5 ms·

Black holes might end their lives by transforming into their exact opposite

111 points by pps 12y ago

Tyrant505 12y ago
Is this a new thought? Seems like natural thinking to me... Not an expert so would love someone more knowledgeable to chime in.
- walru 12y ago
  It does seem like natural thought - that at some point even a black hole reaches it's maximum density. However, I do seem to recall (some) black holes shoot a stream of particles from either pole (eg. an Astrophysical Jet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet). In that case, it's plausible that it doesn't take on additional mass and thus never reaches a maximum stress point, thus doesn't explode. Of course there's another theory that they're dumping that matter elsewhere.. but who knows. I imagine much of what we currently believe will be disproved in the decades and centuries to come.
  - privong 12y ago
    > In that case, it's plausible that it doesn't take on additional mass and thus never reaches a maximum stress point, thus doesn't explode. In the current understanding of jets from black holes, the jets originate from outside the black hole. So the jets are not reducing the mass of the black hole. The amount of material launched in a jet is smaller than the amount of material which falls into the black hole. So black holes with jets would gain mass, rather than losing mass or staying the same mass.
  - pingou 12y ago
    Is it a natural thought? I'm not an expert but I thought it would just bigger and bigger. For the dumping matter part, they talk in the article of the hawking radiation, I think the astrophysical jet wouldn't reduce the mass of a black hole but only slow its rotation, as the matter haven't reached the event horizon it would not be considered part of it. Again, I'm no expert, so you shouldn't trust me.
  - Udo 12y ago
    > It does seem like natural thought - that at some point even a black hole reaches it's maximum density. There is no compelling reason, neither theoretical nor observational, that black holes should have a maximum mass. In fact, we've observed some extraordinarily heavy black holes and so far no upper bound has become visible other than factors stemming from the amount of time active and the environment in their vicinity that allowed those holes to grow. > However, I do seem to recall (some) black holes shoot a stream of particles from either pole That happens whenever a lot of matter accretes around a source of gravity - a hot disk is formed and matter is accelerated out of the poles. It happens with heavy objects other than black holes as well. The ejected matter comes from the accreted stuff, not from the black hole itself. > In that case, it's plausible that it doesn't take on additional mass and thus never reaches a maximum stress point, thus doesn't explode No, only a small part of the accreted matter is ejected. > Of course there's another theory that they're dumping that matter elsewhere.. There is no plausible theory at this point that suggests anything of that nature. Matter as we know it ceases to exist in a black hole, it becomes compressed in a way that its usual properties are lost - so much so that in fact, how and if information loss happens in a black hole is still a matter of debate and has led to some credible theories on how information and entropy might be preserved at the border to ordinary space. There is also nothing to suggest that black holes are losing mass at any appreciable rate, other than possibly through Hawking radiation. Combined with the fact that the known cosmos does not exhibit any regions where measurable amounts of matter simply come into existence, the idea that opposite of every black hole is a white hole spewing out the stuff both ignores the fact that black holes get bigger by ingestion and the lack of any evidence for matter spewers. Of course that does not prove it's not happening, but there is zero reason at the moment to believe this is going on. And that pertains to this article as well, the content being presented here is not supported by any evidence or current theoretical modeling.
    - Tyrant505 12y ago
      So will the universe eventually just have black holes?
      - Udo 12y ago
        Not strictly speaking. Black holes are just ordinary gravity wells. They're strong, and stuff falls into them, but they don't actively suck stuff in anymore than planets or stars do. However, over very long time spans, orbiting systems should lose energy by radiating gravitational waves. That means after an inordinately long period of time, and after ejecting a lot of its mass, each galaxy will likely end up just one big black hole. But there is always stuff traveling through the universe that is not gravitationally bound to anything, and since space itself is expanding, a lot of the matter in the universe will just keep on drifting without ever colliding with anything ever again. Not that it matters from a practical perspective. Once the last stars have gone cold, that's pretty much as good a definition of "the end" as any other, and that will happen long before maximum entropy is reached. There might not be a definite end state to the universe itself, but there are certainly some thresholds past which everything will become so boring that we may just as well consider them to be final.
- thret 12y ago
  TL;DR? This was covered on the show Red Dwarf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxWN8AhNER0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxWN8AhNER0 Natural question: was the big bang a white hole?
  - bellerocky 12y ago
    > Natural question: was the big bang a white hole? The big bang theory describes the early moments in the Universe's expansion of space, not the projection of matter from a single point in space.
    - ck2 12y ago
      White hole could maybe also create its own universe with that matter projecting into it. The sheer volume and energy/speed perhaps.
      - bellerocky 12y ago
        I don't have any idea, but to me it sounds like you're just making things up now.
Oculus 12y ago
The feeling I get from reading the article is the theory is highly speculative. Could be just this line: "‘loop quantum gravity’ — a theoretical attempt that has yet to find experimental support"
- Argorak 12y ago
  Considering that the Higgs Boson was theorized about in 1964 and finally proven in an experiment in 2012: this seems to be the way of theoretical physics. ;)
  - lisper 12y ago
    The difference is that the Higgs was a necessary logical consequence of the Standard Model. Quantum loop gravity is purely speculative, much like string theory. In the case of QM versus GR we have the very weird situation where we have two theories that are logically incompatible with each other, so we know at least one of them must be wrong. And yet neither one has ever made a prediction that has ever been falsified by experiment, so we have no guidance from nature regarding which theory is wrong or how. That's the reason that the theoretical physicists seem to be grasping at straws, and everyone is a little disappointed that the LHC hasn't done anything surprising.
    - chunky1994 12y ago
      While I agree with what you are saying, I'd like to add a bunch of addenda (caveats?). The Higgs mechanism was one possible model which the standard model required, the others have now obviously been disproven thanks to the LHC. If no one had proposed this particular model, we'd still be wondering how fundamental particles gained mass and have another unexplained experimental result with the peak at 125 GeV from the data at the LHC. Similarly, GR and QM are both extremely well tested, however GR has dark matter and energy to deal with, and we still have no real idea what that is. This could potentially point to GR being wrong, however none of us are able to come up with another theory of gravity that could incorporate this and be better than GR at this stage. If a theory of quantum gravity (or just gravity) came along that could explain dark matter quite effectively then it would be hailed as a better theory than GR. The reason string theory and loop quantum gravity are considered completely speculative is because their predictions are so far beyond our grasp that even in the relatively far future we still have no way of confirming or denying either of them. Had they predicted things that could've been confirmed within the next century or so, I'm sure we'd all be rallying to try and confirm them. They aren't speculative so much so because we don't know which of GR or QM is wrong, but because their testability is quite precarious at this point.
acd 12y ago
Personally I believe black holes are our "real gods", they created us through the opposite of sucking us in.
TheEzEzz 12y ago
If the "bounce" is perfectly "elastic" then the explosion should not eject matter fast enough to reach escape velocity from the local system. The explosion would then collapses back onto itself into a black hole, and the whole thing would repeat over and over. Kind of like the old theories of the eternally recurring Big Crunch --> Big Bang.
- privong 12y ago
  The "bounce" is not a classical one, so the conceptual idea of a ball bouncing or similar intuition could be very misleading.
  - dpark 12y ago
    I'm can buy that the bounce it's not a classic bounce, but that doesn't answer the parent comment. If the ejected matter has sufficient energy to reach escape velocity, where does the additional energy come from? Does the theory hypothesize that some of the matter is converted to energy?
    - privong 12y ago
      I cannot speak to the theory. But, if one starts out with the classical "bounce" intution, one then arrives at the escape velocity issue you and the OP are noting. I was trying to point out that the escape velocity argument may not be relevant, because of the assumption/intuition which went into framing the problem, as stated by the OP. In general, yes, the escape velocity would need to be overcome. But because it would need to be a quantum and general relativistic phenomenon, there are quantum and curved spacetime effects which make framing the problem as simply "escape velocity", a potentially problematic approach.
      - dpark 12y ago
        I don't think QM or GR really change anything here. Matter and energy in must equal matter and energy out. So if the "bounce" produces the same amount of matter that went in, then it seems in general to lack the energy to reach escape velocity. If some (significant?) amount of matter is converted to energy, then maybe it works. I glanced over the paper and I don't see anything that specifically addresses this, but I might be missing it, because I only skimmed, and I'm not particularly knowledgeable about physics.
ck2 12y ago
I've heard the theory for years that the "big bang" was this event. If so, then maybe many other universes. Very weird to ponder.
- beaner 12y ago
  Or maybe it's all one universe and the big bang was just a localized event within it, but since we can't see that far away it seems like everything. (Not a physicist, this idea may seem silly to the more well-versed in this topic.)
  - sixQuarks 12y ago
    The book "The Mathematical Universe" is an interesting read. The author theorizes that there are 4 types of infinite universes. The one we're in contains an infinite number of "universes" that are so far away from each other, that light hasn't had the chance to reach others. These universes all abide by the same physics. the other "universes" are in a kind of different dimension, where each one has different laws of physics. This theory is basically the end-all of just how insignificant we are, starting from the theory that earth was the center of the universe. Not only are we not the center of the universe, but our universe itself is an insignificant part of the whole.
  - astrobe_ 12y ago
    Or maybe, as the expansion of the universe accelerates, a point is reached where the expansion is faster than anything, creating a singularity.
frabcus 12y ago
I don't quite get the article... I understand that the shrinking of the black hole will cease, if underlying space/time is discrete. And I understand that that will happen quickly from POV inside the black hole, and slowly outside. What I don't get is why once the newly formed white hole begins to spit out stuff, it will continue to do so. Why won't gravity pull it together agian?
- pdonis 12y ago
  > What I don't get is why once the newly formed white hole begins to spit out stuff, it will continue to do so. Why won't gravity pull it together agian? It will, but not fast enough. Basically, the theory (at least as I understand it) says that the "quantum bounce" reverses the collapse process, so a massive object collapsing very fast turns into a massive object expanding very fast. The expansion decelerates because of the gravity of the hole, but the deceleration is not enough to stop it from exploding outward and redistributing all the matter that collapsed back out into the universe.
- edem 12y ago
  Think about how a Type II supernova happens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_II_supernova http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_II_supernova

111 points by pps 12y ago

Is this a new thought? Seems like natural thinking to me... Not an expert so would love someone more knowledgeable to chime in.

walru 12y ago
It does seem like natural thought - that at some point even a black hole reaches it's maximum density. However, I do seem to recall (some) black holes shoot a stream of particles from either pole (eg. an Astrophysical Jet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet). In that case, it's plausible that it doesn't take on additional mass and thus never reaches a maximum stress point, thus doesn't explode. Of course there's another theory that they're dumping that matter elsewhere.. but who knows. I imagine much of what we currently believe will be disproved in the decades and centuries to come.
- privong 12y ago
  > In that case, it's plausible that it doesn't take on additional mass and thus never reaches a maximum stress point, thus doesn't explode. In the current understanding of jets from black holes, the jets originate from outside the black hole. So the jets are not reducing the mass of the black hole. The amount of material launched in a jet is smaller than the amount of material which falls into the black hole. So black holes with jets would gain mass, rather than losing mass or staying the same mass.
- pingou 12y ago
  Is it a natural thought? I'm not an expert but I thought it would just bigger and bigger. For the dumping matter part, they talk in the article of the hawking radiation, I think the astrophysical jet wouldn't reduce the mass of a black hole but only slow its rotation, as the matter haven't reached the event horizon it would not be considered part of it. Again, I'm no expert, so you shouldn't trust me.
- Udo 12y ago
  > It does seem like natural thought - that at some point even a black hole reaches it's maximum density. There is no compelling reason, neither theoretical nor observational, that black holes should have a maximum mass. In fact, we've observed some extraordinarily heavy black holes and so far no upper bound has become visible other than factors stemming from the amount of time active and the environment in their vicinity that allowed those holes to grow. > However, I do seem to recall (some) black holes shoot a stream of particles from either pole That happens whenever a lot of matter accretes around a source of gravity - a hot disk is formed and matter is accelerated out of the poles. It happens with heavy objects other than black holes as well. The ejected matter comes from the accreted stuff, not from the black hole itself. > In that case, it's plausible that it doesn't take on additional mass and thus never reaches a maximum stress point, thus doesn't explode No, only a small part of the accreted matter is ejected. > Of course there's another theory that they're dumping that matter elsewhere.. There is no plausible theory at this point that suggests anything of that nature. Matter as we know it ceases to exist in a black hole, it becomes compressed in a way that its usual properties are lost - so much so that in fact, how and if information loss happens in a black hole is still a matter of debate and has led to some credible theories on how information and entropy might be preserved at the border to ordinary space. There is also nothing to suggest that black holes are losing mass at any appreciable rate, other than possibly through Hawking radiation. Combined with the fact that the known cosmos does not exhibit any regions where measurable amounts of matter simply come into existence, the idea that opposite of every black hole is a white hole spewing out the stuff both ignores the fact that black holes get bigger by ingestion and the lack of any evidence for matter spewers. Of course that does not prove it's not happening, but there is zero reason at the moment to believe this is going on. And that pertains to this article as well, the content being presented here is not supported by any evidence or current theoretical modeling.
  - Tyrant505 12y ago
    So will the universe eventually just have black holes?
    - Udo 12y ago
      Not strictly speaking. Black holes are just ordinary gravity wells. They're strong, and stuff falls into them, but they don't actively suck stuff in anymore than planets or stars do. However, over very long time spans, orbiting systems should lose energy by radiating gravitational waves. That means after an inordinately long period of time, and after ejecting a lot of its mass, each galaxy will likely end up just one big black hole. But there is always stuff traveling through the universe that is not gravitationally bound to anything, and since space itself is expanding, a lot of the matter in the universe will just keep on drifting without ever colliding with anything ever again. Not that it matters from a practical perspective. Once the last stars have gone cold, that's pretty much as good a definition of "the end" as any other, and that will happen long before maximum entropy is reached. There might not be a definite end state to the universe itself, but there are certainly some thresholds past which everything will become so boring that we may just as well consider them to be final.
thret 12y ago
TL;DR? This was covered on the show Red Dwarf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxWN8AhNER0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxWN8AhNER0 Natural question: was the big bang a white hole?
- bellerocky 12y ago
  > Natural question: was the big bang a white hole? The big bang theory describes the early moments in the Universe's expansion of space, not the projection of matter from a single point in space.
  - ck2 12y ago
    White hole could maybe also create its own universe with that matter projecting into it. The sheer volume and energy/speed perhaps.
    - bellerocky 12y ago
      I don't have any idea, but to me it sounds like you're just making things up now.

Oculus 12y ago

The feeling I get from reading the article is the theory is highly speculative. Could be just this line: "‘loop quantum gravity’ — a theoretical attempt that has yet to find experimental support"

Argorak 12y ago
Considering that the Higgs Boson was theorized about in 1964 and finally proven in an experiment in 2012: this seems to be the way of theoretical physics. ;)
- lisper 12y ago
  The difference is that the Higgs was a necessary logical consequence of the Standard Model. Quantum loop gravity is purely speculative, much like string theory. In the case of QM versus GR we have the very weird situation where we have two theories that are logically incompatible with each other, so we know at least one of them must be wrong. And yet neither one has ever made a prediction that has ever been falsified by experiment, so we have no guidance from nature regarding which theory is wrong or how. That's the reason that the theoretical physicists seem to be grasping at straws, and everyone is a little disappointed that the LHC hasn't done anything surprising.
  - chunky1994 12y ago
    While I agree with what you are saying, I'd like to add a bunch of addenda (caveats?). The Higgs mechanism was one possible model which the standard model required, the others have now obviously been disproven thanks to the LHC. If no one had proposed this particular model, we'd still be wondering how fundamental particles gained mass and have another unexplained experimental result with the peak at 125 GeV from the data at the LHC. Similarly, GR and QM are both extremely well tested, however GR has dark matter and energy to deal with, and we still have no real idea what that is. This could potentially point to GR being wrong, however none of us are able to come up with another theory of gravity that could incorporate this and be better than GR at this stage. If a theory of quantum gravity (or just gravity) came along that could explain dark matter quite effectively then it would be hailed as a better theory than GR. The reason string theory and loop quantum gravity are considered completely speculative is because their predictions are so far beyond our grasp that even in the relatively far future we still have no way of confirming or denying either of them. Had they predicted things that could've been confirmed within the next century or so, I'm sure we'd all be rallying to try and confirm them. They aren't speculative so much so because we don't know which of GR or QM is wrong, but because their testability is quite precarious at this point.

acd 12y ago

Personally I believe black holes are our "real gods", they created us through the opposite of sucking us in.

TheEzEzz 12y ago

If the "bounce" is perfectly "elastic" then the explosion should not eject matter fast enough to reach escape velocity from the local system. The explosion would then collapses back onto itself into a black hole, and the whole thing would repeat over and over. Kind of like the old theories of the eternally recurring Big Crunch --> Big Bang.

privong 12y ago
The "bounce" is not a classical one, so the conceptual idea of a ball bouncing or similar intuition could be very misleading.
- dpark 12y ago
  I'm can buy that the bounce it's not a classic bounce, but that doesn't answer the parent comment. If the ejected matter has sufficient energy to reach escape velocity, where does the additional energy come from? Does the theory hypothesize that some of the matter is converted to energy?
  - privong 12y ago
    I cannot speak to the theory. But, if one starts out with the classical "bounce" intution, one then arrives at the escape velocity issue you and the OP are noting. I was trying to point out that the escape velocity argument may not be relevant, because of the assumption/intuition which went into framing the problem, as stated by the OP. In general, yes, the escape velocity would need to be overcome. But because it would need to be a quantum and general relativistic phenomenon, there are quantum and curved spacetime effects which make framing the problem as simply "escape velocity", a potentially problematic approach.
    - dpark 12y ago
      I don't think QM or GR really change anything here. Matter and energy in must equal matter and energy out. So if the "bounce" produces the same amount of matter that went in, then it seems in general to lack the energy to reach escape velocity. If some (significant?) amount of matter is converted to energy, then maybe it works. I glanced over the paper and I don't see anything that specifically addresses this, but I might be missing it, because I only skimmed, and I'm not particularly knowledgeable about physics.

ck2 12y ago

I've heard the theory for years that the "big bang" was this event. If so, then maybe many other universes. Very weird to ponder.

beaner 12y ago
Or maybe it's all one universe and the big bang was just a localized event within it, but since we can't see that far away it seems like everything. (Not a physicist, this idea may seem silly to the more well-versed in this topic.)
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  The book "The Mathematical Universe" is an interesting read. The author theorizes that there are 4 types of infinite universes. The one we're in contains an infinite number of "universes" that are so far away from each other, that light hasn't had the chance to reach others. These universes all abide by the same physics. the other "universes" are in a kind of different dimension, where each one has different laws of physics. This theory is basically the end-all of just how insignificant we are, starting from the theory that earth was the center of the universe. Not only are we not the center of the universe, but our universe itself is an insignificant part of the whole.
- astrobe_ 12y ago
  Or maybe, as the expansion of the universe accelerates, a point is reached where the expansion is faster than anything, creating a singularity.

frabcus 12y ago

I don't quite get the article... I understand that the shrinking of the black hole will cease, if underlying space/time is discrete. And I understand that that will happen quickly from POV inside the black hole, and slowly outside. What I don't get is why once the newly formed white hole begins to spit out stuff, it will continue to do so. Why won't gravity pull it together agian?

pdonis 12y ago
> What I don't get is why once the newly formed white hole begins to spit out stuff, it will continue to do so. Why won't gravity pull it together agian? It will, but not fast enough. Basically, the theory (at least as I understand it) says that the "quantum bounce" reverses the collapse process, so a massive object collapsing very fast turns into a massive object expanding very fast. The expansion decelerates because of the gravity of the hole, but the deceleration is not enough to stop it from exploding outward and redistributing all the matter that collapsed back out into the universe.
edem 12y ago
Think about how a Type II supernova happens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_II_supernova http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_II_supernova