Saturday 21 January 2012

What's inside a black hole/Where did our universe come from?

The most fitting song to this article (yep, you guessed it!) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-BRcgUW5Y

First of all, what is a black hole?

A bit daunting really, often known as the black hole of death, nothing can escape it's grip; not even light (why you can't see it). It's not exactly a swirling space whirlpool of doom, it's just a place where the gravity is so strong, not even light can escape. Theory's think all this mass sucked in focuses onto a single point; until recently. But more about that further on!

Where do black holes come from?

General knowledge this one, black holes are the result of supernovas imploding and after a while, it reaches its size determined by what's known as the Schwarzchild radius. 

To qualify to become a black hole, the star needs to be roughly 25x our sun's mass, and when it explodes the outer layer throws off a loads of energy, but the core collapses on itself, condensing to a single point, and now it's a monster which eats every single thing near it.

What happens if you fall into a black hole

So lets say you're in your little space ship, dock next to a black hole. You jump into it, now what? 

Firstly you'll slowly drift in, but very quickly you'll realise you are truly FUBAR. The gravity on your feet will be 1000 stronger than on your head, and you're going to be stretched thin like spaghetti. Assuming you survive that (you won't), by the time you get inside the hole, you're going to be a thin strand of mass many miles long. Inside is a temperature of millions of degrees, now if thats not enough to end you, the amount of X-rays spewing out surely will!

Okay, now you've survived the very hot conditions and the X-ray havoc, what next? Well, this point is the Event Horizon, nothing now can escape, there's no way back..

Imagine a waterfall, as the water hits the rocks and water below, some flies back up, this is what it's like inside a rotating black hole. As you get sucked further in, the environment becomes even more chaotic, other mass inside the hole will collide with you.

So lets say you survived even that. What lies ahead? The truth is, we aren't exactly sure. All equations fail at the centre of the black hole.

BUT

Recently, Nikodem Poplawski proposed that inside a black hole is another universe. These could make sense as all the mass has to go somewhere! 

Einstein proposed that at the heart of a black hole is a space-time singularity, singularities are created whenever mass is too dense in a region. 

Poplawski's equations say that this mass isn't actually gathered at a dense heart, but rather expelled in another reality. Gamma rays are often observed at the edges of our universe, similar to the bursts from supernovae, thinking what I'm thinking? Poplawki reckons these are bursts from another universe's black holes.

Supermassive black holes

We've all heard the badass Muse song, but what is it?

To be honest, it's what it says on the tin, a black hole which has absorbed a lot of mass, including other black holes classify as a supermassive black hole. But wait there, scientists have confirmed there is one at the centre of every galaxy, including our own milky way. Poplawski reckons the gamma bursts are responsible from these black holes, which could hint that our own universe was birthed from the centre of another black hole.

Now if this is all correct, he may have solved The Big Bang Theory! 

(not why Sheldon is so awkward)


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