Black hole fireworks: quantum-gravity effects outside the horizon spar

[Demystifier]

Of course you say that you depart from GR in that region as not reliable, but flat space-time just seems unexpected (of course it might be the case).

But the only reason why it looks unexpected is GR. And GR is not valid in this case. The idea, borrowed from condensed matter physics, is that in fluids the geometry only looks curved, while the true geometry is flat. In crystals, such an illusion of a curved geometry is not present; only the true flat geometry is seen.

Of course, it is not a proof that the same happens with quantum gravity, but at least it should make this possibility more intuitive and less unexpected.

 

[Demystifier]

As I understand it, in the Planck star model, the mass of the black hole is concentrated in a small volume of Planckian density - actually, this seems generic since anything should reach the central region quickly in proper time, and that region should not have more than Planck density, though it may be surrounded by a transition region of slightly lower density.

So speculatively, I wonder if the fraction of the mass you describe as crystallized might be either
- An inner core
- A crust
The latter might mesh nicely with its role as a recipient for information landing on the core:)

Would either be somewhat compatible with what you describe? If not, where is the rest of the mass, the uncrystallized part? Or am I using too naive a notion of mass here, after all I don't know how the mass of that crystal as quoted relates to its effective gravitating mass?

A portion of mass would be in the inner core. The ratio between core mass and total mass would increase with time.

 

[wabbit]

Interesting thanks. I thought of the core as being in a different phase than usual spacetime, but nothing like a crystal, more something close to totally disconnected as suggested in some models. An inner crystal is an intriguing possiblility - though it seems this still leaves open the description of the phase of the outer core - even if there is an effective GR-like metric describing its large scale behaviour as in Rovelli's papers, this can't really be a microscopic description, can it?

 

[Jimster41]

I am probably doing this way way wrong (but at least I'm trying to calculate something).

r\sim \frac { 7 }{ 6 } 2m

\tau \sim \frac { { m }^{ 2 } }{ { l }_{ p } }

The r number looks interesting for small m. I'm a bit confused how it grows with larger m. The time number is so long, it is pretty uninteresting. That said, I think this is trying to estimate the time it would take for that much mass to be reflected if it fell in as a single shell. Maybe it gets more interesting if it is treated more like a flow rather than a shell. In which case there is incoming mass and outgoing reflected mass, and the time it might take for interference between those to develop is on some other scale.

Or I am misunderstanding the whole concept.

 

[Demystifier]

even if there is an effective GR-like metric describing its large scale behaviour as in Rovelli's papers, this can't really be a microscopic description, can it?

Yes, that's the idea that curved metric is only an effective large-scale description of the fundamental dynamics. In this picture gravitons would only be quasi-particles similar to phonons, etc.

 

[Ilja]

So you think like a physicist, that's good. It is known that properties of a moving fluid in flat spacetime can be described by an effective curved metric. But crystals in flat spacetime do not share this feature - their effective metric is still flat.

As far as I know, if you compute the curvature (in the mathematical sense) of the stress tensor of a crystal, you will find out if there is inner stress, caused by crystal defects. Of course, if there are no defects, so that the crystal is ideal, then the stress is caused only by deformation, thus, a coordinate transformation. So that the curvature tensor has to be zero. But for crystals with inner stress this is different.

 

[Demystifier]

As far as I know, if you compute the curvature (in the mathematical sense) of the stress tensor of a crystal, you will find out if there is inner stress, caused by crystal defects. Of course, if there are no defects, so that the crystal is ideal, then the stress is caused only by deformation, thus, a coordinate transformation. So that the curvature tensor has to be zero. But for crystals with inner stress this is different.

Do you know a reference where more details can be found?

 

[Ilja]

Sorry, no, this was too long time ago.

 

[Andrekosmos]

McVittie spacetimes represent an embedding of the Schwarzschild field in isotropic cosmological backgrounds. Depending on the scale factor of the background, and the presence or otherwise of a cosmological constant, the resulting spacetime may contain black and white hole horizons, as well as other interesting boundary features. Together, these points indicate that with a background Λ-CDM model with Λ > 0, McVittie spacetimes can indeed model the boundary of a black hole horizon and a white hole horizon in expanding universes.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.0044

Very interesting lectures including the quantum mechanical underpinning of black holes, white holes/ wormholes (Lenoard susskind):





(NEW - Cole Miller)
(NEW - Gary Gibbons)

 

[no-ir]

I have a question regarding the gravitational crystal proposal. My first impression was that, while it is a very nice idea, it was a bit philosophical (i.e. how would you test it?), since the gravitational crystal would be hidden behind a horizon (by definition), until the black hole evaporated; which for larger black holes is effectively never. But then I remembered primordial black holes:

- Would the gravitational crystal proposal offer an explanation for the (lack of) observation of primordial black hole "explosions" (explosions due to rapid Hawking evaporation of very light black holes), by imposing a lower limit on the black hole mass before the evaporation stopped (when the horizon met the crystal surface)?

- Could such gravitational crystal remnants of (as much as is possible, evaporated) primordial black holes be candidates for dark matter?

I did not yet run any calculations, since this is not my area of physics, but it seemed an interesting idea to me ... (One really should do some quick numerics though, to find if it is even plausible. And to check if there are any known facts that would discount such ideas immediately (like the ~spherical distribution of dark matter around elliptical galaxies, for example; probably not, though?) ...)

Just an idea. :)

P.S. Another reason why I really liked the idea that GR is just an effective theory for the "liquid" phase of the "fundamental degrees of freedom" (not of "space-time", since that is a valid name only in the context of GR) is because I've recently been reading the book by X.-G. Wen:

Wen, Xiao-Gang. "Quantum Field Theory of Many-body Systems: From the Origin of Sound to an Origin of Light and Electrons." Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 2004. ISBN 019853094. 1 (2004).

where he talks about emergence of (simple, beautiful, universal) low-energy effective theories from completely different (possibly ugly, non-universal) microscopic theories, which reminded me that it is not so far stretched that GR could just be an effective theory where the space is still relatively flat, not necessarily inside black holes (where a "phase transition" (a fair name for the effect?) of the more fundamental degrees of freedom could conceivably occur, as is pointed out in the article).

The above mentioned book's introduction talks about emergence particularly in the context of recent developments in solid state physics (the last ~30 year), where it was realized, that Landau symmetry-breaking is not the only way for a system to undergo a "phase transition", but that there also exist so called "quantum orders" (with eg. topological phase transitions [in fractional quantum Hall, spin ices, spin liquids, etc.]) that break no symmetries, but nonetheless lead to different states of matter with different low-energy excitations.

In particular, it was realized that one could produce effective (collective) low-energy physics of gapless (massless) gauge bosons and gapless anti-commuting fermions from purely bosonic local degrees of freedom (something that was thought impossible in Landau's symmetry breaking picture, which could produce only scalar gapless bosons (so the book says)). The book proposes a unifying description of such emergence in terms of string-net (as opposed to particle) condensation (just another way to think of collective states of a complex system in terms of string nets; not necessarily connected to string theory, as far as I can tell(?)). As an application/manifestation of the principle the author also constructed an explicit "ugly bosonic spin model on a square lattice" that had effective low energy U(1) x SU(3) interactions with emergent "photons", "electrons", "quarks" and "gluons" a while back in the article:

Wen, Xiao-Gang. "Quantum order from string-net condensations and the origin of light and massless fermions." Physical Review D 68.6 (2003): 065003.

Anyway, it is a very inspiring book, by a very original physicist, and I would really recommend its introduction, at least. To me it was very illuminating (it discusses things with a much wider scope than is usual for such books, with implications far beyond solid state physics).

P.P.S. I mean to write a better summary of the introduction but no matter what I did I wrote just longer and longer version of the above text, still not doing the book any justice. So the above should do (it's still too long, I know). I recommend the book version nonetheless (the first chapter is a quick read), since I only skimmed the surface above.

P.P.P.S. A very non-serious comment: a "gravitational crystal inside a black hole" kind of reminds me of the plot of the movie Interstellar (if you've seen it I think you would understand). ;)

 

[Demystifier]

- Would the gravitational crystal proposal offer an explanation for the (lack of) observation of primordial black hole "explosions" (explosions due to rapid Hawking evaporation of very light black holes), by imposing a lower limit on the black hole mass before the evaporation stopped (when the horizon met the crystal surface)?

I think yes. The evaporation always stops before the final "explosion" predicted by the standard semi-classical scenario.

- Could such gravitational crystal remnants of (as much as is possible, evaporated) primordial black holes be candidates for dark matter?

Maybe for a part of dark matter, but probably not for all dark matter. Namely, standard cosmological analysis puts an upper bound to the quantity of barionic dark matter. So if the remnants do not contain much barionic dark matter, then what kind of matter do they contain? The gravitational crystal, by itself, probably cannot answer that question.

 

[no-ir]

Maybe for a part of dark matter, but probably not for all dark matter. Namely, standard cosmological analysis puts an upper boundary to the quantity of barionic dark matter. So if the remnants do not contain much barionic dark matter, then what kind of matter do they contain? The gravitational crystal, by itself, probably cannot answer that question.

Thank you for your reply. But, from what I understand all that is required for an object to be a non-baryonic dark matter candidate is that it: has no net charge (aside from mass, if you consider that a gravitational charge), only interacts via the gravitational force (check) and does not take part in Big Bang nucleosynthesis (I would imagine that a black hole does not?). Would primordial black holes or their remnants not fit that description?

Actually, looking at Wikipedia (:p) under Primordial black holes it says:

It has been proposed that primordial black holes, specifically those forming in the mass range of 10^14 kg to 10^23 kg,[1] could be a candidate for dark matter. This is due to the possibility that at this low mass they would behave as expected of other particle candidates for dark matter. Being within the typical mass range of asteroids, this excludes those black holes too small to persist until our era and those too large to explain gravitational lensing observations.

What the gravitational crystal proposal changes about the above statement is that it removes the lower limit on the mass range of primordial black holes, since it is no longer necessary to "exclude those black holes too small to persist until our era" (thereby boosting the number of stable primordial black hole (remnants) that could contribute to dark matter). How much this is helpful (or natural), I wouldn't know.

P.S. Actually, reading that Wikipedia article further on:

General relativity predicts the smallest primordial black holes would have evaporated by now, but if there were a fourth spatial dimension – as predicted by string theory – it would affect how gravity acts on small scales and "slow down the evaporation quite substantially".[9] This could mean there are several thousand black holes in our galaxy. To test this theory, scientists will use the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope which was put in orbit by NASA on June 11, 2008. If they observe specific small interference patterns within gamma-ray bursts, it could be the first indirect evidence for primordial black holes and string theory.

So if those intereference patterns are observed, it could also (instead) be indirect evidence for gravitational crystals? ;)

 

[Demystifier]

No-ir, I am not an expert in those aspects of dark matter, but your arguments seem reasonable. I think you could be right.

 

[no-ir]

Thank you! :)

 

[Jimster41]

Sorry about this, but I have to wonder out loud.

The description above is one where "gravitational crystals" are somehow things located very specifically somewhere in space-time. I had been imagining them to be potentially non-local, possibly helping to describe, more generally, the emergence of complexity in association with gravitational clumping. The effect could still be associated with dark matter but also other gravitation-ally induced emergent structure.

That's why earlier (post #50) in reference to the paper, I was interested in whether or not it was plausible that "entanglement interference structures" could form, radiating from a black hole Killing Horizon, or even other special gravitational radii.

The implication being that somehow the complexity containing all that information isn't collapsed into some subset of energy matter, it is conducted/dissipated? through surrounding space-time.

 

[no-ir]

P.S. Hm, reading this 2014 news article:

http://www.nature.com/news/search-for-primordial-black-holes-called-off-1.14551 (Search for primordial black holes called off)

it seems that primordial black holes as dark matter were (almost) "ruled out" purely on the basis of mass constraints, but were otherwise considered viable as dark matter candidates. If the lower mass constraint is just that too light black holes should have evaporated by now, then the gravitational crystal theory could still save the proposal of primordial black holes as dark matter. A thought.

 

[Demystifier]

Thanks! It's an interesting idea to have a change of phase into a "crystal" phase.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04088
Gravitational crystal inside the black hole
H. Nikolic
(Submitted on 15 May 2015)
Crystals, as quantum objects typically much larger than their lattice spacing, are a counterexample to a frequent prejudice that quantum effects should not be pronounced at macroscopic distances. We propose that the Einstein theory of gravity only describes a fluid phase and that a phase transition of crystallization can occur under extreme conditions such as those inside the black hole. Such a crystal phase with lattice spacing of the order of the Planck length offers a natural mechanism for pronounced quantum-gravity effects at distances much larger than the Planck length. A resolution of the black-hole information paradox is proposed, according to which all information is stored in a crystal-phase remnant with size and mass much above the Planck scale.
6 pages

I think that important advances in physics occasionally have something at the "philosophical" or "conceptual" level, that makes them different.
Whether or not this will turn out to be successful, it has this very interesting new perspective:

"We propose that the Einstein theory of gravity only describes a fluid phase and that a phase transition of crystallization can occur under extreme conditions such as those inside the black hole. Such a crystal phase with lattice spacing of the order of the Planck length offers a natural mechanism for pronounced quantum-gravity effects at distances much larger than the Planck length."

So what about evaporation?

This Nicolic idea reminds me of the 1995 Jacobson idea of the "Einstein equation of state" describing the collective behavior of little things we can't see. Now the new idea is that these little things can form a crystal (and require a new equation to describe their behavior in the new phase).
I would like to see a reaction to this paper by Ted Jacobson.

I like this idea very much (without myself having any ability to judge if it could or could not be right). It is even more than usually entertaining, if it is possible for physics ideas to be considered entertaining.

Now a revised version accepted for publication in Mod. Phys. Lett. A is available:
http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/1505.04088

 

[member 11137]

Thank you for your reply. But, from what I understand all that is required for an object to be a non-baryonic dark matter candidate is that it: has no net charge (aside from mass, if you consider that a gravitational charge), only interacts via the gravitational force (check) and does not take part in Big Bang nucleosynthesis (I would imagine that a black hole does not?). Would primordial black holes or their remnants not fit that description?

I beg my pardon for that naive question, especially if it already has been asked and answered in the previous paragraphs of that long discussion. So far my understanding and so far what I can read here and there on the web or in the literature, we are looking for the exact nature of dark matter (and byside, also of dark energy). The actual discussion here is one more illustration of that affirmation. I appreciate your attempt to describe the basic properties of the "dark" matter because, in some way, this gives a visage to the invisible. And that word is motivating my question: "Does some one already have done an investigation concerning the criterium of geometrical invisibility for some actual known particle (in extenso: the definition of concrete circumstances for which a particle in motion don't perturb the geometry)?" If yes, do you have a reference on this topic. Just a thought too (constructive proposition).