
By what theories? The indigenous peoples have many theories of the universe. The Mayans, Incas, Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians, and their intelligent progenitors have many more. The history of the future is defined by the theories that are ignored.
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions [fapit.net]? -RAH
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By what theories? The indigenous peoples have many theories of the universe. The Mayans, Incas, Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians, and their intelligent progenitors have many more.
Hate to be fussy, but careful with the use of theory. It's misinterpretation in this context is what people who believe in the supernatural cling to when discussing such things as the theory of evolution.
Theory: a well-established principle that has been developed to explain some aspect of the natural world. Theories have been typically tested repeatedly in many ways and have become widely accepted truth.
Hypothesis: Testable and informed predictions with supporting facts. What is expected to happen du
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You're supposed to say "magnets, how do they work?" or something like that. Do try to keep up with popular culture, or at least try for a sense of humor.
The "Cosmological Constant" has been an admitted kludge for a century. But somehow recently it seems to have gone from an explicit lable for "here's the place where our theory breaks" to "our theory's great, and here another great theory too", which isn't healthy.
The uniformity of tempurature of the CMBR, for example, was a bit of a surprise - being too un
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You're supposed to say "magnets, how do they work?" or something like that.
The magnets attract, the magnets repel - you can't explain that.
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From KnowYourMeme
Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work? is a lyrical reference to the 2009 single Miracles by the Insane Clown Posse, an American hip hop duo from Detroit, Michigan. The song describes the wonders of the universe and an appreciation for nature's beauty, while angrily eschewing science. Among the most quotable lines can be heard at 1:52, "fucking magnets, how do they work," which instantly became a popular catchphrase on the web.
Most other kludges resolve themselves quickly - even the more elusive like neutrinos and dark matter didn't take that long to gain experimental evidence. But universal expansion has been kludged forever - we're clearly missing somehting very fundamental.
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Neutrinos were suggested in 1930 and confirmed experimentally in 1956. I wouldn't call 26 years quickly. Inflation was suggested in 1980, so it's not that far behind neutrinos. But, of course, that isn't the important thing. Come up with a theory that better explains the data, and inflation will fall. Until that day, inflation is the best we have. The cosmological constant doesn't pose as anything but a kludge, but until we get better data or bette
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Redshifting, the primary support behind the expanding universe theory, has only been known/studied for the past hundred years or so. At best, that gives us some hundred years of data. On a cosmological level, this is near insignificant. Based on the calculations of Einstein's field theory, we know that the acceleration outward has a positive second derivative, meaning that the acceleration is increasing (and not decreasing as previously thought). Why is not known (and so the expanding universe is an obs
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It's a comic strip, not a scientific journal.
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Expanding and accelerating. Perhaps the Big Bang didn't just start, but continues to this day. It just so happens that as each moment in time passes, the more warped and distorted the pace of time becomes the further you look back. That is to say, the pace of time is constantly moving forward as events take place. But from our perspective, it's constant. Can be a bit confusing, I know. Sorry.
go easy on the bong. (Score:3)
If you don't you'll have Bruce Lee worked into this scenario...
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Of course we would, he was the original cause of the singularity expanding...
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Re:Current theory says the universe expands foreve (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah, this is a tough one, too. Since no evidence exists for alternative universes, either preceding or parallel, these things cannot be tested. Just because a parent universe could exist doesn't mean it did exist. The only evidence available is that the universe we live in is the only universe that does or has ever existed. So when ordering possibilities, the parent universe and a lineage of universes falls lower in likelihood than the current universe is the only one, ever.
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Yeah, this is a tough one, too. Since no evidence exists for alternative universes, either preceding or parallel, these things cannot be tested. Just because a parent universe could exist doesn't mean it did exist. The only evidence available is that the universe we live in is the only universe that does or has ever existed.
Well, that's something this experiment would be designed to answer, actually. If a black hole can - through exceedingly careful experimentation - be proven to predate the universe, that would be evidence there. Besides, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. It simply means that we don't know, because, absent the possibilities raised in the article, the notion of parallel universes doesn't appear to be testable.
So when ordering possibilities, the parent universe and a lineage of universes falls lower in likelihood than the current universe is the only one, ever.
By the same reasoning you provided above, you also have no evidence by which to handic
Multi-Verse Collisions (Score:3)
Actually, one current theory is that the universe does expand forever, but collision points between universes causes "big bangs" which sparks energy/matter into existence. The best explanation is two drum heads colliding at a single point, which would result in a "drum beat" of a bang, with the vibrations and ripples being the equivalent energy/matter.
So, a pre-big bang black hole could be from a prior collision. It would be a "vibration" that never completely lost gravitational cohesiveness, which is the
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This is a tough one. Theory is a strong word. It's not even a hypothesis as it simply can't be tested. No evidence exists. Multiverse seems to be more a postulation of a possibility, even if the idea sounds scientific enough to be a reality. I believe in realm of the possible, possibilities need to be ordered in terms of likeliness based on the evidence we have. So your disclaimer IANAS is appropriate. I appreciate your candor!
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Yeah, but didn't the Big Bang supposedly CREATE space and time in our universe? So how could anything be said to exist BEFORE the Big Bang?
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http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw94.html [washington.edu] -- reference (not the one I was looking for, but it is mentioned)
Some other ideas about different boundary conditions at t=0 may be found at these pages:
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/dtime/node4.html [washington.edu] [conventional view]
http://www.space.com/4019-glimpse-time-big-bang.html [space.com]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7440217.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.universetoday.com/15051/thinking-about-time-before-the-big-bang/ [universetoday.com]
"pseudo-scientific nonsense" is excessive (Score:2)
In the beginning, there was nothing, which then exploded.
The article is a newspaper report about some physics papers. Half of it's just fine (slight-post-Big-Bang black holes still being around is a perfectly reasonable concept.)
The other half apparently has at least some math to it and is trying to see what it implies, and while it's more likely to be wrong than right, unless you've gone and read the physics papers it's a bit excessive to call even that half of the article pseudo-scientific nonsense. I'
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nothing had HOLES IN IT (or next to it or something), which sounds like a major stretch, but all of the scientific theories of the very early origins of the universe are pretty much of a stretch. It's something that's at least as falsifiable as any theory of the early Big Bang period.
It's a common misconception that the BBT says the universe came from nothing. It doesn't, it claims it came from a singularity. A singularity is not nothing, particularly when it has the entire universe compressed into it. Where the singularity came from is currently not part of the BBT, also the early part of the BBT relates to a time ~10e-37 seconds AFTER the singularity started to expand and is well established science compared to this idea.
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"Talking about what was "before" the big bang, is like talking about what is north of the north pole."
Maybe, maybe not. If we find evidence for these black holes then it shows there was a before the big bang and we have to change our view of the universe accordingly. Until we look for the evidence we don't know, that's kind of the point of science.
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I don't know, but allow me to help the scientists test this. All I need is to be hooked up to some deadly neurotoxin.
In the name of Political Correctness... (Score:2, Funny)
We can't release a photo of this as it may incite other, more restive black holes into action.
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Fuck Islam. How's that for incitement? Show me Osama's new cranial sunroof!
I bet Al Qaeda are shitting their pants knowing you're on their case.
They all survive Big Bang!!!! (Score:1)
...season to season. They're signed for something like 7 seasons. Even though the show has gone down hill it still has it's moments.
I think Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons are going to be just fine post Big Bang, but if you've heard Kaley Cuoco's rendition of "Somewhere over the rainbow", you'll realise that her career is headed for a big a black hole once the show ends
I get it! (Score:2)
We just cant comprehend it because of the complexity of the multidimensionality of it all.
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Old old news (Score:3, Informative)
Read A Brief History of Time. Dated 1988
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time
Or this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M._Carroll#From_Eternity_To_Here
Either way, this is OLD news
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1. Introduction to basic concepts
2. Overview of research to date
3. Novel result
4. Possible implications of result
The journalist then has to simplify it for "a general audience". #3 is very difficult to simplify, #2 is fairly difficult. #1 and #4 are easier to simplify. So after removing the "confusing bits" we have:
1. Simple overview of field
2. Brief mention of one previous result/theory
4. Wild specu
Yeah, older than the universe (Score:2)
Way to survive the "Big Crunch"? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, if one model of the universe (currently out if favor) is correct that has it oscillating between big bangs and big crunches, would this be a way for sone super civilization to survive the end (big crunch) of the universe? The "Heechee" in Frederick Pohl's Gateway novels had them hiding out in black holes (though not for this reason). They were hiding out from another even more advanced race that had created the universe (which explained why the cosmological constant amongst other things was so finely tuned) and didn't want to be around when they came back to reclaim their "property".
The Heechee had some way as well of getting OUT of these black holes (FTL travel?). Of course since the the latest models show the universe to be expending itself to smithereens even if you could hide out in a black hole, it is likely there would be literally nothing to come back to.
By the way, does time stop completely below the event horizon? Might be another reason why hiding out in a black hole wouldn't be such a good idea.
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By the way, does time stop completely below the event horizon? Might be another reason why hiding out in a black hole wouldn't be such a good idea.
Some say you eventually experience falling into it for eternity. If there really is a quantum unit of time and that's not merely a perceptual thing then you might be able to get stuck "forever". On the other hand, if there isn't, then you can decide any time to pop back out if you have the technology.
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Maybe, but they'd never survive the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief
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Survive the Big Crunch? Impossible. There is absolutely no way to survive a Big Crunch. [youtube.com]
Great. Now I'm hungry.
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By the way, does time stop completely below the event horizon? Might be another reason why hiding out in a black hole wouldn't be such a good idea.
Amusingly, I just attended the last class before my final exam in general relativity, and all we talked about was the math behind black holes. Pretty interesting stuff, if only I could've understood all of it...
It turns out that space and time actually switch inside a black hole. Your time vector becomes space-like and your spatial vectors become timelike. What does that mean? I'm not entirely sure, but I do know that there is no escape from hitting the singularity at the very middle of the black hol
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Which leads to the question "How can a black hole ever be observed to come into exis
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That's simple, we never actually observer the black hole or it's event horizon. We can only observer the matter and energy that surround it.
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> That's simple, we never actually observer the black hole or it's event horizon.
That's not what I said. Let me try again. In order for a black hole to grow matter must cross the event horizon. However, it takes forever for matter to cross the horizon so all black holes must infinitesmally small (though some might be surrounded by millions of suns worth of matter that has almost crossed the horizon).
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The problem with big bang/big crunch is that really what we're saying is the physical equivalent of "Here there be dragons". We simply don't know what physics looks like at the Planck scale yet. Big bang/crunch are what happens if we trust GR way into the regime where we expect quantum gravity effects to be strong.
Now there are various ideas about how a collapsing universe can transition into an expanding one - conformal cyclic cosmology, loop quantum cosmology, etc etc, and certainly within at least one of
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Just like Clarke writes science fiction? The whole idea of sf is to postulate about what might be possible.
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Intriguing .. (Score:2)
why is it (Score:5, Funny)
that i can never tell the difference between cosmology and the ramblings of a stoner?
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look at my hands... our hands, human hands... did you ever actually look at your hands before? no i mean, really LOOK at them?
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I really wish people would stop glorifying drug use like that. If you really want to get in touch with the universe there's better ways than that, ones which don't leave you brain damaged afterwards. Sure drugs can hit those spots of the brain that make you think you've met God, but seriously, is it really worth it when you consider the harm that a lot of those drugs do?
-1 buzzkill. (Score:3)
Its hardly glorifying it to associated with this fairy tale. But maybe you should try a bud or two sometime.
Just say Perhaps.
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Like alcolhol, nicotine and caffeine, you mean?
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"The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world." - Carl Sagan
I really wish people would stop degrading the reputation of all drugs like you just did. Is it really worth being such a square, when you consider all the things you miss out on?
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Slashdot?
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Where do you think Carl Sagan got most of his ideas?
Billions and billions of Slashdots.
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[why is it] that i can never tell the difference between cosmology and the ramblings of a stoner?
Because you haven't studied the field, so all you get are explanations meant for the layman?
Seriously, if someone were to have shown you a page with differential equations back when the math you knew was limited to arithmetic would you be able to distinguish it from a page containing random symbols that looked math-like? Would you be able to tell which one represented something real and which one was BS? Well, the stoner ramblings is like the random page, and someone trained in physics and astronomy can t
string theory (Score:2, Troll)
not science
nothing about it is testable
therefore, string theory is indeed the ramblings of a stoner. a very intelligent, mathematical stoner, but completely useless to the realm of actual science nonetheless
i don't understand much of the math in string theory, but i do know it is not testable. therefore, string theory is nothing but mental masturbation of the sort mildly stoned college students engage in. of no more value to us who are interested in actual scientific efforts
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"nothing about it is testable" - False. A common misconception it's hard to test, but some tests have been put forth.
Even if it is 'just math' doesn't mean it has no value.
Example:
Special relativity - You might have heard of it.
Wasn't testable, in fact many qualified people at the time thought it would never be testable. Yet here we are.
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"it's hard to test, but some tests have been put forth"
uh... really?
name one
and i mean a test for string theory itself, not tangential subject matter
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String Theory is (somewhat) testable.
People have gotten the idea that String Theory isn't testable because one of the predictions is supersymmetry. Supersymmetry isn't directly testable at the energies our particle accelerators can reach - indeed they fall many magnitudes of power short of producing collisions that would emit supersymmentric versions of familiar particles (no Snutrinos or Selectrons will come out of CERN or anything else we could build today, even if we made it our number one priority for t
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thank you. for taking the time to explain politely
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String theory != cosmology. There's string cosmology, sure, examining the cosmological implications of string theory, but standard GR based cosmology has been tested - see WMAP, COBE, predictions of the cosmic microwave background.
In fact, XCKD based their entire "It works bitches" http://xkcd.com/54/ [xkcd.com] on the predictions of standard cosmology.
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"Bat shit crazy thinking from very smart people is how many breakthroughs begin"
i agree 100%. and i am happy we both agree that string theory is bat shit crazy thinking and not science
you should also make note of the fact that for ever bat shit crazy theory that went on to become hard science, 100 more went nowhere. so i don't know why you are angry at me, for not giving respect, where none is yet due
Whoooossshh (Score:2)
"What's that sound?" :D
Is that code for a new position not in kamasutra? (Score:2)
but maybe I got this wrong :)
Looong inhale.... (Score:5, Funny)
<tight>"Like, man. Maybe our universe is only a little speck in so other universe?"</tight>
Exhale.
"Dude. Wouldn't it be funny if we like wrote that up as a paper or something?"
Thus stands most cosmological theory.
Tolkien anyone? (Score:2)
...
One Hole to rule them all, One Hole to find them,
One Hole to bring them all and in the blackness bind them
Before the Big Bang where the Shadows lie.
I thought there was no "before" the big bang (Score:2)
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Not a physicist but it wouldn't be too hard to guess:
Time FOR YOU only exists in this universe. It doesn't mean that's the only "time" that's even existed. Or will ever exist. Yes, technically, you could have one "time" over there and one over here, or even one "before" another, etc. But you're tinkering in multi-dimensional physics of which almost all our knowledge and predictions are based on mathematics, not perception.
Time is merely a dimension, like up/down, left/right. There are generally reckone
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Complicated.
But the big Bang was not the start of everything. It's was an event.
While counter intuitive, if time was removed, there would still be a 'before' and 'after'. hey may not happen in sequence.
Any physists here? I think I have some questions.. (Score:2)
1) Could this explain how the symmetric particle soup go asymmetric, allowing "proper" particles, dust clouds, galaxies etc to form?
2) If I had a lot of very large black holes, could they account for the missing anti-matter? If we assume a _large_ pre-existing universe, this would/might shift the problem from "where is it" to "it's really far away" due to distribution and "local" fluctuation.
3) Assuming anti-matter has normal gravity, could we detect black holes made from anti-matter other than seeing them
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1) As it turns out, there may have never been any symmetry. - I recommend the radio lab pod cast called - Symmetry.
2) read - http://books.google.com/books?id=AbQXSDAZQLwC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=antimatter+black+holes+deGrasse+tyson&source=bl&ots=RwPjQDitC3&sig=vLKNFewMgPCsOmHzdzd3dV7xXag&hl=en&ei=g9rCTeeQO4GgsQPyzvDyDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false [google.com]
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> 1) You mean how the universe is made out of matter instead of antimatter? The truth is we don't know, and we're only just starting to come up with some good guesses
And I was asking about the viability of my guess.
> 2) Pose that a different way- why haven't antimatter black holes changed everything into antimatter? (Morbo: Black holes do not work that way!)
Also, that is not what I asked ;)
> 3) Anti-matter has exactly the same properties of matter (we think, so far). If the universe were made out o
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We don't know if anti-matter has gravity or anti-gravity. We will be able to test this soonish as 32(?) anti-hydrogen atoms existed for several seconds, just a few days ago.
I think the ability to measure the gravity of individual hydrogen (or anti-hydrogen) atoms is a little longer off then anything I wold consider soonish.
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Apparently there is a way. Don't ask me which, though.
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What makes you think that?
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A version of the atomic fountain [nist.gov] technique should work for samples of a few thousand anti-hydrogen atoms. Cool them in the center of your chamber, release them, and watch for the burst of gamma rays as they hit the bottom of the chamber (or the top if matter and antimatter repel).
If you can't cool them that much send a low-energy beam of them down a long horizontal tube and measure the droop.
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We don't know if anti-matter has gravity or anti-gravity. We will be able to test this soonish as 32(?) anti-hydrogen atoms existed for several seconds, just a few days ago.
If anti-gravity exists, it obviously has to be an attractive force between anti-matter particles. Whether anti-matter attracts normal matter or repels it may remain to be seen, but it's still safe to say that a universe made out of anti-matter would still behave pretty much the same as our universe, with the same observable laws of physics.
i hate myself (Score:3)
Previous Universe ? (Score:2)
The article is assuming that an universe existed before Big Bang. If that was the case it would be feasible to guess that the bang happened BEFORE every little mass (or massless) particle dropped into the black hole to explode. There is a reason to cause the big bang to happen (maybe a critical mass ?) and if I were to explode as the big bang I couldn't wait for every little particle, would You ?
I have understood that big bang theories assume that before that there was no space or time. So no universe befor
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That was a gangbang they survived - not quite as dramatic as the big bang.
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its also possible that a black hole is the threshold where space inverts, so inside a black hole is the opposite of outside, so what we perceive as the big bang is actually the creation of a black hole in the inverse space. and we are possibly inside a giant black hole, which would explain the background gamma radiation. this also allows for an oscillating universe which gives more support to the very nature of exis
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I assumed the only black hole left was the one sucking all the brains from Donald Trump.
Blackhole sucking void? That is a new concept.
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I assumed the only black hole left was the one sucking all the brains from Donald Trump.
Blackhole sucking void? That is a new concept.
Black holes can collide.
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The theory goes that in the very early universe, temperatures and pressures were so high that even small fluctuations in the density of matter would have resulted in local regions becoming dense enough to collapse into black holes. The time period considered here is long before any nucleosynthesis occurred: in fact temperatures and pressures were so high in this period that the strong nuclear force is not yet able to confine quarks into hadrons.
These tiny primordial black holes [wikimedia.org] would not, contrary to popula