Physics question

[SweetZombieJesus]

So I was watching The Elegant Universe on PBS last night, and first off, I know exactly jack and shit about physics, and most science in general, so you can feel free to tell me I'm insane, but the part about string theory and black holes got me to thinking:

Is it possible that the big bang was the result of a black hole absorbing the entire universe, thus reaching a sort of critical mass, and exploding, thus recreating the universe it had absorbed over an incredibly long amount of time? I mean, if nothing can escape a black hole, not even light, then slowly but surely one of them will suck up everything in the universe, even other black holes, and once there's nothing left, it would result in a big bang?

[kalian]

1. Well...its possible....

but remember, the theory about black holes is that maybe matter does
come out the other end. Maybe a parallel universe. :shrug:

I don't know squat about astrophysics but I'm pretty good at philosophy and bullshiting :D

[toddzilla]

3. i believe they've shown

that some things can escape black holes, remember those "jets" that were shown to be shooting out from the top and bottom of the cluster?

i think we're talking about critical mass here. i just got elegant universe from the library so when i finish i'll know a little more about it. fascinating stuff though.

[Dudley_DUright]

8. Once matter passes the event horizon of a black hole

it cannot come back across as jets. The jets come from matter in the accretion disk being flung out perpendicular to the plane of the disk (the mechanism probably has to do with the incredibly strong magnetic field of the black hole, but it is still unclear exactly how this occurs. See the following link for a good explination.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/990923a.html

[Dudley_DUright]

10. Although wormholes and "white holes" may be theoretically

possible, we have never seen any observational evidence for a white hole (but lots for black holes). It actually would require localized negative mass-energy (similar to the nonlocal dark energy) to stabilize a wormhole. While I am not an expert in this field, I have gone to talks and read books from the guy who is, Kip Thorne of Cal Tech. I recommend highly his book titled "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy".

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393312763/102-2134133-8731364?v=glance

Here is his homepage at Cal Tech.

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~kip/

[Catshrink]

2. Bill Bryson wrote a book

that is very entertaining and informative for those of us who aren't heavy duty scientists, just curious onlookers.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything."

It's a good read. You'll be hooked on science from now on!

[bicentennial_baby]

5. He's a great writer

I've read all his books except that one, and I'm looking forward to reading it. His books on Australia and the Appalachian Trail are hilarious and excellent!

[alexwcovington]

4. There are two theories about the Universe

1: That gravitational forces will eventually stop the universe from expanding, and eventually collapse in on itself.

This theory allows for the recreation of the universe by having that black hole somehow blow apart.


2: That the universe will continue to expand forever, and that its entropy will continue to increase as it goes along, until nothing is left of the universe except radiant energy and black holes flying endlessly away from each other. "Heat Death."

As grim as the second theory is, it is the most widely accepted at this time. Data from a probe called WMAP has revealed that not only is the universe expanding, it is *accelerating*

We believe that some form of "dark energy" is behind this acceleration, but what that actually is -- we don't really know.

[Zomby Woof]

6. dark energy

Rumored to be Dick Cheney according to the latest research.

[Dudley_DUright]

9. Here is the WMAP Cosmic Background Radiation map

that you refer to in your post.



and a link to the WMAP website. Worth a look!

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0206mapresults.html

[Philosophy]

7. The Big Crunch

There was a theory that if their is enough mass in the universe that it's combined gravitational attraction would slow and then reverse it's ongoing expansion from the Big Bang, and it would contract in a Big Crunch. Then another Big Bang might occur, and so on in and endless cycle. But recent observations have determined that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating. So eventually all the matter in the universe will get sucked into black holes, but they will be too far apart to coallesce into a single one. Long after that, those black holes will all evaporate by Hawking radiation and the entire vast universe will be filled with nothing but very low levels of electomagnetic radiation.

[Dudley_DUright]

12. Very true, but it won't happen anytime soon

The "evaporation" of even a 10 solar mass black hole via Hawking radiation would take about 10^78 seconds. For comparision, the current age of the universe is of order 10^17 seconds. The time for evaporation scales like M^3, so supermassive black holes will be around for a very long time indeed!

[SweetZombieJesus]

11. So...I'm way off, right?

It's not possible that the universe sort of eats itself and once full, explodes matter in its simplest form, and the universe starts all over again?

[Dudley_DUright]

13. As Philosophy and Alex correctly point out above

it looks like the "heat death" scenario where the universe continues to expand forever is the one that fits the observational facts. However, some well respected cosmology theoreticians like Andre Lind think that other "baby universes" are being created all the time. I will let him explain it. You can find his ideas described at his website:

http://physics.stanford.edu/linde/

[Ratty]

14. Your question is irrelevant (scientifically)

The Big Bang sprang from a singularity. There was no time and no space and then suddenly there was. Our physical laws and mathematics don't apply at singularities so our understanding must simply stop at that point. It's meaningless to ask what was before the big bang. It's fundamentally, mathematically unknowable. In any sense we understand there was no before the big bang.