Perhaps, but stellar bursts (massive simultaneous births) and massive accretion disks around black holes might cover those just as easily with the advantage of being know quantities.
White holes, IIRC, are just the theoretical result of looking at the model of black holes as they stand … i.e., you have this mathematical model of curved spacetime where matter and energy are entering and never leaving … you can just as easily–mathematically speaking–have the reverse, where a mathematical model of curved spacetime is spewing matter and energy out, and no energy/matter can pass into its event horizon.
But just b/c it’s mathematically possible doesn’t mean that it has to happen. Just as stars/planets/galaxies/universes made of antimatter are mathematically possible, but have never been observed.
dnooman I think the problem here is that the classic hollywood image of a black hole as a giant opening in space that you approach from one direction and get sucked through is hard to shake off.
As I understand it a black hole is just like any regular celestial object only it’s mass is so great that all it’s volume has collapsed to a single point, the singularity. There is nothing “past” it, any object sucked in would become part of the mass of the singularity and would not be transported somewhere else like in bad sci-fi flicks. This however completely ignores the whole time slowing down everything goes screwy as you get close to the singularity thing that the others have described and I don’t even pretend to understand (I’m just a biologist)
I guess a better way to pose the question would have been “does current theory support being able to navigate around, and completely behind a black hole”.
Sorry for being such a bastard. I get real frustrated when my point doesn’t get across. I should have gone to bed.
Look, a black hole is a point, a zero dimensional object (maybe) within a sphere called the event horizon (EV). The EV is the place where once you cross it, you are never coming back. It’s the point where the escape velocity of the black hole equals the speed of light.
Now you can move around the outside the EV easily enough, hell matter orbits black holes often enough that that is used as indirect evidence of their existence. Once you head towards the singularity space shrinks until there is no x, y or z directions to speak of there is a point (0,0,0).
Maybe you’re asking could you go through a black hole. Unless there are more dimensions within which this universe exists I don’t see how, but I am not a cosmologist. If there was a 4th or 5th spatial dimension it might be possible that the 3-D singularity turns out to be a line or plane of space but that’s a guess.
Yes.
However, once you’re inside the event horizon, you can’t move farther away from the singularity at the center - only closer. But you can still go around to the back of the singularity, like in an orbit.
dnooman: don’t think of a black hole as a hole. There is no “front” or “back”. There is no “through.” A black hole is not a whirlpool-shaped funnel that you get sucked down.
A black hole works like this:
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a giant star collapses to a point (singularity). That means that all of its mass is concentrated at a single point. Got it? It’s pretty dense, right?
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meanwhile, out in space, it continues to exert the same gravitational influence as the massive star it used to be. There have been threads (and maybe a Staff Report) on how the Earth’s orbit would be totally unaffected if the sun was suddenly replaced by a black hole of the same mass.
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now, this point curves spacetime, just like any massive body does. However, it’s so dense and its gravitational field is so strong that it curves spacetime right back in on itself, so that any object (or photon) that gets within a critical distance of the point (the critical distance is known as the “event horizon”) will find itself traveling a curved spacetime path that NEVER leads out of that event horizon (no matter how fast you go). So the event horizon is an altitude above that point from which there is no return. You can never go fast enough to boost yourself into a higher orbit.
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all right, so you find yourself inside the event horizon. What happens? Nothing really (except that time slows down and you’re ripped apart by gravitational tidal forces). You could, I believe, continue to orbit the singularity within the event horizon forever. But if you slow yourself down, then you’ll plummet into the singularity, and join the rest of that matter in that single point in spacetime. Squish.
Get it? Don’t think of it as a hole. Think of it as a point, packed with mass, which happens to have an altitude (based on its mass) below which objects/light can never escape. So a point inside a sphere; a sphere from which there is no coming back.
In my ever to be so humble opinion, all of the above posts are speaking from a" Wright Brother’s" perspective on a “Space Shuttle” problem. The correct answer is we don’t know. In fact historians may look back on our currently feeble,but ever so neccasary beliefs and find them as ridiculous as a flat earth.We Don’t Know.Its all very complicated theory,That’s it! So keep guessing but we don’t have the answer.
Now is that to hard to say? “I don’t know”
Ahhh. The “whirling cone of destruction” I’ve been picturing has been corrupting my logic.
I did.
And, equally importantly, I explained why we don’t know.
Well, your question has already been answered, but I think the reason it was so tough to get it across is that you’re probably being thrown a little by the terminology; a black hole isn’t really a hole at all. Take the mass of our sun, for example, and compress it down to a single point in space. Yes, you have a black hole, but one who’s gravity equals and works exactly like that of our sun. The planets would travel around it just like a star–there’s no infinite-drop off in the fabric of space-time getting in their way like the rubber sheet analogy suggests.
What I believe the rubber sheet is supposed to show is that as one approaches the center of the black hole from any given angle, space-time stretches infinitely before it comes to the singularity due to the intense gravity, leaving some doubt as to whether or not anything that falls into the hole ever reaches the center. Actually, seeing as it would become impossible for us to satisfactorily monitor a mass on its way to being a black hole once it’s volume is small enough to fit entirely inside its event horizon, unless we figure a way to observe and transmit data from inside the hole we will never be able to say for sure that the mass ever reaches a point of infinite density. Inside the hole is an area of mass confusion, and we don’t really know how to observe and experiment on something that’s just about totally nonmanifest to us. All we have to go on are our theories. However, if we think of space-time as a cube that extends infinitely, that theoretical inifinite stretch wouldn’t be a hole between the faces, but a point of infinite density within it. It could be circumnavigated as could any point in the cube.
I’m not being snooty or sassy,and these^^^^^^are all great points. Just thought I’d bring us down to earth. Sorry Q.E.D. you write many valid,thoughtful,intelligent and helpful answers on this site.
Ack… beaten to the punch. Oh well.
I just thought I’d point out that dnooman’s question was probably conceptually closer to “Can one go around a worm hole?” That is, let’s say a circular worm hole opens in space time perpendicular to the trajectory of some spacecraft you are in. If you rocketed around it and looked back, would you see the hole? Would you see just regular space-time? I’m curious to know myself, actually. Worm holes don’t get nearly enough discussion time in physics 101.
Where does the matter in the singularity go? I think that is “dnooman’s” basic question. Does it infinetly get more dense?Does it transform to another state unknown to man?Does it enter another dimensiion?What if when matter gets to a point ,so dense, that it changes to an unknown form of energy humans can’t detect?What if that form of energy is uneffected by gravity or travels faster than the speed of light? Is their intellegent life in the center of a black hole? Some life form made of some form of energy in some way so beyond our imagination that it all but escapes us? A lifeform unefected by gravity? Could be!..I could go on…lol…