# Why didn't the early universe collapse into a black hole?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-early-universe-collapse-into-a-black-hole/300712>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 23, 2005, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-early-universe-collapse-into-a-black-hole/300712 "2005-04-23T01:33:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-early-universe-collapse-into-a-black-hole/300712/1 "2005-04-23T01:33:40Z")

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I don’t get it. You had what was the mass of everything compressed to the size of an atom. Densities that are unthinkable! Why did it not just form the ultimate black hole?

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-early-universe-collapse-into-a-black-hole/300712/2 "2005-04-23T01:47:41Z")

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You get into trouble with this claim:

> [@](#):
>
> You had what was the mass of everything compressed to the size of an atom.

The mass of “everything” in the pre-inflationary era may have been as small as 100kg. Most of the _current_ mass of the universe formed as the false vacuum collapsed and the universe inflated.

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**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-early-universe-collapse-into-a-black-hole/300712/3 "2005-04-23T01:48:05Z")

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Because a black hole requires a section of space-time to warp. When all the mass took up all of space-time, there was no “surface” to be distorted past an event horizon.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2005, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-the-early-universe-collapse-into-a-black-hole/300712/4 "2005-04-23T06:25:23Z")

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On the other hand: If the Universe is closed, then one could fairly say that it did collapse into a black hole. The Big Crunch, then, is the singularity in the center. It’s just taking us a long time to get there, since the universal black hole is so big.

But the current data does not seem to suggest a closed universe, so that’s not really relevant.