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.
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
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.
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.
Fortunately the universe can get Cosmic Overdraft Protection, for only a small annual fee and 23 squillion bazillion stomptillion dollars per occurrence.
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
I can barely afford rent!
Well… the good news is you can stretch your income a bit further with spaghettification!
Beans are economical too
What if we’re not in a black hole, but in the aftermath of a vacuum decay event?
no my vacuum is working fine, thanks
But is your refrigerator running?
We’re inside a dust cup?
NOT “discovered inside black hole”, just gained further theoretical evidence for the Earth being in a less dense area of the universe. There has been actual evidence of such for some time (at least a decade), but there is uncertainty at such large scales so it cannot be called conclusive based only on a couple types of observation that may have erroneous procedures.
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.
Less dense as in ~20% less dense. It’s absolutely nowhere near the population density difference of rural vs NYC, even assuming matter == chance for life, which simply is not the case, either.
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.
That is simply how horizons work. It’s nothing magical about our universe. It’s discussed in every astrophysics course worth its salt year one…
PBS Spacetime has many episodes on horizons and this very concept comes up a lot. It’s also equally probable using such simple logic that we are in a white hole given the effects of dark energy, but the truth is they are very different sorts of horizons.
Nah, there’s been a bunch of discussion about our entire universe being inside a black hole.
Nah, that discussion is MUCH older and including much of the “news” about it, is completely and utterly misinformed BS.
Tax breaks for the rich is the only solution
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?
We should all be celebrating our good fortune, protection against a dark forest strike!
Except from aliens that are also stuck here with us
We’re not stuck in here with them. They’re stuck in here with us!
Sucking us into a black hole WAS the attack.
Dark Forest theory is just way for a Chinese author to make up bullshit nonsense physics to turn 3D space into 2D space via Clarktech while desperately trying to not piss off the CCCP.
Dude. Relax. It was fiction.
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.
Both are fair and valid.
Peaceful science & good housing should go hand in hand.
Man I really wish we had super fast space travel like star wars…
Don’t get me wrong, understanding the nature of the universe is valuable and noteworthy. But how would that information meaningfully impact anyone’s life or change their behavior or worldview beyond a general awe at the unfathomable mysteries we already have towards space as we’ve understood it for centuries? Especially in a way that would ne noticeable to this person. Am I meant to stare up at the sky from 8:15 to 8:30 every other night with my mouth agap while I try to wrap my mind around the spacetime bubble we all exist on the surface of? Or can I just eat dinner?
The reason research like this exists is because we don’t know what we don’t know. Results like these are meant to stoke curiousity so that more research can be done.
So on and so forth until one day you have horseshoe crabs saving millions of lives. But they didn’t know that would be the case when they started researching them crabs, function comes after exploration.
For sure, not undervaluing scientific research and exploration by any means. But Angie’s post seemed to be a call to action or an expectation of a greater reaction to potential findings from the general public. But A) it’s honestly the first I’ve heard about any such news. And B) I don’t think the vast majority of people would have any idea how to even process that information, let alone get excited about it or understand it’s full implications, or to have any sort of reaction to it at all.
I mean on top of answering fundamental questions about the nature if reality, proving that the universe is a black hole would necessarily invalidate almost every religion. That fact alone would upend society, and probably in a bad way.
Also, if the universe is a black hole that means the universe is capable of reproduction. If the universe reproduces, there is likely no limit to the number of times it can do so. If an infinite number of universes spawn an infinite number of children, it basically establishes reincarnation as a fact of life.
And that’s ignoring all the philosophical implications such a discovery would immediately raise.
Maybe it wouldn’t change anything. Maybe it would change everything.
No way, at all, what so ever.
Most religious people will readily admit it’s based on faith, not fact. Furthermore, it’d likely make them believe it more. God has always been described as beyond the universe, bigger than, all encompassing, etc. If the holographic principle proves true, it’d actually provide a mathematical path for such statements to be literally true. Yes, it’d still be a pile of assumptions about such an external entity, but the point is there would still exist a scientific path for the most basic of things to be good enough for faith.
Yes, we ignore it. Given the size of the universe, if being inside a black implies any conseqences that will ever hurt us, it will be a process that takes billions of years to develop, giving the human race billions of years to either become extinct or solve the problem.
There is no problem introduced by noticing that there exists a horizon to the universe. It’s also in no way what so ever a new “discovery”, but a basic concept based on how horizons work in the first place.
The only “new” “discovery” I’m aware of is just a theory about our galaxy being roughly in the center of a less dense area of the universe that’s ~ 2 billion lightyears across. There has been observational evidence for it for many years, but the new info correlates it with dark energy observations as well as distance/density observations, or thereabouts.
It’s just black holes all the way down.
I got it! We’re within a simulation of the innards of a black hole. And that is the first time I’ve used the word “innards”. Lol
One has to wonder lol.
hasn’t this been a theory for a while now? The event horizon of a black hole keeps information minus one dimension. and the theory goes that our entire universe is just at the edge or a black hole in a 4D universe
Yes. It’s basically how the holographic principle got started, and that was decades ago.
