Can black holes form without gravity in the early universe?

[dlevanchuk]

Hey guys, I got a question that is kind of bugging me..
Need your opinion on it. Here are my thoughts from my notebook that i wrote while i was at work :) Sorry for the loose and simplified language..

In the paper titled "Greatest Story Ever Told", Neil deGrasse Tyson states that little after the Big Bang occurred (at 10^-43 seconds), there was a spontaneous formation of black holes:
"When the universe was a piping-hot 1030 degrees and a youthful 10-43 seconds old—before which all of our theories of matter and space break down and have no meaning—black holes spontaneously formed, disappeared, and formed again out of the energy contained within the unified field."

Since the universe is so young, there are yet no basic four forces of nature: its all in one. But in order for a black hole to form you need to have matter, which, according to Eistein's relativity, bends the space, and "causes" matter to have gravity.


My question is how can a black hole form without having the force of gravity to be formed yet? Is it due to the temperature of the universe to be so collosal, that energy can't turn into matter due to the absence of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and concetrates in one region, forming a black hole?

Source of the paper:
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/essays/nathist/greateststoryevertold

 

[marcus]

...
In the paper titled "Greatest Story Ever Told", Neil deGrasse Tyson states that little after the Big Bang occurred (at 10^-43 seconds), there was a spontaneous formation of black holes...
Source of the paper:
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/essays/nathist/greateststoryevertold

Thanks for giving the source. It is over 10 years old. Published in a popular magazine March 1998. Says nothing about dark energy, dark matter, the evolution of the universe leading up to the big bang and other more modern cosmo topics.

Cosmology had a revolution in 1998 and was completely renovated as a field, it is still changing rapidly. I wouldn't bother with anything written before 2005.

So don't take anything you read in the article as authoritative, but some of it might happen to be right! I think the business about spontaneous formation of black holes at Planckian (very high) energy density has in fact not been contradicted. So that's OK. But it would be better if you had a more recent source, which might give additional insight.

Maybe someone else will have an up-to-date source they can recommend that talks about spontaneous BH formation.

You could also try Einstein-Online. It is comparatively recent (since 2005) and is public outreach by one of the worlds top research institutions.
http://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlights/cosmology/index.html
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About the formation of microscopic BHs. That's just another thing that General Relativity allows for. It is mathematically possible to have black holes smaller than a dust-grain, just as it is possible to have black holes with a diameter millions of miles across.
Hawking BH model says that any BH has a temperature and tends to radiate and therefore will evaporate. And the little ones are much hotter and can evaporate very quickly, almost before you know they are there.

A BH can form anywhere the energy density is high enough. In the simplified non-expanding case, this is just based on the 1915 classic GR theory and Schwarzschild had already figured it out mathematically by 1918 or so.
It doesn't take any particular kind of matter field, like protons or neutrons. All it takes is a region of very high energy density. The early universe environment is good for that because it already has very high density and it also can have random fluctuations leading to extra even higher density. You have to allow for expansion, which is an extra complication, but forming microscopic BHs should be no problem.
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As a general rule people should be advised to be cautious because we still do not have an entirely satisfactory model for how the universe was evolving before the big bang and what immediately led up to it.
There is no scientific reason to suppose that time started with the big bang but there are various models that people are working on. they need to be sorted out and tested. Until that's resolved we can't really talk about conditions right at the big bang.

So you should be aware that an article like the Tyson 1998 one is speculative. His tone of voice and style suggests that he knows, but what he says could just be a fairy tale.
He talks about conditions at 10^-43 seconds from start of expansion. He doesn't have reasonable grounds for speculation. Ideas have changed since 1998 and are still in flux.

If he was talking about 1 second, or 1 minute after start then there might be some current scientific consensus about that. I think theory is in pretty good shape and is fairly stable. People won't change their minds about those things in the next 5 or 10 years. I think.

But you need to be cautious when somebody starts talking about conditions 10^-43 seconds from start. It needs to be clearly qualified with disclaimers.

the detail you mentioned about microscopic brief-lifetime BHs forming and vanishing spontaneously seems OK though. It is speculative to some extent but not terribly unreasonable.

 

[dbiggs]

Please indulge this inquiry...

Since time and space are relative and inter-dimensional, help me understand why black holes and what we've come to understand as the big bang cannot be inter-related, almost as an ending and beginning of one cyclical process? In other words, black holes act as an infinite source of matter pulling in everything within their gravitational grasps, crushing all resources down to infinitesimal streams of singularities. These streams would be inter-dimensionally joined through time and space to the point of origin, the beginning of our universe… the big bang… again, acting as the exit or infinite expansion point of all these streams of singularities.

I understand this may indeed be inconceivably simple, however quantum theories aside, there is a certain cyclical poetry and balance in this suggestion as to where matter comes from in the first place, or last place depending upon your point in time.

 

[Tanelorn]

dbiggs, I have proposed a similar concept; a cyclical universe involving all the black holes eventually recycling all the matter and energy in our universe to some extra dimensional place, beyond our space time field, like a multitude of vacuum cleaners, preparing for the next BB and roll of the dice. I call it the pinball universe model - also inspired by the earthly water cycle :)

Of course I have no evidence for any of this whatsoever and the only thing in its favour is its simplicity and elegance and it seems intuitive, at least to me - which can also sometimes fool one into thinking something is right!

However, I am optimistic that we will eventually get to the bottom of all this by making more observations of the distant past like this:

http://news.yahoo.com/bright-galaxy-sheds-light-early-universe-170731884.html


Cosmology is still very young indeed and I suspect that many theories will be found to be as incorrect as the Earth being the center of the universe.

 

[dbiggs]

I don't think I could consider the process a linear event in terms of time. If we consider that linear time is an illusion, and black holes recollect matter as a source for the big bang... I would suggest its a simple natural occurring cycle.

 

[Tanelorn]

If time really is an illusion then perhaps the black holes of today are supplying the energy for our BB! :)

 

[dbiggs]

excellent point...