Exploring the Mystery of Black Holes

[tock~tick]

hi, i was just wanting to get a few opinions on where and maybe even when a black hole goes to. It's something I've read into a lot in the past few months; and I'm really interested to find out what others think.
Thanks

 

[JaredJames]

Are these mainstream published papers you've been reading or simply sci-fi novels?

 

[tock~tick]

oh, i try not to get fictional ideas into my head; so not so many sci-fi novels. I've read from many papers, articles in magazines and books to get a wide range of ideas, some probably more realistic than others.

 

[JaredJames]

Can you cite these for us?

From my understanding there are no published or accepted theories for black holes leading anywhere / any when.

 

[tock~tick]

Sorry, didn't mean papers. I'm purely talking about various theories people have, nothing for certain. Everyone has a view point, right?

 

[JaredJames]

A theory is not a viewpoint.

All viewpoints are not valid, and they aren't all acceptable here.

If you are talking about some hypothesis someone has regarding black holes leading somewhere, please cite a source for it.

 

[Chronos]

Time and space ends at the singularity. There is literally no where/when left to go.

 

[qraal]

hi, i was just wanting to get a few opinions on where and maybe even when a black hole goes to. It's something I've read into a lot in the past few months; and I'm really interested to find out what others think.
Thanks

We have no direct means of observing the interior of black holes, so a whole bunch of possibilities exist. One option is the gravastar model - which means you'd go splat into a very thin pancake spread out just above the event horizon. In that model there is no way in, because space-time has effectively turned inside-out.

 

[jackmell]

hi, i was just wanting to get a few opinions on where and maybe even when a black hole goes to. It's something I've read into a lot in the past few months; and I'm really interested to find out what others think.
Thanks

I think this description comprehensively answers the OPs question better than anything else we have:

I think the OP worded the question poorly. Our current descriptions of Astronomy, of very massive bodies, reach a singular point. I mean the descriptions themselves reach a singular point and by that I mean the analyticity of the description reaches a critical point where it is no longer analytical. For example, consider the function f(z)=1/z. That's a perfectly analytical function until it reaches the critical point of z=0 at which point it looses it's analyticity as it's derivative changes from finite to the qualitatively different value of infinite. Our descriptions of a (finite) derivative no longer applies to the function at the singular point. It has changed qualitatively.

So too I believe with a black hole: our descriptions of matter, time, and space reach a critical point at a black hole, a singularity, whereby those descriptions can no longer apply. Something new, something qualitatively different may be needed to more accurately describe what happens there.

 

[dkotschessaa]

I've heard the popular science communicator types say that "new math is required" to explain such things and that "we don't have this math yet". Can anybody tells me if these are meaningful statements?

-DaveKA

 

[jscroft]

Before the invention of the calculus, there existed no mathematical tools to deal with phenomena in a constant state of change. The calculus made it possible for the very first time to build non-empirical mathematical models of non-trivial physical phenomena. Calculus was "new math."

Before the invention of Fourier analysis, the question of heat transfer was analytically intractable. Fourier opened up frequency space and paved the way for most of modern engineering, electronics, and communications theory. Fourier analysis was "new math."

A physical singularity like a black hole poses an analytical problem because the analysis "blows up" as you approach the singularity, just like in the f(z) = 1/z example above. At a mathematical singularity, we say the solution "exhibits a discontinuity" and "approaches infinity," and they DO.

At a physical singularity, our mathematical solutions do the same. We have an innate sense that there must be SOMETHING going on in there... but it is the nature of a gravitational singularity that it is cut off from observation by the rest of the universe at its event horizon, and it is the nature of our "innate sense" of things that it is often flat-out wrong.

Since there is no test we can perform to test any conjecture we have regarding the interior of a black hole's event horizon, and since the limitations of our mathematical tools prevent us from even MAKING a conjecture regarding conditions at the singularity, the most intellectually honest statement we can make regarding those conditions is that we have no idea.

 

[dkotschessaa]

Jscroft,

Thanks for a very well crafted answer! Historical perspective and all.

Is there any kind of math at present that is a candidate for explaining such phenomena? Is it perhaps one of the yet to be fulfilled promises of string theory?

If indeed there's no mathematics to explain what goes on in a black hole, then the idea that it must "lead" somewhere seems to be the product of imaginations that can't comprehend the kind of mathematical oblivion that seems to be described here. I suppose that when we are confronted with some kind of nothingness we psychologically need to replace it with something.

-DaveKA

 

[Ophiolite]

Sorry, didn't mean papers. I'm purely talking about various theories people have, nothing for certain. Everyone has a view point, right?

Black holes don't go anywhere, other than where they were going before they became black holes.

There was a brief period when it was though by some that material from a black hole might interconnect with a white hole somewhere else in the universe. Before the nature of quasars was determined they were seen as possible candidates. This is now very old, falsified theory.

 

[stevebd1]

Based on a number of metrics, it's predicted we can cross the event horizon, if the black hole is rotating, then it is predicted that there is a weak singularity at the inner (Cauchy) horizon which, if the spaceship is robust enough, can be crossed. It's normally stated that once beyond the weak singularity of the inner horizon, it's not possible to predict what happens but if Kerr metric still applies, then there is a ring singularity where space becomes negative within the ring (i.e. new space) and there is suggestion that this is the throat of a wormhole. The issue here is if you do manage to traverse the wormhole, the current solution predicts that you would simply emerge within the Cauchy horizon of another spinning black hole with no way of leaving the black hole. White holes seem to take care of this problem but as there is currently no evidence of these, it doesn't seem to be an option. Another solution would be a maximal Kerr black hole (i.e. a/M=1) but this would violate cosmic censorship and the third law of BH thermodynamics.

 

[jscroft]

Besides... getting spewed out of a quasar at 0.999c as a fog of incandescent subatomic particles is probably more commitment than I think the frequent flyer miles are worth.

 

[Chronos]

As a footnote to jscroft's excellent explanation, the new math we need to deal with singularities is a working theory of quantum gravity. We still won't be able to see what happens inside the event horizon, but, we will feel better about it.

 

[JaredJames]

right but my opinion is there is blackness then death while your living is pretty much what it would be like to be dead except you have to go through more pain and you can see whatever else got sucked into it although as a direct answer to your question i don't think it leads anywhere it probably just goes on forever and ever and ever.

The chances of you still being alive before you get to the event horizon are slim to none (somewhere in the region of zero I believe).

The fact is you die.

Everything else about your post relating to:

living is pretty much what it would be like to be dead

more pain

it probably just goes on forever and ever and ever

is just wild speculation and frankly I don't know what basis you have for any of it so far as science goes.

Remember, you're dead long before you get near the singularity (and as above the event horizon for that matter) so aside from increased gravity / possibly increased radiation, your death is the equivalent to dying on Earth.

 

[mjacobsca]

I, for one, am intrigued by the concepts of quark stars and preon stars. I would not be surprised at all if there was a form of degenerate matter that could support itself against infinite collapse to a singularity while at the same time possessing such high mass that it has an escape velocity greater than light itself. Perhaps it's a string-degenerate star. Or a photon-degenerate star. Or a graviton degenerate star. Or a neutrino degenerate star. I just have a hard time accepting an infinitely small singularity in my view of the universe. Either way, we'll probably never know and my fantastical visions can never be proven true, only hypothesized.

Question: Hypothetically, if it is ever proved that gravitons exist and the classical relativistic view of space-time curvature is nothing more than a mathematical representation of the way gravitons act on matter and energy (e.g. the foam mattress analogy isn't adequate and there really is no "well"), does that destroy all hope for wormhole theories? I'm just curious.

 

[Tyrannical]

A Blackhole is only theorized to be a singularity, it's not a decided fact.

 

[JaredJames]

A Blackhole is only theorized to be a singularity, it's not a decided fact.

As with the majority of things in this area of physics. However, that is the mainstream view on the matter and that's all that matters here.

 

[phinds]

Earlier in the thread, it was stated that "Time and space ends at the singularity". I've seen that statement before, but it strikes me as an unfortunate forumlation of the current state of knowledge because the concept of something coming to and end is one that I think we all have some sense of, whereas I think the current state of knowledge about the inside of the singularity is not that anything starts or ends but that we just do not have any clue at all WHAT happens.

 

[Chronos]

Singularities are generally viewed as the point where theory and math cease to yield logical results. A biological analogy would be human origins. We can trace back the history of a human to its birth mother, and that back to a fertilized egg - a biological 'singularity'. That, of course, is not the end of the story, but, we possesses deeper knowledge of biological causality.

 

[ladykrimson]

hi, i was just wanting to get a few opinions on where and maybe even when a black hole goes to. It's something I've read into a lot in the past few months; and I'm really interested to find out what others think.
Thanks

Perhaps the misconception, here, is the assumption that a black hole is actually a "hole." It is not a hole; it is a highly dense object.