Black hole mystery

Several comments ...

Within their respective domains, the two separate theories of Quantum Mechanics (QM) and General Relativity (GR) are each extremely solid, having made more accurate predictions of various measurements than any other physical or chemical theories. Yet where their domains intersect, they contradict each other. That is why we don't yet have a Grand Unified Theory, a.k.a. Theory of Everything.

To be just slightly more detailed, the contradiction really involves 3 theories: quantum mechanics (the latest, most detailed version of several editions over the past century), general relativity (Einstein's equations of gravity and time), and an additional concept commonly called "reality" or "local reality" (don't ask me to explain, I don't understand it well enough myself). At least one of those theories must be wrong, and needs to be fixed. Tweaked. Updated. Re-written. And it seems that more and more fingers are pointing in the direction of the problem being not in QM or GR, but in our current understanding of "reality."

One of their contradiction points is at the event horizon of black holes. In GR, an object approaching a black hole by itself (not bumping into a hot plasma of other objects flying in at the same time, like a sports stadium of people trying to cram through a tiny fire escape door all at once), would pass through that event horizon without fanfare. Calculations show that a human could pass through the event horizon of the very largest galactic black holes and still live for a while inside the black hole. OK, just briefly. This applies only to very large black holes, not smaller solar-class black holes where tidal forces cause "Spaghettification" well outside the event horizon.

In contrast, QM demands that nothing actually crosses a black hole's event horizon to the inside. It is a hard firewall, there is no "inside".

Consider the Big Bang as yet another point of colliding theories. Our models cover only what happened after the Big Bang, not right at that moment.

Another point. Yes, if you cram enough mass into a small volume, it will collapse into a black hole. But remember that the speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light. So when figuring masses within volumes, the largest radius you can consider is the distance light could have traveled since T=0. Anything outside that volume is too far away to have any gravitational communication to contribute to black hole formation. E.g. when figuring at T= 10^(-30) second, the largest radius you can figure is 3x10(-22) meter, several orders of magnitude smaller than the size of an electron. FWIW, electrons and protons didn't yet exist that far back. They condensed out of the hot plasma of more fundamental particles later, as the universe cooled.

There are other snags too. Other forces that are absolutely negligible in our current human-scale world, were overwhelming back then, helping drive the expansion outward. Also, according to cosmology, most of the universe is made of "dark energy" and "dark matter", not the common energies and matter that we can see. What are "dark energy" and "dark matter"? We don't eff-ing know or have a clue yet, that is why they are called "dark". But the astronomy observations and cosmology models don't mesh without them. Stay tuned for updates. Things have changed enormously in the 50+ years I've been paying some (not enough) attention it to.

 

"An ancient black hole is the oldest object humans have found."

"The black hole in question was seen at the center of a galaxy roughly 570 million years after the universe began, making it the oldest known image ever witnessed by mankind."

Those show editorial license. Following back to the referred article, that claim is really just the oldest black hole, not the oldest object. Last night's 60 Minutes featured the James Webb Space Telescope and its early images, including some galaxies seen at just 300-some million years after the universe began. And this 'oldest galaxy' assignment is expected to be changing and pushing back very frequently.

 

well at the very beginning the known forces had not yet separated into their forms that we know today? There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. It also seems either that there is a sh*tload of dark matter OR we do not yet understand gravity. Increasingly MOND (modified gravity) is gaining acceptance over dark matter. And dark energy also seemingly more powerful than gravity, allowing universe to expand so darn fast (faster then speed of light?), creating more "space" whereas space is apparently more than nothing.

So go figure. We can be thankful for James Webb Telescope being launched in our lifetime...I suppose for our generation, you me and maybe Fuzzy1, that is all we will get to see.

 

I'm hoping to see some results from Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope too. Currently scheduled for launch by May 2027. I'll cross my fingers hoping for less than a decade of additional delays.

 

an inspired writer once described the force powerful enough to overcome that huge magnetic pull;



Isaiah chapter 45.
A mighty bold claim. Yea if you can wrap your head around the notion of Genesis chapter 1 - the rest is a breeze
.

 

A great many people are interested in much more detail about how He did it. And for many of them, biblical and science descriptions are not necessarily in any conflict. While some sects on both sides do believe they conflict, this belief is not universal.

According to a study guide included at the end of the first translation given to me, the bulk of chapter 2 is really the same story as chapter 1, but as recorded by a different group of tribes at the opposite end of the kingdom.

Some sects disagree. One even labeled that particular translation I received as having been inspired by the devil. But if one is to insist that the Bible is meant to be taken literally, then it would help to know which version is the literal one. There are hundreds of English versions, and no inherent reason why the literal version should even be English, a language that didn't exist back then.

 

Reviewing the approximate cosmological timeline, here is a very condensed version, seriously oversimplied from just one of the wipikedia pages.

0.5 * 10^(-43) second. Minimum time increment allowed by Planck theory. All fundamental forces are combined.

10^(-43) s. Gravity separates from the other fundamental forces.

10^(-37) s. Cosmic inflation era begins, universe expansion unconstrained by our concept of speed of light.

10^(-36) s. Strong nuclear force separates from the other forces.

10^(-33 to -32) s. Cosmic inflation ends. Inflation has expanded the universe by a linear factor of 10^(26) or more.

10^(-12) s. Electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces separate.

10^(-11) s. Particle energies have cooled, dropping to the levels reached by our very largest particle accelerators.

10^(-6) s. Quarks and gluons condense into protons and neutrons.

1 s. Electrons form. Today's observable universe (as limited by speed of light) is about 10 light years across.

10 s to 3 minutes. Some protons and neutrons combine to form deuterium and helium nuclei and very tiny amounts of others.

379,000 years. Electrons and nuclei combine to form atoms. The universe becomes transparent, releasing photons to travel as the cosmic background radiation, since redshifted to mostly the microwave band today.

Allow for plenty of future revisions.

 

As long as the radius of the universe is less than the Schwarzschild radius rₛ, which is given by √(3c²/(8Gρ)), with ρ being the matter density, gravitational collapse will not occur. As the universe grows since Big Bang, ρ decreases and rₛ increases.

 

(... to be rewritten later ... )

 

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We have no clue what the real radius of the universe is, not even if it is finite or even a meaningful concept. But current cosmology holds that it is larger than the 'observable' universe, which is the portion from which electromagnetic signals could reach us since the Big Bang. The entire universe should be at least many orders of magnitude larger.

I usually see Schwarzschild radius expressed as:

which in this context, means that if the mass within a given sphere of radius r(s) equals or exceeds a certain value M, then it collapses into a black hole. But because the speed of gravity is finite, the same as the speed of light, the largest radius that you can consider is c * T, where c is the speed of light, and T is the age of the universe.

The most massive black holes known today have radii of several light-days. But back when protons and neutrons condensed out of the primordial soup and all their anti-particles were annihilated (as were almost all the regular particles too), the universe was only a microsecond old, so you could run this calculation on only the mass within a radius of 300 meters. That wouldn't have held enough mass to make our sun. Back when the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces separated at 10^(-12) second, this calculation was limited to 0.3 millimeter, and wouldn't have had enough mass inside to make our Earth.

There are additional complications too, such as astronomers using multiple distance scales that I haven't been able to adequately wrap my mind around. It isn't just that the matter in the universe is expanding, but space itself is expanding. So while the universe is now pegged at 13.8 billion years old, the edge of the currently observable universe is estimated as about 46.5 billion light-years away on one of those scales.

 

My original argument ignored that the mass of the universe is more or less constant over time; so, that wouldn't explain why there was no gravitational collapse.

In the early universe, it is thought that the expansion forces were greater than the attraction forces, which prevented gravitational collapse.

There is then this:

There might be a universe inside every black hole | Latest science news and articles | Discovery

 

Quantum mechanics still has plenty of room to hide additional forces and particles and fields that we cannot yet explore with existing equipment, not powerful enough to reach into those domains. Not now, not anytime soon, some possibly not ever.

Cosmic inflation almost certainly demands one of those still unknown, exceedingly high energy forces.

There are many proposals along this and similar lines. Each time a new big machine or experiment comes along with exciting new results, many competing proposals get weeded out, a portion survive the gauntlet and possibly even get refinements, and a new round of ideas start emerging. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But don't expect any useful guidance from me about what ideas are likely to survive and which are likely to end up on the junk pile. Even the experts get caught by many surprises.