Absolute Density, fractals, the origin of the universe and BH's. Who's up for it??

BJ here. I’m new to this forum, and the reason I joined is that I noticed some serious intellects voicing interesting opinions. That’s what I need. I’m 18, I’m an inexperienced amateur philosopher. I don’t let lack of experience stop me from believing I know everything - one of the Powers of Being a Teenager that I cherish. :slight_smile:

But seriously, I have some big ideas on real things, important things; and nothing is worse than having an idea when nobody around you is able to understand it, much less criticise it. If someone proves me wrong, that’s good, I can sit down and start again. If someone says I’m on to something, then I’ll have a reason to be encouraged. Either way, if I get real feedback, I win.

Anyway, enough personal crap. I have developed a theory, all by my little lonesome, that explains a hell of a lot… if it’s valid. It’s called Absolute Density. It involves Relativity, astrophysics, fractal geometry and plenty of other things to keep the grey matter pumping.

Rather than expend the effort posting my theory now, I’ll wait to see if I have any takers. If you’re interested in participating in my magnum opus, post a reply. If the very nature of the universe isn’t your kind of thing, go away. If I get some genuine replies, I’ll launch into the real stuff.

I need big thinkers for this one, guys. If you think you’re up to it, welcome aboard.

In fervent anticipation.

Brendan Jurd

Speaking of absolute density, your father wouldn’t happen to go by the handle “Phaedrus” would he?

Inside joke. Never mind.

Anyway, before you post your magnum opus, why do you think it is true? You say it is a theory, so supposing you’re using the term correctly, that means you have evidence to back it up. Is that the case?

Phaedrus? Don’t tell me someone’s done this before… that would suck.

It’s a little difficult to answer your question. My ‘theory’, as I have termed it, whether that term is immaculately applicable or not, is more an exercise in thought and logic that took off more than I expected it to. I started with what is generally accepted about relevant things. I took the existing black hole theory and tried to extrapolate, to extend it, purely by using the faculty of reason. Originally I did it out of boredom, but then it really seemed to be going somewhere, so I pursued it further. As I proceeded, I backed up my hypotheses with parts of Einstein’s great theories, and fractal geometry, as I mentioned in my OP.

There are several things that I wanted to enlist help for. To check my understanding of said theories, those I have incorporated into Absolute Density. To inspect possible flaws in my logical process. To counter my hypotheses with further logical processes. And all that jazz.

Answer your q?

I, for one, would like to hear your theories.

I’m interested in fractal mathematics, but I’m afraid that I’m not much of a philosopher. I’ll just hang around here and see how things develop.

When I was 16 or 17, I hung out with this guy who liked to ponder the imponderable, too. I went along with him enthusiastically, because if some of the things he was saying were correct, I would have access to all these fantastic powers. (I was always a sucker for a power trip.)

One day, with a little feedback from me, he concocted this grandiose theory of how the Whole Great Big Picture Of Everything was put together. He called it “absolute space”. It had nothing to do with the pre-Einsteinian notion of an absolute reference frame or anything; it was basically a picture of infinite numbers of universes, each of varying numbers of dimensions from 0 to infinity, all stacked in infinite arrays. This “theory” had no evidence to back it up whatsoever – he settled on it as the “right” model not because of its predictive power, but basically because it sounded neat.

I now think he was just a megalomaniac. :wink:

Hrm

Well, not an overwhelming response, but I think I’ll go ahead with it anyway. This is going to be a seriously abbreviated version, so it may be badly written and difficult to decipher.

By the way, on the off chance that this thing is brilliant or something equally preposterous, could you please be nice and not publish it in your own name? Thanks.

<font size=5>Absolute Density, the short, short version.</font>

We start with a black hole. Now, as we understand it, a black hole is an ex-star that fulfils certain criteria. These criteria are:
1) It has mass. Bags and bags of mass. Many times more mass than our sun.

2) It has gone supernova and then collapsed into a tiny, dense, massive thing.

Now, any uncharged, non-rotating object has a theoretical boundary called the S-radius. I’ll tell you where that originated later if you want to know. The S-radius obviously defines a spherical part of space. It normally resides within the uncharged, non-rotating object. This is because an S-radius is a function of the object’s mass, and tends to be very, very small. For instance, if I were uncharged and non-rotating, I would have an S-radius, and it would be measured in terms of fractions of nanometres. Perhaps even picometres.

When a very massive star collapses to a very small size, it is possible for it to become smaller than its own S-radius. Now, at the risk of sounding juvenile, when an object become smaller than its own S-radius, some really fucked-up stuff starts to go down.

The S-radius defines a point where, according to Einstein’s equations, directions tend towards the centre of the sphere, and directions become defined in terms of time instead of space. That’s a hard thing to get one’s head around, believe me, I know. Instead of things moving from point A to point B, they go from ‘then’ to ‘now’. As it just so happens, ‘now’ is the centre of the sphere.

So, back to the unfortunate collapsed star who has found himself where he does not want to be: inside his S-radius. (excuse the anthropomorphization if you find it silly) As soon as that happens, the star has to go from ‘then’ to ‘now’, and ‘now’ is at the centre. The star collapses further into a singularity. For those who don’t know, a singularity is like a geometric Point. It has no size, it occupies no area in the spatial dimensions. A singularity has a radius of 0. I don’t know about you, but the idea of something many times the mass of the Sun occupying zero space bothers me. But that’s what it does. And once the star is within its S-radius, nothing can prevent its collapse to singularity status. Time cannot be stopped, therefore the draw towards the centre cannot be stopped.

Ugh… I’m going to have to start abbreviating more if I want to get through this.

Okay, once you have a singularity and there is a region of space occupied by the S-radius, the S-radius is redefined. It is now called the Event Horizon. I’ll call that EH for short. The reason it is the EH is that now there is the possibility (the inevitability, actually) of foreign objects touching the EH boundary. It is at this point that even more fucked-up stuff goes down.

Any object coming into contact with the EH is subject to those same temporal forces that caused the singularity… except now these objects are drawn towards the singularity, because the singularity IS the centre. That’s the current theory, about as far as it gets. There are a lot of calculations about the effects on matter once in the EH, but it’s conjecture as to what happens when (and if) contact with the singularity occurs.

And that’s a black hole. It’s called ‘black’ because light is subject to the time-driven force too, so it can’t reflect.

Hence the common misconception that light can’t escape a BH because its gravity is too strong. In actual fact, it can’t escape for the same reasons Monday becomes Tuesday.

Now, here’s where it becomes my theory.

Hypothetically and for the sake of argument, just indulge a few suggestions I’m about to make.

It’s reasonable to assume that as an object enters the EH, it is attracted to the singularity in a more or less decreasing orbital motion. A downward spiral, like water down the toilet when you flush it. The nature of such motion is that it causes acceleration. So any given particle descending toward a singularity is subject to acceleration. Let us suppose that this acceleration force is quite powerful. After all, we are discussing drastic violations of the space time continuum here, the forces involved are not likely to be meek. If the acceleration forces are powerful enough, the particles approaching the singularity, or core, will approach light speed.

A particle approaching light speed exhibits unusual behaviour. You’ve probably heard it all before. Mass approaches infinity, volume approaches zero, local time slows in comparison to an exterior point. Of course, when mass -> infinity and volume -> 0, density -> infinity, seeing as density = mass/volume. For reasons I don’t have time to go into right now, the matter inside the EH also begins to resemble a piece of spaghetti… it stretches itself out along its high speed, temporally defined path.

So, what I think happens is that matter entering a black hole’s EH does exactly that, and spirals around the core, becoming infintely close to the singularity, approaching light speed and thus slowing local time relative to the rest of the universe. At the same time, it is acheiving a mindboggling density.

While gravity is irrelevant (largely) within the EH, it does help draw matter to the EH in the first place. As the BH accumulates matter, all spinning around the core at frightening speeds, it therefore also accumulates mass… and gravitational magnitude. So the more matter a BH has collected, the stronger its ability to collect further.

I also propose that a BH can draw in another BH and cause it to behave in the same way as other particles captured by the EH. When two EHs collide, the stronger of the two would eventually force the other into an orbit, simultaneously stabilising its own swing towards the smaller BH. So the inferior singularity, with all its little particles surrounding it, starts to stretch out and become subject to the dominant BH’s forces. This would obviously be a significant gain of gravity power for the dominant.

The inevitable conclusion of a system where
a) BH’s exist
b) They draw in matter and
c) They aggregate
is that eventually, far into the future, all the matter in the whole universe will be in one small location, part of a singularity’s decaying orbit system, travelling at near light speed, distance between it and the singularity approaching zero, density approaching infinity. Every single last speck of space dust.

What happens when all of the universe exists in the same state? The barrier of relative time is removed. If the universe is in the same state, in the same place, and travelling at the same speed, then relativity ceases to exist. When this happens, the final event occurs. Every particle, every atom, everything hits light speed. It all becomes Absolutely Dense (there’s the title line!), and exists in one tiny realm of space.

What’s that you say? “The whole universe in one place, incredibly dense? That sounds familiar!” Well, you’re quite right, my dear Watson and I was just getting to that part.

The Big Bang. I mean, think about it. The whole universe has just given the laws of physics the finger. Time ceased to exist. Everything’s gone completely crazy. It’s about time we had a bloody great big explosion.

And then galaxies form, solar systems form, planets form… and BHs form. The BHs begin the aeonic mission of drawing all the matter together again, only, at the completion of their mammoth quest, to find that it all gets blown to shit again. So the universe reforms, contracts, explodes. Reforms, contracts, explodes.

It is reasonable to presume that this process has

tracer, I know it sometimes seems stupid, but if people didn’t ponder the imponderable, how the hell do you expect it to get pondered?

Circular logic, I know… it was a joke. :wink:

I think it’s important to ponder the invincible mysteries every once in a while. Keeps the brain moving. Gives you some added purpose to your life. Of course I know that we’re never going to have ALL the answers, not if we ponder forever. But that doesn’t really matter to me, because pondering is fun. Full stop so there.

Thanks for your post, by the way, it was cool :slight_smile:

BJ

Small detail on your suppositions, which I think is not any problem to your theory.

As speed approaches light, mass of any particle with rest mass greater than zero tends to infinity, etc. As stated, you had this happening to light, composed of massless photons. However, it’s quite true of the mass-bearing particles falling into the black hole. If neutrinos have mass, as seems now likely, it would be true for them as well.

A certain amount of the photons will emerge from any black hole, randomly, through a variation on quantum tunneling. This is why mini-black holes theoretically explode, well, explosively. :slight_smile:

To the best of current knowledge, the amount of mass available in the universe is insufficient to close the universe. This is the reason behind all the WIMPs, MACHOs, and other particles of varying stupidity of nomenclature that have been suggested – to make up the “missing mass” needed to close the universe and bring about the Big Crunch (visualized as kind of a Big Bang with the tape running backward).

Other than that, which do not seem insuperable objections, your theory is quite close to on target. I don’t totally understand how fractals fit.

By the way, care to guess the S-radius of a black hole containing the mass of the universe? Hint: how long has it been since the Big Bang? :slight_smile:

I don’t know how to break this to you, BlakJak, so I’ll just do it up front. Your theory is basically the ** Big Crunch **, and it’s been around for quite some time. There are two schools of thought as to how the universe ends…

[ul][li]If there is enough mass in the universe, then gravity will eventually revert the expansion caused by the Big Bang and suck everything back together. Black holes just happen to be an important part of the equation. This event is called the ** Big Crunch **.[/li][li]If there isn’t enough mass in the universe to pull everything back in together, then the laws of thermodynamics dictates that we’ll experience a ** Heat Death **. Basically, the universe fills up with radiation and everything pretty much ends up at the same temperature.[/ul][/li]
Now the above two ideas also tie into several other hypothesis about the overall development of the universe. They are…

[ul][li]The universe had a beginning but will have no end. This is essentially ** Heat Death **.[/li][li]The universe had no beginning and will have no end. Everything will be just as it is now, and just as it was in the past.[/li][li]The universe has a definite beginning and an end. When it comes to an end, we’re all gone.[/li][li]The universe works in a cycle. It has a beginning and it has an end, except the end leads to another beginning, sort of like reincarnation.[/ul][/li]
So there you go… you may now begin to pull your hair out and regret the choice of throwing all that jargon at us :smiley:

There were a few words of discussion about the notion of infinite density at [urel=http://www.astronomy.net/forums/blackholes2/messages/672.shtml]Astronomy Dot Net.

This remark caught my eye:

But I don’t think that’s right, is it? I mean, unless the universe is a plane. Don’t particles “flatten” rather than expand at that speed?

As to the matter :wink: of not enough mass for a Big Crunch, what effect, if any, does an ever expanding event horizon have on the equations? I guess what I’m asking is, if you’re tearing a hole in space-time anyway, then what is to keep everything from falling out of it?

Maybe it’s not so much a Big Crunch as a Big Suck.

Okay, here’s that link (hopefully).

Astronomy Dot Net.

A quibble:

BlakJak said:

Do you know for sure that a black hole is “non-rotating”? I don’t. Other stars and star remnants continue to rotate after collapse; why would a black hole be different?

And, incidentally, I have seen forms of your thought before. Not necessarily even the “big crunch” that has already been mentioned, but I believe one of Hawkings books at least made passing mention of the possibility that the universe is a big black hole.

Welcome back, David.

Point of order, please. From a small sampling of posts (about a hundred), I’ve noticed that all in the sample who were registered on or before August, 1999 have dates given with two digit year format, as in May 99, whereas all in the sample who were registered after August, 1999 have dates given with four digit year format, as in Sep 1999. Assuming that it is generally true, until a counterexample is found, why is it that way, do you suppose?

Blakjak, welcome to the SDMB. Unfortunately, your idea, while intriguing, is not new. It’s called “The Oscillating Universe” theory, and I first read about it about twelve or thirteen years ago, when you were five or six, in a non-fiction book written by SF author Isaac Asimov. It wasn’t his idea, he was just reporting it. Wish I could tell you who did originate it, but I just don’t remember right now.

And it wouldn’t surprise me if Carl Sagan mentioned it in his Cosmos book and TV series back in 1981, which would be before you were born. I could go look for it in the library, but they’re about to close for the day and won’t re-open till Tuesday because of the Monday holiday.

Don’t be discouraged, though. You would not be the first person who unknowingly re-invented the wheel, as it were. Who knows, you may find the clue that has eluded physicists that would explain How It All Began. You sure sound smart enough to be a physicist!

Libertarian, I think your question about registration dates would be better suited in the About This Message Board.


>< DARWIN >
__L___L

Awright, I’ll take a WAG and say: somewhere between 12 and 15 billion lightyears?


Peeewww --! Behold the Power!

Do you know for sure that a black hole is “non-rotating”?

They rotate per Kip Thorne at least up to 1994.

I forgot to mention: Part of the reason I now classify that old acquaintance of mine as a megalomaniac is:

(A) The year before he came up with “Absolute Space,” he was really into the idea that human muscles could produce much more force than we normally give them credit for, but you had to know the “secret” way of doing it. He called this secret way “torque”, which is confusing as hell if you’re talking real physics because his “torque” involves no actual twisting force. And

(B) Just before he came up with Absolute Space, he claimed to have discovered a new (and of course “secret”) state of mental acuity, in which your effective IQ becomes a hillion jillion and you can bend spoons and kill insects with the power of your mind alone. He called this mental state “Chronosynclastic Parapinibula,” not because this weird term was at all descriptive of the mental state, but because he’d recently read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and had mis-remembered the term “Chronosynclastic Infindibula”. I continued to hang out with him anyway because he offered to teach me how to enter this fabulous state of mental super-logic and limitless power.
Incidentally, the formula my Astrophysics book gives for the Schwarzchild Radius (the radius of a black hole’s event horizon) is about 3 kilometers per solar mass. So, if you know how many solar masses are in the Universe, you can easily calculate its Schwarzchild Radius. (One light-year is about 9.5 million million kilometers.)


The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

BJ here…

For all the people who thought they were going to surprise me by unveiling the pre-existence of the Big Crunch, I’m afraid no surprises here.

Of course I know of the Big Crunch theory. The point of my theory is exactly how matter behaves in relation to the singularities of BHs, and how it all fits in. Think of it like this

Black hole theory + my theory = Big Crunch

I was sort of trying to fill the gaps.

Oh, yeah, the other flaw raised… the behaviour of photons. I didn’t know about quantum tunnelling, and I didn’t know about mini BHs, but that’s very interesting. I never really gave much thought to how light affects the whole procedure. As you said, it is massless, which means it can’t contribute to absolute density. I don’t think that the motion of photons would actually affect any formation / collapse of the universe? Comments on that assertion?

And as for the Oscillating Universe… well, shit.

I think my name for it is cooler anyway :p.
However, as you said, it’s enough to be proud of that I recreated the idea.

Okay, some other points raised…

David, your quibble re: rotation. You raise a good quibble. The non-rotating thing was not mine… I got it from some information on BHs I was reading, the source which also explained the Schwarzchild radius.

Perhaps I misinterpreted?

http://www.blackholes.com is the source.

tracer… yeah, he probably was a megalomaniac then. He didn’t seem to have completely thought through his ideas on psychokinesis…