[HN Gopher] In New Paradox, Black Holes Appear to Evade Heat Death
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       In New Paradox, Black Holes Appear to Evade Heat Death
        
       Author : theafh
       Score  : 93 points
       Date   : 2023-06-06 13:57 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
        
       | jareklupinski wrote:
       | Maybe black holes were torn in spacetime by advanced
       | civilizations in previous iterations of the Universe in an effort
       | to escape their own Universe's heat death
        
         | BudaDude wrote:
         | This sounds like a great premise for a sci-fi novel
        
           | pelagicAustral wrote:
           | Indeed, I just ask ChatGPT to write me a story using this
           | premise and it was gold.
        
             | haneefmubarak wrote:
             | Please share with the class, what did our dear AI come up
             | with?
        
           | jareklupinski wrote:
           | "To Hitch a Ride on a Dying Star" will be the title :)
        
       | SomeCallMeTim wrote:
       | Reading about how, over time, the volume of a black hole seems to
       | grow infinitely makes me immediately jump to an obvious
       | connection:
       | 
       | The universe as a whole is ALSO a system that appears to grow
       | infinitely.
       | 
       | I mean, there have been many conjectures that a black hole could
       | contain a new universe, and that the creation of a black hole
       | also creates a new universe. This would seem to hint at another
       | potential connection.
       | 
       | That said...I'm really not a physicist, so maybe that connection
       | is at best a hook for a science fiction story. But it surprises
       | me that the article didn't even mention the parallel.
        
         | Freestyler_3 wrote:
         | I like that idea, a bubble has small bubbles inside. All of
         | them growing, but one inside it is growing more, and it "eats"
         | the others until it consumes the bubble it is in, and then it
         | pops and all matter starts moving from center outwards.
         | 
         | Now we need to find some way to prove this is real.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | I'd be willing to put $100 on longbets to say our universe is
         | inside a singularity, but I doubt anyone who remembers I
         | existed will still be alive when we figure it out.
        
           | moffkalast wrote:
           | You best bet some future physicist doesn't also figure out
           | how to reverse entropy, or they'll be back to collect on that
           | bet.
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | You can't be inside a singularity because that's a point, but
           | we are inside (surrounded on all sides by) an event horizon.
        
             | boringuser2 wrote:
             | What proof exists for this hypothesis?
        
         | pdonis wrote:
         | _> over time, the volume of a black hole seems to grow
         | infinitely_
         | 
         | Unfortunately, the article fails to note that this is a
         | speculative _hypothesis_ with which not all physicists agree.
         | It 's not an established fact. It's not even an established
         | theoretical prediction.
        
       | cyberax wrote:
       | So they're integrating across a singularity to compute volume?
       | That's always a bad idea.
        
       | RecycledEle wrote:
       | May someone who does not understand any of this ask a question?
       | 
       | Years ago scientists made small black holes here in Earth, and,
       | while I was screaming in protest, they assured me they would not
       | fall to the center of the Earth and slowly eat us all. They
       | assured us those black holes would evaporate.
       | 
       | Has anything changed? Should I be worried?
        
         | drdeca wrote:
         | In addition to what the other reply points out (that the LHC
         | and such are not sufficient to produce a black hole), another
         | calculation I've seen shows that, even if it had produced a
         | black hole with mass given by the energy of these collisions,
         | and even if these black holes had started at rest with respect
         | to the earth, and like, fallen into the earth (and started
         | oscillating around the center), and if they did not evaporate
         | (say, if Hawking radiation wasn't actually a thing), then the
         | amount of time needed for them to swallow any appreciable
         | amount of matter at all, would be very very long, and so would
         | not actually cause any problem for the forseeable future.
         | 
         | (not that any were created. The detectors would have noticed.
         | But even if they had been created, it wouldn't have been a
         | problem, even if we are wrong in thinking that they would
         | immediately evaporate.)
         | 
         | The thing is, if the black hole is made from something of a
         | given mass, then, well, it only has the amount of gravitational
         | attraction associated with that quantity of mass. And, that is
         | a very small amount unless the-thing-to-be-attracted is very
         | very very very close to it, and, a point particle falling
         | through the earth wouldn't be likely to get that close to many
         | atoms.
         | 
         | Ok, found the link I read this on :
         | https://4gravitons.com/2023/01/27/lhc-black-holes-for-the-te...
         | 
         | He says that it would take 10^67 years for the black hole to
         | double in mass.
         | 
         | So.... Not really a problem.
        
         | beecafe wrote:
         | No black holes have ever been produced on Earth
        
         | devoutsalsa wrote:
         | Scientists have not made black holes here on earth. The energy
         | required to do this is insanely higher than anything we are
         | currently capable of. Even at the LHC we aren't even hitting
         | the energy levels of cosmic rays hitting out own atmosphere.
         | These aren't the most reputable sources, but you'll get the
         | basic idea...
         | 
         | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/has-anyone-create...
         | 
         | https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/08/23/cosm...
        
       | passion__desire wrote:
       | So Roger Penrose was right all along. CCC.
       | 
       | This[0] is a nice overview lecture by Scott. Lenny and Scott were
       | exploring these ideas long time ago.
       | 
       | [0] Scott Aaronson: Black Holes, Firewalls, and the Complexity of
       | States and Unitaries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJdTtL3ajaI
        
       | denton-scratch wrote:
       | > Once they cross the event horizon, they are moving at the speed
       | of light toward certain doom.
       | 
       | Can that be correct? I thought the falling man experienced no
       | change on crossing the event horizon (other than the effects of
       | spaghettification, which begins long before arriving at the
       | horizon).
       | 
       | I thought that you'd continue accellerating toward the
       | singularity, asymptotically approaching both the speed of light
       | and infinite inertial mass. Am I wrong?
        
         | samstave wrote:
         | When I was in 7th grade we were learning about Black Holes -
         | and the movie "Explorers" had come out where the kids are able
         | to make a forcefield sphere surrounding an abandoned car from a
         | carnival ride/roller coaster --- and they fly into space and
         | meet aliens and stuff...
         | 
         | Welp - 7th grade me postulated that if you had one of those
         | force spheres, and you could accelerate at the same rate or
         | slightly faster than the speed at which matter is pulled into a
         | black hole, could you stay ahead of the gravity wave and "surf"
         | it safely into the black hole?
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al75vXD6koc -- Trailer
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqQKGxrfwsk -- Trivia
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | downWidOutaFite wrote:
         | No reason you would continue accelerating. Seems like you would
         | would reach a stable speed while orbiting inside the event
         | horizon.
        
           | vikingerik wrote:
           | No - this doesn't happen, because the speed required for a
           | stable orbit would be greater than the speed of light.
        
         | pdonis wrote:
         | _> Can that be correct?_
         | 
         | The "towards certain doom" part is correct. The "at the speed
         | of light" is not. Unfortunately this kind of thing is typical
         | for pop science articles.
         | 
         |  _> I thought the falling man experienced no change on crossing
         | the event horizon_
         | 
         | That's correct. The infalling person has no way of knowing,
         | locally, that they have crossed the horizon and are now doomed
         | to hit the singularity. But that doesn't change their doom.
         | 
         |  _> (other than the effects of spaghettification, which begins
         | long before arriving at the horizon).*
         | 
         | Not for the typical black holes we observe in the universe.
         | Tidal gravity at their horizons is too small for
         | spaghettification; that doesn't happen until the infaller is
         | well inside and approaching the singularity.
         | 
         | _> I thought that you'd continue accellerating toward the
         | singularity, asymptotically approaching both the speed of light
         | and infinite inertial mass. Am I wrong?*
         | 
         | Yes. None of these things are true. Your acceleration is zero--
         | you're in free fall. There is no well-defined notion of "speed"
         | at all, but your worldline remains timelike. Your inertial mass
         | is unchanged. And, finally, the singularity is not a place.
         | It's a moment of time. You can't "accelerate towards" it any
         | more than you can accelerate towards next week.
        
           | denton-scratch wrote:
           | > Your acceleration is zero--you're in free fall.
           | 
           | So if I jump out of an aeroplane, I don't accelerate towards
           | the ground? Apparently my understanding of the natural world
           | needs some enhancements.
        
             | AdamH12113 wrote:
             | > So if I jump out of an aeroplane, I don't accelerate
             | towards the ground?
             | 
             | In a very real sense (although not a useful one for a
             | skydiver), the answer is yes. This is a key insight of the
             | Equivalence Principle and the curved-spacetime view of
             | gravity. You (in free-fall) are on an inertial "straight
             | line" path through spacetime towards the center of the
             | Earth. When you reach the ground, it pushes on you, messily
             | accelerating you off of that path.
        
             | ninkendo wrote:
             | Nope, you're in an inertial reference frame when in free-
             | fall. Ignoring air resistance, if you were to take an apple
             | out of your pocket and place it next to you in mid-air, it
             | would be motionless relative to yourself. Put a box around
             | you with no windows and you'll have no idea whether you're
             | floating through space in the absence of gravity, or if
             | you're free-falling inside a gravity well.
             | 
             | This is the main difference between general relativity and
             | the newtonian notion of gravity: GR says gravity is just
             | spacetime curvature, and by following an inertial
             | (geodesic) path through spacetime, it _appears_ to be
             | acceleration to certain observers, but is in fact inertial.
             | Newtonian mechanics says instead that gravity is a force
             | and you 're indeed accelerating, but it's a view that
             | breaks down at high mass/speed, and GR makes correct
             | predictions where Newtonian mechanics does not, so we
             | generally prefer the GR interpretation.
        
               | smallnamespace wrote:
               | > you're in an inertial reference frame when in free-
               | fall.
               | 
               | But the falling person's frame isn't the only one
               | available. Someone on the ground would rightfully
               | describe the falling person as accelerating towards the
               | ground (or them) (at least until they reach terminal
               | velocity).
               | 
               | The most important lesson of relativity is that _no
               | reference frame is privileged_. That means both
               | descriptions are valid, provided you attach the reference
               | frame to the description.
        
               | pdonis wrote:
               | _> The most important lesson of relativity is that no
               | reference frame is privileged._
               | 
               | No, the _most_ important lesson of relativity is that
               | _only invariants are physically meaningful_. IIRC
               | Einstein once commented that he wished his theory had
               | been called the  "theory of invariants" since that would
               | have been a better description of its most important
               | feature.
               | 
               | The _second_ most important lesson of relativity is that
               | yes, you can use whatever frame you wish, _because_
               | invariants are the same no matter what frame you use to
               | calculate them. So you will come up with the same
               | physically meaningful quantities no matter what frame you
               | choose.
        
               | 867-5309 wrote:
               | all this talk of GR and invariants, not to confuse a
               | mathematical singularity with a gravitational one, at
               | which point GR itself breaks down per the need for a
               | quantum mechanical description. the truth is we don't
               | know what happens within a black hole, and probably never
               | will
        
               | pdonis wrote:
               | _> GR itself breaks down per the need for a quantum
               | mechanical description_
               | 
               | This is the current predominant belief among physicists,
               | yes, but that doesn't mean it's established fact.
               | 
               |  _> the truth is we don 't know what happens within a
               | black hole, and probably never will_
               | 
               | This is way too pessimistic. The predictions of GR for
               | this regime are precise and unequivocal. Even if you
               | believe GR breaks down when spacetime curvatures reach
               | the Planck scale (which is the current predominant
               | belief, as I said above), that still leaves _most_ of the
               | black hole 's interior within GR's domain of validity.
        
             | akomtu wrote:
             | Falling in a black hole is a different experience. It must
             | be more like being squeezed in a narrow tube with a glowing
             | light that was once the universe on one end of the tube and
             | something indescribable on the other end. Perception of
             | time will change too, as all the particles that let us
             | perceive the time will be messed up in strange ways.
             | Perhaps time will seem multidimensional or there will be
             | many timelines. In other words, your perception of a fall
             | from an aeroplane isn't true or absolute, it's mediated by
             | particles that define, for you, space and time, and if
             | those particles get messed up, your reality will change
             | completely.
        
               | pdonis wrote:
               | None of what you say is correct as a description of what
               | General Relativity says will happen to someone who falls
               | into a black hole.
        
             | pdonis wrote:
             | _> if I jump out of an aeroplane, I don 't accelerate
             | towards the ground?_
             | 
             | Not in your rest frame. In your rest frame, the ground
             | accelerates towards you.
             | 
             | However, the acceleration described in both frames (yours
             | and the Earth's) is coordinate acceleration, which is
             | frame-dependent, and in relativity frame-dependent
             | quantities don't have any direct physical meaning. The
             | quantity that has physical meaning in terms of acceleration
             | is proper acceleration--what an accelerometer strapped to
             | you would read--and in free fall that is zero.
        
           | FrustratedMonky wrote:
           | Typically I thought Quanta magazine did better than typical
           | pop-science. Guess this was an exception?
        
           | beebeepka wrote:
           | > That's correct. The infalling person has no way of knowing,
           | locally, that they have crossed the horizon and are now
           | doomed to hit the singularity. But that doesn't change their
           | doom.
           | 
           | This is what happened to SG-10.
        
           | smallnamespace wrote:
           | It's pretty clear GP was using the reference frame of a far-
           | away observer.
           | 
           | It's fine to switch to the infalling observer's frame, as
           | you're doing here, but that choice isn't objectively any more
           | correct than GP's. For example:
           | 
           | > Your acceleration is zero--you're in free fall.
           | 
           | That's in the falling observer's frame. It's totally fine to
           | say 'a astronaut in freefall is accelerating towards the
           | earth', explicitly invoking Earth's reference frame.
           | 
           | The freedom to choose a frame is literally why it's called
           | 'Relativity'.
        
             | pdonis wrote:
             | _> It 's pretty clear GP was using the reference frame of a
             | far-away observer._
             | 
             | Even in such a frame (for example, Painleve coordinates),
             | not all of the statements are correct. In those
             | coordinates, the infaller's coordinate acceleration is
             | nonzero, as you say, but their coordinate _speed_ inside
             | the horizon is _greater_ than the speed of light. Their
             | inertial mass is still unchanged. And the coordinate
             | acceleration in this frame is still not  "towards" the
             | singularity, since the singularity is still a moment of
             | time, not a place in space.
             | 
             |  _> It 's totally fine to say 'a astronaut in freefall is
             | accelerating towards the earth', explicitly invoking
             | Earth's reference frame._
             | 
             | In terms of _coordinate_ acceleration, yes. But coordinate
             | acceleration, precisely because it is frame-dependent, is
             | not considered a physically meaningful quantity in
             | relativity. Only invariants can be physically meaningful
             | quantities. _Proper_ acceleration--what an accelerometer
             | attached to the infaller reads--is an invariant, and that
             | is zero for a free-faller.
        
           | ryanSrich wrote:
           | I can't accelerate towards next week, but I can predict when
           | next week will happen, with extreme accuracy. Is this the
           | same for reaching the singularity? Does the person falling
           | (for the sake of this example let's assume they maintain
           | consciousness) experience the passing of time as they fall
           | further "into" the black hole? If so, how long would one
           | experiencing the falling until they reach the singularity?
        
             | jleahy wrote:
             | Yes, and you can calculate exactly how much time it takes
             | (it was an exam question in my final exams for undergrad
             | iirc). The amount of time depends on the mass of the black
             | hole but it's definitely less than a minute.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | I'd always assumed that for TON 618 it would've been a
               | few days... but I don't have a physics degree, and now I
               | come to write this comment realise I'd been just
               | presuming it was "Schwarzschild radius/c" and it's not
               | _necessarily_ going to be such an easy result.
        
             | russdill wrote:
             | You certainly can accelerate to next week as measured by
             | Earth calendars. Climb into your local particle accelerator
             | and ask them to get you accelerating around the loop as
             | close to the speed of light as possible. By accelerating,
             | you can get to next week in just a few seconds of your own
             | subjective time.
             | 
             | Also, you can accelerate towards the black hole singularity
             | and get there faster.
        
             | didgeoridoo wrote:
             | I'd love to understand the interaction effects between 1)
             | acceleration toward singularity (prob approaching c?), 2)
             | gravity (prob approaching infinity?), 3) distance
             | compression experienced by infalling observer.
             | 
             | My instinct is that the observer would subjectively
             | experience it to take exactly the time predicted by
             | classical mechanics to "hit" the singularity -- basically
             | that all the considerations above would cancel out in the
             | local reference frame -- but that to an outside observer it
             | would take an infinite amount of time.
        
       | zmgsabst wrote:
       | There's a fairly obvious connection:
       | 
       | Braiding is equivalent to circuits, as shown by Microsoft's idea
       | for a topological quantum computer.
       | 
       | If you start a system braiding, it will build complexity because
       | braiding appears to be non-local -- and so the tangle becomes an
       | increasingly complex circuit. The cusp of a black hole is a
       | regime we'd expect such topological effects to accumulate.
       | 
       | AdS/CFT suggests that maybe there's something deeper to the
       | relationship between braiding in spacetime and quantum systems.
       | Indeed, braiding is one of the few ways we know to generate
       | quantized properties within a continuous geometric setting.
        
         | SanderNL wrote:
         | Your comment raises important points. The non-local nature of
         | braiding in topological quantum computing contrasts with the
         | inherent locality of the AdS/CFT correspondence, prompting us
         | to wonder how these paradigms might coexist.
         | 
         | Could braiding and entanglement entropy, both non-local quantum
         | properties, hint at new understandings in the AdS/CFT
         | framework? Additionally, might these braided structures help
         | illuminate the microstate structure of black holes as theorized
         | by string theory?
         | 
         | Finally, your insight into quantized properties emerging from
         | continuous geometry recalls how quantum field theory has been
         | linked to knot theory. Can we use these ideas to further probe
         | the quantization of spacetime?
         | 
         | Your reflections beautifully intertwine quantum computing,
         | holography, and quantum gravity, encouraging us to weave
         | together these disparate strands in the tapestry of theoretical
         | physics.
        
         | uoaei wrote:
         | > If you start a system braiding, it will build complexity
         | because braiding appears to be non-local -- and so the tangle
         | becomes an increasingly complex circuit. The cusp of a black
         | hole is a regime we'd expect such topological effects to
         | accumulate.
         | 
         | Would you please expand on the connections between the first
         | and second sentence here? What does braiding 'look' like in
         | topological spacetime?
        
         | sdfghswe wrote:
         | Meaningless word salad.
        
         | dustingetz wrote:
         | "system braiding" - what is the wikipedia or googleable term
         | for this?
        
         | CaptainNegative wrote:
         | I don't understand how this is obvious -- non-locality does not
         | inherently imply that iteration increases complexity. For a
         | concrete not-entirely-trivial counterexample, von Neumann's
         | middle-square method also appears "non-local" (in that every
         | output bit is a function of a majority of the input bits
         | including well-separated ones) but famously tends to converge
         | to short orbits if not a single constant value.
        
         | ChatGTP wrote:
         | Blackholes and Microsoft...
        
         | didgeoridoo wrote:
         | Obviously!
        
         | EddieEngineers wrote:
         | This feels like what GPT-4 would say on the Rogan podcast after
         | mushrooms
        
           | jiggawatts wrote:
           | I asked GPT-4 to pretend it's on shrooms and talking about
           | these topics: https://chat.openai.com/share/b76b8139-4224-4de
           | 7-87ce-0e2a3a...
        
             | EddieEngineers wrote:
             | > Let's talk about braid theory. In the quantum world,
             | particles can be thought of as strands, and their
             | interactions as braids. The braids weave and loop around
             | each other, creating intricate patterns, a dance of
             | existence. Each unique pattern, or braid, represents a
             | different state of the particle. The magic is that the
             | braids can't get tangled.
             | 
             | That is not too far off hahahaha
        
           | aaroninsf wrote:
           | If I could give HN comments reddit awards, I'd start with
           | this one.
        
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