[HN Gopher] Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place insi...
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Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole
Author : zaik
Score : 243 points
Date : 2025-06-11 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.port.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.port.ac.uk)
| thrill wrote:
| Maybe it was the repeat.
| karol wrote:
| Beginning is an illusion created by our way of perception. Time
| is neither linear nor real so how can there be a "beginning"?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "Your honor, I could not have possibly shot that person,
| because yesterday might not have been before today, or at
| least, there is reasonable doubt that yesterday was before
| today, according to some physicists on crack. I treat those
| physicists with high regard personally though, and they have
| degrees that you don't have, so the court must reasonably
| conclude their opinions should be entertained."
| asveikau wrote:
| I guess that's a joke, but it's actually kind of serious that
| causality, personhood, identity, free will, etc. are all
| social constructs.
|
| They are _useful_ to us, but every now and then it 's helpful
| and humbling to remember it's a fiction we assign, rather
| than fundamental.
|
| Criminal justice or the concept of culpability is one of
| these areas. I know I've seen material by Robert Sapolsky, a
| neuroscientist who does not believe in free will, talking
| about how off the mark criminal justice and punishment for
| crimes can be.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| You're stating this as if determinism has been proven
| beyond a doubt which is not the case.
| asveikau wrote:
| I think it's unclear what kind of determinism you are
| presuming. Determinism in the universe? Determinism in
| consciousness? Certainly a deterministic machine can
| exist in a non-deterministic universe.
|
| However I didn't just assume a lack of free will. I also
| assumed a lack of _identity_. Do you realize that _who
| you are_ is socially defined? When you breathe in, the
| air in the room around you becomes part of you. When you
| breathe out, you lose certain gases. When you eat your
| food, similar story. There 's a good case to be made that
| "you" are in the entire room or the entire food chain.
| That does make causality and culpability hard to assess
| objectively. When we do so, we do so subjectively.
| ofjcihen wrote:
| Ah, so we're playing at being shamans.
|
| In that case I dub you a mushroom.
| asveikau wrote:
| Don't be silly. I didn't say anything about shamans. I'm
| saying human existence is subjective. Culpability, like
| the courtroom joke above, is subjective. They're useful
| models for how the world works but it isn't objective
| reality.
|
| We would do well to remember that every now and then.
| People who get too into pretending their perspective is
| objective reality tend to do stupid things.
| cwmoore wrote:
| Let me strengthen the observation to say they are the
| "social constructs [most] useful to [those who survive]
| us."
| layer8 wrote:
| That doesn't affect time in the sense discussed here,
| though, which is a fundamental dimension in our physical
| theories.
| asveikau wrote:
| It's been several years and I'm not fresh enough to
| summarize it, but some time ago I read Carlo Rovelli's
| "The Order of Time" which is a pop science book on why
| that isn't true. Ymmv. I'm sure many reading this know
| more than I do about the topic.
| exe34 wrote:
| An interesting corner of philosophy for me is when people
| worry about perfect clones with all your memories. The only
| reason it bothers us is because we're not used to our
| doppelgangers turning up and claiming our sofas and
| relationships. In a polity where clones are commonplace and
| provision is made to inform the source and the perfect copy
| that their material possess will be divided or some stuff
| will be provided, the shock value would fade away.
| emigre wrote:
| "Objection, your honor. In the many-worlds interpretation
| there is a world in which that happened."
| lazide wrote:
| I wonder how far counsel could take it before the judge hit
| them with contempt for lawyering while Nietzsche.
| layer8 wrote:
| Many-worlds doesn't predict that everything happens
| somewhere; far from it.
| emigre wrote:
| Well, it's just a joke. :) It doesn't necessarily have to
| make a lot of sense.
|
| In any case, I find your comment very interesting. I'm
| studying quantum computing at the moment, and I've had to
| read the different interpretations of quantum mechanics,
| including Everett's many-worlds interpretation. As a non-
| physicist, I've found the different interpretations
| fascinating.
|
| The many-worlds one, as far as I understood it, says that
| all the possible outcomes of a quantum measurement
| actually "happen" in different worlds. I have the
| impression that you would be able to give a much better
| explanation.
|
| In any case, in the joke the gun is shot in the macro
| world, not in a quantum state. It's possible that it is a
| quantum gun, but probably not.
|
| Let's say "overruled" then.
| jjallen wrote:
| What if it wasn't the beginning of _our_ universe or wasn 't the
| beginning of everything, including what is probably outside of
| our universe?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Eh, the thing about the statement there is you're redefining
| "universe", which is fine, but restating a definition isn't
| really saying anything new. The literal meaning of "universe"
| especially with respect to the Latin origins is... well...
| everything. It may make sense for physics to separate in to
| separate sets of everything if there's some reasonable
| justification.
| exe34 wrote:
| There's the Universe (everything everywhere everywhen), and
| then there's the observable universe. Most testable theories
| will be referring to the observable universe.
| runarberg wrote:
| As I understand it (I'm not a cosmologist by any means), saying
| that the observable universe began at big bang simply means
| that anything that happened before the big bang has no effect
| on what happens afterwards.
|
| There may be other universes out there, with their own big
| bangs, but that has no effect on ours.
|
| Reading this article, I think they are simply disputing the
| necessity of singularity inside a black hole, and hypothesize a
| universe which expands from non-singularity black hole, while
| staying inside its own event-horizon.
|
| That is how I understood it at least, somebody please correct
| me if I misunderstood it.
| DannyPage wrote:
| Asimov already covered this in The Last Question:
| https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
| JdeBP wrote:
| Not really. Asimov's story did not represent the process as a
| mathematically inevitable consequence of physics. It might not
| even have gone through a second cycle. Cellular life, dollars,
| and teletypes would all have had to come about again. (-:
| xorokongo wrote:
| "Nothing" implies that something exists, this duality creates the
| universe.
| aswanson wrote:
| There is no proof of "nothing " existing. Every observation we
| take, we see "something".
| xorokongo wrote:
| Than why do we need a beginning if there was always
| something.
| roywiggins wrote:
| There is as yet no proof that there was nothing before the
| big bang, it's just a supposition. The hot dense universe
| definitely happened but whether that was the "beginning" is
| essentially unknown.
| lazide wrote:
| For the same reason the mind seeks for an ending if there
| is something. It's the environment our little neural nets
| trained in.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| We don't. There was never nothing, because there is no
| "before" the big bang. Time as we know it did not exist
| until the big bang. It's not there was nothing, it's that
| there was no there or then.
| ramon156 wrote:
| We don't need it, the same way we don't "need" scientific
| proof about anything. We could live our whole life pleasing
| the stakeholders and be happy about it
| johnea wrote:
| My lay interpretation of this theory is that it says there
| was no beginning.
|
| But a cycling of a previous universe.
|
| I was a little unclear on the ending, where he says this
| theory would place our entire universe "inside" a black
| hole of a parent universe.
|
| All in all, it does seem to tie up some loose ends, and
| suggest some order to what previously required speculation.
| coliveira wrote:
| "beginning" is a misnomer, since time itself started with
| the Big Bang. There is no such thing as "before" the
| singularity, as time and space were curved together.
| xorokongo wrote:
| Time is a map of the states of consciousness, I believe
| consciousness/awareness of the universe has no beginning
| just infinite layers of abstraction.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This is meaningless technobabble.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I'm happy you feel that way
| EasyMark wrote:
| There are many theories that portray time as existing
| before the big bang.
| Kranar wrote:
| Strictly speaking, modern cosmology does not treat the Big
| Bang as the beginning of all of existence, it's what
| happens when you take observations about large scale
| cosmology and run them backwards in time.
|
| Based on the information we have available about our
| universe, we can't make predictions or formally model
| anything prior to a certain point in time, consequently
| it's convenient to treat this moment as the earliest point
| in time in which physics as we know it makes any sense. So
| while there may have been some kind of existence prior to
| the Big Bang, we have no way to make sense of it even at a
| conceptual level. Given that, we may as well treat this
| special point in time as the beginning of the universe as
| we understand it and can explain it using physics, as
| opposed to some absolute beginning of all of existence.
| xorokongo wrote:
| Thank you for your insightful response.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That's a boring axiom.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Only if something exists. But both nothing and something could
| not exist, and then there is no duality, just nothingness
| without a something to relate it too.
| xorokongo wrote:
| The concept of Nothing can only exist if Something exists,
| they both exist and are the substance that make up the
| universe.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Nothing is everything
| kgwxd wrote:
| Everything is everything
| mrtksn wrote:
| Isn't time a human invention useful to model the nature? It's
| literally just a defined interaction as a reference, i.e. the sun
| rising up and going down which is the rotation of the earth.
|
| So IRL there's no time, there's no need to have a beginning or an
| end. Whatever happened when all the matter was close together
| isn't the beginning of anything, just a phase.
| tomrod wrote:
| I'm butchering the mythology, but the Greeks had Cronos and
| Kranus. One was measurement, and one best explained as cause
| and effect.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| We have no idea if there is a meaningful beginning or end,
| other than heat death. But time is real in the sense that there
| is an arrow of time, due to entropy.
| Morizero wrote:
| Not true. The arrow of entropy has a direction and it's the
| same as the arrow of time. There's not a good explanation for
| why though.
| mrtksn wrote:
| There's no arrow of entropy, it's an invented useful model to
| describe something that nature does. Everything is like that,
| I.e. there's no electric field, it's a useful way to do
| calculations about particle interactions.
| lagrange77 wrote:
| Of course these are models. And to be able to recognise
| that entropy increases with time is an example for their
| usefulness.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Does it increase over time or does it do its thing and in
| our model we decided that stages of it is called time?
| lagrange77 wrote:
| Right, i had the same thought. What we can say is, that
| the quantities we call t and S are correlated.
| Morizero wrote:
| Absolute entropy of a system is calculated either by
| integrating heat capacity/temp at constant pressure from
| 0kelvin to the measured temperature, or by calculating
| via Shannon's method using average amount of information
| in a discrete random variable.
|
| There is no time factor in any absolute entropy equation.
|
| Empirically, if you measure the entropy of a closed
| system at a given time, and you measure the entropy of
| that same closed system at a different time, then
| calculate the deltas of each, their signs match so long
| as the time delta is finite and the system isn't empty.
| So stated plainly, as time increases, so does entropy.
|
| By combining these first principle formulae with the
| empirical results on entropy, you arrive at the second
| law of thermodynamics. However, like I said before, we're
| not really sure why the signs match and it's considered
| to be an unsolved problem in physics.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_i
| n_p...
| Kranar wrote:
| There's a perfectly good explanation for why though, in fact
| the explanation is what motivated the formalism of entropy to
| begin with. There are significantly more ways that the energy
| contained within a closed system can spread throughout that
| system than there are ways for energy contained within a
| closed system to condense, so that if you observe the state
| of a system at two different moments in time, you will expect
| to see it evolve towards the statistically more likely
| outcome than the statistically less likely outcome.
|
| And from first principles, that's what entropy is, a measure
| of how energy is dispersed throughout a system. Of course
| once you have that first principle understanding of entropy
| then you can come up with more rigorous formalisms to
| properly quantify what it means for energy to be distributed
| throughout a system, such as measuring the number of
| microstates that correspond to a macrostate, and other
| various formalisms that are more or less equal to each
| other... but fundamentally they all start from this basic
| principle.
| majoe wrote:
| If time were running against the arrow of entropy, nobody
| could perceive or measure it, right? Remembering something is
| per se an increase in entropy, so the universe could run in
| negative time direction, but we would simply forget, what had
| happened.
|
| That said, I personally think such thought experiments are
| futile and the nature of time has to be understood by its
| connection to causality and information.
| Kranar wrote:
| Of course you could perceive it, measure it and record it.
| The entropy of your body or your brain is not necessarily
| increasing, nor is the entropy of your computer or other
| information storage systems.
|
| Entropy only statistically tends towards an increase in
| closed systems and neither your computer or your brain are
| closed systems. They are both constantly getting energy
| from an external source of power and in turn dispersing
| previously consumed energy out into their environment.
|
| And yet you still manage to perceive things just fine... in
| fact your perception of the world is unlikely to change
| whether or not the entropy in your brain increases or
| decreases by some bounded amount (of course too much of
| either an increase or decrease will destroy your brain).
|
| Your claim about remembering an event, which likely alludes
| to Laplace's demon [1], requires an overall increase in
| entropy in the system as a whole, but does not require an
| increase in entropy in the specific part of the system that
| is recording the event.
|
| Every time your computer calls a function like memset(dst,
| 0), or sorts a list, or arranges data into some kind of
| structured binary tree, your computer is decreasing its own
| internal entropy by taking a statistically likely
| arrangement of bits and transforming it into a very
| unlikely arrangement of bits. The decrease in the internal
| entropy of your computer is more than offset by an increase
| in global entropy but that global entropy is radiating way
| out into the cosmos and has no impact on your computer's
| ability to register information.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| No, time is what the clock measures. Consciousness does not
| collapse the wave function meaning clocks exists without humans
| and time exists without humans.
| lazide wrote:
| The second, however, is a purely human invention.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Exactly, time is whatever the clock measures and the clock
| does it through some defined physical interaction. Can be a
| swing of a pendulum, can be vibration of an atom, flow of
| sand, unwinding of a spring etc.
|
| It's useful because its quantifiable.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The hot dense universe caused our current cool universe, and
| not the other way around, which makes the two states of the
| universe quite different.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Time is the coordinate of spacetime that has a different sign
| in the metric than the other three.
| lloeki wrote:
| This has been one of my pet theories for a while.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39271752
| xutopia wrote:
| I love that theory. I very much spent time thinking that it
| would be cool if we were inside a black hold after reading A
| Brief History of Time.
| paxys wrote:
| There are countless versions of this theory out there. Basically,
| a universe existed, then collapsed down to a single point, and
| then expanded again (the big bang). Rinse and repeat.
| tomrod wrote:
| Or a universe expanded inside a black hole and we are holograms
| on the shell.
| Antipode wrote:
| In this version we're still inside the black hole.
| carbocation wrote:
| I think it's neat that this summary is written by an author of
| the scientific manuscript. Oversimplification is a risk, but this
| approach eliminates the possibility that the writer did not
| understand the underlying science.
| n2d4 wrote:
| Yea, and it was a great read too. I wish more researchers would
| publish blog posts alongside their technical whitepapers,
| although I acknowledge that not everyone involved in science
| has or wishes to acquire the skills needed to write blog-form
| content.
|
| (I'd also be worried about a world where researchers are
| evaluated based on the virality of their blog posts, vs. how
| impactful their work was.)
| pkaodev wrote:
| Be worried then because that is the reality of the vast vast
| vast vast vast vast vast majority of research. At this point
| academia is a massive lumbering beast that exists and must be
| fed because it's become a big part of the economy. Most
| research being produced isn't really research, just people
| keeping busy.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Can you cite your sources please?
| johnisgood wrote:
| Most jobs are really not important either, they just keep
| people busy. Do you need sources for this claim, too?
| lukas099 wrote:
| Yes. Who are these people paying for jobs that don't do
| anything, and why are they more concerned about "keeping
| people busy" than their own profits?
| ckdot wrote:
| I'm not the one you were referring to, but I have similar
| experiences. I'm living in Germany, and most bigger
| companies here have such issues. I also worked for
| companies in Netherlands and Island, so I assume it's an
| European, if not global problem. No one is concerned
| about keeping people busy. It's a systemic problem. And
| there are multiple reasons for it. One reason is that the
| bigger a company grows, the more hierarchy is necessary.
| But increasing hierarchy will lead to people doing the
| work are not the people that are most responsible for it.
| So we have people that should do the work but they aren't
| too motivated because they are not responsible enough -
| they are too low in hierarchy level. And we have people
| that are responsible but don't do the work. They
| delegate. If something goes wrong or takes too long, they
| will have enough time and skill to find an excuse.
| Another issue is that you need more people to get
| specific things done. At some point in time these things
| have been done, and you actually don't need the amount of
| people anymore. But you can't quit them because of
| worker's laws. You maybe even don't want to quit them
| because you think you still need them. People, of course,
| tend to find reasons why their own work is important. And
| they will communicate that. And the chance is good you'll
| believe that and don't question it enough. There are more
| reasons for that. But it's a fact that in many, many
| companies the economical results of a lot of employees is
| almost zero. If you don't believe this, just google the
| biggest companies in Germany, pick one, apply for an
| office job and start to work there. It won't take a month
| until you'll find out. Btw. I don't want to criticize the
| situation too much. Probably it's good that people are
| employed, even if they don't work efficiently. Otherwise
| the unemployment rate would be much higher. Then again,
| Germany's economy is flatlining and a crash is not
| unlikely.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Sounds like you're describing the principal-agent
| problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-
| agent_problem
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Why do you think profits are important?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I would think that profits are important to investors,
| since that's why they invest in the first place. Maybe
| not though.
| LPisGood wrote:
| The people doing the hiring are typically not the people
| concerned about profits at medium and large sized
| companies. Sure someone has to approve the headcount
| numbers, but realistically this is an extremely flawed
| process.
| daedrdev wrote:
| The Bullshit Jobs jobs theory has been widely discredited
| by researchers, but you probably won't believe them.
| Consider that most business is B2B so it makes sense that
| the casual observer would not know what it's for.
| Additionally, the Bullshit Jobs book relies on a magazine
| survey, actual studies shows that the percent of people
| who consider their jobs meaningless is very low and also
| decreasing over time
| LPisGood wrote:
| There have been countless academics who have discussed
| this topic, occasionally not behind closed doors.
| Regardless, it's certainly my observation as well.
| beloch wrote:
| It's far preferable to having university PR people write some
| hype piece. Where they'd spend the whole time gushing about it
| being a world first, paradigm shifting, blah blah blah, the
| author focuses on things that actually matter. e.g. Is it
| testable? Yes, here's what to look for.
| fracus wrote:
| Yeah, wow. That was great. His solution seems so simple and
| clears all the previous model's problems. I guess every black
| hole could contain its own universe.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Too bad the author didn't explain more the concept of the
| "parent" universe and how our own (contracting & expanding)
| universe got created. Nice things to read/consider/ponder
| late at night :-)
| csours wrote:
| Unfortunately, it appears that the universe does not care
| very much about human satisfaction. Fortunately, other
| humans do.
| bmacho wrote:
| > The Big Bang is often described as the explosive birth of the
| universe - a singular moment when space, time and matter sprang
| into existence.
|
| It is indeed "often described" in the media as such. However,
| that is _not_ the currently accepted theory. "What if there were
| no space and time before the Big Bang" is just Stephen Hawking's
| pet theory.
| twodave wrote:
| Might as well believe in God if you're going to believe in
| spontaneous accidental creation...
| kibwen wrote:
| Why not? If you can't observe it, test it, and reproduce it,
| then it lies outside the realm of science and in the realm of
| belief. Until someone figures out a way to experimentally
| verify the big bang hypothesis (or any other explanation for
| the origin of the universe or what came "before"), it's
| entirely fair to attribute it to whatever you feel like, be
| it a god or anything else. There is no law of the universe
| that guarantees that science is capable of answering all
| questions.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| Well, I think surely the entirely fair thing to do is to
| just admit we don't know rather than make any attribution
| or imply any possession of an answer to those questions?
| kibwen wrote:
| Certainly, that's also perfectly fair. The thing to keep
| in mind is that some people derive utility from belief in
| some sort of creator, so ultimately it's an argument of
| values (specifically, you're looking to argue that people
| should prefer uncertainty to unprovable (but also
| undisprovable!) certainty).
| kgwxd wrote:
| Belief in anything is completely trivial unless you act based
| on those beliefs. No one is going to waste time worshiping,
| or murder someone over, the "nothing" from before
| "something".
| arbll wrote:
| Anything outside of what we can observe will always be based
| on faith anyway. We'll probably never understand what's
| "before" the big bang, wether it make sense to ask that
| question or why something exists rather than nothing.
| pharrington wrote:
| Which God? Vishnu? Ra? Amatarasu?
| ben_w wrote:
| Prince Philip?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip_movement
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Assume God exists.
|
| Various isolated cultures are going to come up with
| different names for God.
|
| This like saying which Sun? Surya, Ra or Helios?
|
| All are different names of sun. But there is only one sun.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| On the other hand, there are a lot of stars and different
| cultures might give them different names and yet there
| really are many of them.
|
| Furthermore, assume God doesn't exist. Lots of cultures
| might invent god for various reasons and they'd naturally
| have different names and attributes for them, which in
| fact seems to be the current state of affairs.
|
| In fact, if we assume God exists and is actively in
| communication with humans, its actually a bit _weird_
| that different human cultures would have different
| conceptions and names for that being. Why didn 't it just
| give everyone the same name and information?
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Why do you think God will have a name? Name is used by
| humans to identity a person among a lot of other persons.
| Why will God have a name if it is the only thing in
| existence?
|
| To answer the question of why humans give name to God.
| It's to make god more relatable so that they can workshop
| it. And use devotion to come closer with it. Look up
| Bhakti Yoga.
| kobalsky wrote:
| You're confusing belief with accepting the current scientific
| consensus.
| duped wrote:
| There's quite a big philosophical difference between "there
| exists a point beyond which it is possible to make
| observations" and "the universe was created by an omnipotent
| being"
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Am omnipotent being is a necessity for making observations.
| A lot of religions considers consciousness as God.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't see how this is. It seems eminently reasonable
| that observation can simply be performed by sub-
| omnipotent beings.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Life is one omnipotent being. It's just ego, thoughts and
| social identity that creates the illusion of multiple
| beings.
|
| But ego and names are made up. Separation just thoughts.
| The more life believes in thoughts it becomes divided.
|
| But the waves and ocean are one.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Verily, for all knowest that the gods live up in the sky,
| which is forever unreachable and unobservable by any man.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Yes. The man can never see consciousness. Only
| consciousness can see man.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't think so - god is substantially less parsimonious.
| But in the end, I think you're sort of using two different
| notions of belief as if they were the same.
|
| I believe (lowercase b) in all sorts of stuff, scientific and
| otherwise, but believing in God typically indicates some kind
| of act of faith, which is to say, ultimately, to believe in
| something despite the absence of evidence for it and for some
| deeper reason than can be furnished by a warrant of some
| kind. I can believe in the spontaneous generation of the
| universe in the lowercase b sense of the word without really
| having anything to do at all with the latter kind of belief,
| which I think is kind of dumb.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| What is the currently accepted theory?
| bmacho wrote:
| We have no theories working at those conditions. Wiki says
|
| > General relativity also predicts that the initial state of
| the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, was a
| singularity of infinite density and temperature.[6][obsolete
| source] However, classical gravitational theories are not
| expected to be accurate under these conditions, and a quantum
| description is likely needed[7].
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity
| DrammBA wrote:
| > [6][obsolete source]
|
| I didn't know but apparently wikipedia treats old sources
| as obsolete, doesn't matter if there's new information or
| not that would make it obsolete.
|
| I wonder if any sources supporting the notion that the
| earth is round must be updated every couple of years with a
| new source or study.
| cwmoore wrote:
| That exemplifies a much deeper problem than good
| information, "Good Law":
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_law
|
| As an aside, the earth is almost flat, just not nearly as
| flat as the Universe.
| DrammBA wrote:
| > As an aside, the earth is almost flat, just not nearly
| as flat as the Universe.
|
| Source? And make sure to update your response every few
| years.
| mkl wrote:
| Obsolete doesn't just mean old, it means superseded by
| newer information.
| DrammBA wrote:
| I agree with you, wikipedia seems to disagree with both
| of us
| arbll wrote:
| At t=0 or "before" none
| jerf wrote:
| A more accurate summation would be that _our theories_ do not
| permit us to go back beyond what appears to be the "Big Bang",
| and indeed, we can't quite get to it either, since the need for
| Quantum Gravity becomes too great as we get to what seems to be
| the "zero time". We have no principled, reasonable way to make
| any claims about what came before the point where our theories
| break down, and that includes the claim that there was no space
| or time at all before then.
|
| Thus, anything and everything you've heard about what is there
| "before the big bang" has always been speculation. I mention
| this because sometimes people read the science media, which is
| always reporting on this speculation, and think that the
| reporting on the speculation constitutes "science" constantly
| changing its mind, but that's not the case here. Science has
| consistently not had a justifiable position on this topic,
| ever. It has always been speculation. It is the press that
| often fails to make this clear and writes stories in terms of
| what "science" has "discovered", but any claims of certainty in
| this area are not the claims of "science".
| _alternator_ wrote:
| Interesting thing with this work is that it does create an
| observable, testable hypothesis: slightly positive curvature
| of the universe.
| smadsen wrote:
| What people seem to not be able to conceptualize, consciously
| or not, is that there really is no "before" the Big Bang in the
| standard model (Lambda-CDM), if time itself exists only after
| t=0.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| The Lambda CDM does not really say that. As other commenters
| have pointed out, Lambda-CDM is silent on the very earliest
| few moments of the universe where quantum gravity would be
| required.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Seems inevitable that we'll discover we aren't the only
| universe / only cycle.
|
| We went from thinking the Earth was the center of the universe,
| to the sun being the center of the universe, and the next
| obvious step is our universe isn't at the center of universes.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| O[?] = 0.0007 +- 0.0019 (68% confidence level)
|
| If the universe is curved dark energy is still a problem because
| the expansion is getting faster and overcomes the current
| curvature bounds.
| mclau157 wrote:
| Expansion definitely creates some issues here, at longer time
| scales how do we deal with this?
| bglusman wrote:
| Wow, wild this is being taken seriously now perhaps, I first
| encountered the idea in The Life of The Cosmos ~26 years ago[0]
| and my impression was the author, Lee Smolin, didn't REALLY
| beleive it, but he came up with it mostly to have some kind of
| preferable, falsifiable(er?) alternative to string theory, which
| he disliked even more, and perhaps more as an idea of the kind of
| theory we need to explore to start making progress... or that's
| my memory/impression form 26 years ago, I've been meaning to re-
| read it for a while since. Anyone read more recently/have other
| impressions?
|
| (the basic idea was fecund universes/cosmological natural
| selection[1], such that we should expect to find ourselves, if
| the theory were true, very near to a local maxima of values such
| that they approximately maximize the number of black holes
| produced... but most of the book is really taken up with a
| fascinating look at the history of physics and ideas...)
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_the_Cosmos
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_natural_selection
| rramon wrote:
| I speculate that the big bang is/was fueled by all the black
| holes that existed and will exist, like a huge cycle where all
| the energy sucked into black holes converges at the same point in
| time causing the big bang.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Fractal Universe - I discussed the idea with Benoit Mandelbrot
| back in '84 over beers, interning for him, before he'd
| published "Beauty of Fractals."
| lagrange77 wrote:
| Cool anecdote!
| jpeterson wrote:
| How do you deal with Hawking radiation?
| henry2023 wrote:
| Maybe with space expansion? With more space, particles
| interaction is weaker overall. So the whole system kind of
| loses total energy.
|
| * Not a physicist so this is a really uninformed take
| brian-bk wrote:
| flip the direction of time and hawking radiation ""creates""
| mass/energy inside a black hole (overall mass/energy is
| conserved)
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| The bounce to me has always seemed more intuitive than the bang,
| but man, when it comes to the quantum universe I've learned to
| just check intuition at the door.
| edfletcher_t137 wrote:
| > The black hole universe also offers a new perspective on our
| place in the cosmos. In this framework, our entire observable
| universe lies inside the interior of a black hole formed in some
| larger "parent" universe.
|
| Does it also follow that black holes in _our_ universe contain
| universes internally, beyond their event horizons?! Seems like it
| should. Mind-blowing.
| int_19h wrote:
| It's not a new idea, although I don't think it would be
| accurate to describe the other universes as "contained" within
| the black hole.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hole#Big_Bang/Supermassi...
| bozhark wrote:
| Black hole to White hole to Black hole
|
| It's holes all the way down
| bigbuppo wrote:
| That's a wholly a whole lot of holes.
| lelag wrote:
| Damn, I would not have guessed that Men In Black was actually a
| documentary...
| EasyMark wrote:
| I thought the universe they were saving in that was in some
| kind of "fish bowl" type universe (galaxy?)
| physix wrote:
| I think this is a great summary. It's quite intuitive and
| elegant. Does anyone have any information about what the author's
| peers think of this model?
|
| I'd love the idea that we are living inside a black hole, which
| is inside a black hole, which is inside a ...
| m3kw9 wrote:
| So what if one of the numerous black holes in the universe starts
| to bounce?
| RS-232 wrote:
| Not many people these days like to hear this (I myself was one of
| them), but the answer to this is in Genesis.
|
| There's a reason some of the most famous mathematicians,
| scientists, engineers, and philosophers of all time believe(d) in
| God.
|
| The Hebrew name of God, YHWH, literally means "He Who Is." In
| other words, the Self-Existent One. The father and originator of
| all things that were, are, and will be, who exists outside of
| spacetime.
| jaapbadlands wrote:
| That explains nothing.
| RS-232 wrote:
| Neither does the precursor to the Big Bang. It's the same
| exact thing.
| jplusequalt wrote:
| They are not the same thing. Religion and science may try
| to answer the same questions, but they are entirely
| different endeavors.
| SigmundA wrote:
| This is not an answer that satisfies just begs more questions.
|
| Who Created God? No one? Why does the universe need a creator
| if God does not?
|
| Where does free will and evil come from if God is "originator
| of all things that were, are, and will be". For true free will
| to exist it must have a source of entropy which denotes
| something outside of Gods control and design otherwise
| everything is deterministic as set forth by God.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I understand that many people yearn for a religious explanation
| to answer the question of what caused the universe to exist. I
| myself am content with the "it just happened" explanation, as
| any information prior to the big bang, if it even exists, is
| unknowable.
|
| There are countless other religions that believe in a deity who
| created the universe. These deities either created themselves,
| or had always existed outside of space and time. To that end,
| any one of those deities would be on equal footing with YHWH. I
| don't think that it is appropriate to axiomatically claim that
| a certain deity exists because only that deity could have
| caused the universe to exist.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| It would be a nice argument for deism - but to jump from that
| into anything more, seems way too extreme of a leap.
|
| Why Christianity then, over Hinduism? Why _any_ human religion
| at all?
| kgwxd wrote:
| Yes, not many people these days like to hear senseless drivel,
| hence the failing churches.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I think they mostly "believed" because they would be ostracized
| and maybe even killed for not believing in God and saying as
| much. Many who were famous in their lifetimes would have had
| enemies who would have loved to destroy them via that avenue.
| jl6 wrote:
| I didn't understand whether the author is implying that this
| happens to _all_ black holes or whether the model only applies in
| some circumstances.
|
| I definitely didn't understand whether this is suggesting that
| expanding universes can be contained within black holes that look
| like fixed-size finite objects from the outside.
|
| And what happens to the inner universe when the parent black hole
| evaporates through Hawking radiation?
| WD-42 wrote:
| The heat death of the inner universe.
| kannanvijayan wrote:
| Oh I have so many questions on this topic.
|
| I've often wondered about this. I don't have any direct physics
| training, but it's something that felt really plausible after I
| learned that the mass of a black hole is linearly proportional to
| its swarzschild radius.
|
| As the size of the black hole goes up, its overall density must
| decrease. Combined with the other observation that our universe
| has uniform density at large scales, it seemed really obvious to
| me that there existed some threshold at which the decreasing
| density of a very large black hole, and the fixed density of our
| observed universe.. would cross.
|
| I used to muse about this question with some other tech
| colleagues that liked talking about physics stuff but never
| really got a clear answer to this.
|
| On a side note - I'm absolutely fascinated by the implications
| relating to this. I'll post a follow-up thought I'm hoping
| somebody else has also thought about:
|
| I've seen discussion of dark energy mostly presented as a
| surrogate for real energy. That there is some underlying energy
| "accelerating things away from each other".
|
| I always felt uncomfortable with that characterization. It seems
| more reasonable to me to think of dark energy as _negative
| energy_ - i.e. a loss of overall energy.
|
| In a classical system, two things moving away from each other
| stores potential energy that can be recouped at some later time.
| Dark energy doesn't work this way - things accelerate away from
| each other the further apart they are. From a global perspective,
| it's an energy loss.
|
| The energy loss pervades to the quantum world as well - photons
| that start off high frequency arrive low-frequency.
|
| It somehow feels more appropriate to me to think of dark energy
| as energy being extracted out of the universe, in some form never
| to return. Maybe like a black hole evaporating as observed from
| the inside?
|
| When I asked this of some people in real life, I was pointed to
| answers that indicated that the "energy" component in dark energy
| is normalized into the "tension" of space somehow. As I mentioned
| before I'm not really studied in physics, but that explanation
| felt unsatisfactory to me.
| dvh wrote:
| Plug estimated mass of universe to your schwarzschild formula
| and be amazed how close it is to observable size of the
| universe.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| That is a very interesting idea... the equation and its
| assumptions doesn't seem to have any exceptions so it does
| strongly suggest our universe is a black hole, inside a black
| hole?
| nathan_compton wrote:
| > It somehow feels more appropriate to me to think of dark
| energy as energy being extracted out of the universe, in some
| form never to return. Maybe like a black hole evaporating as
| observed from the inside?
|
| But in this story the black hole increases in size as matter
| falls into the horizon and shrinks as it evaporates, so cosmic
| expansion would be associated with more energy falling into the
| black hole than leaving it.
| account-5 wrote:
| There was a thread a while ago on here where the hypothesis for
| why things are moving apart at faster rates is down to time
| moving at different speeds due to mass.
|
| So time in the void between galaxies is moving quicker than
| time in the galaxies, but on the grand scale of the universe
| the differences as up a lot.
|
| I quite liked this theory, think is make sense, at least from
| my very limited understanding of this stuff.
| codethief wrote:
| Aka Timescape Cosmology,
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhomogeneous_cosmology
| afarah1 wrote:
| >follow-up thought I'm hoping somebody else has also thought
| about [...] dark energy as _negative energy_ [...] Maybe like a
| black hole evaporating
|
| Another layman's thoughts: Isn't the energy theoretically lost
| by black holes so faint it's currently undetectable? And isn't
| the amount of dark energy theorized to be the major component
| of the observable universe? It seems like the numbers wouldn't
| add up?
| codethief wrote:
| > Combined with the other observation that our universe has
| uniform density at large scales
|
| s/has/had at the time of recombination
|
| It is largely an assumption of LCDM that we can treat the
| universe as practically homogeneous throughout its entire
| evolution but potentially not a very well-founded at that [0,
| 1].
|
| > I always felt uncomfortable with that characterization. It
| seems more reasonable to me to think of dark energy as
| _negative energy_ - i.e. a loss of overall energy.
|
| Your intuition is correct. If the Lambda term in the Einstein
| field equations is moved over to the side of the energy
| momentum tensor, it takes on the role of a negative
| contribution (provided Lambda > 0, as observations seem to
| indicate).
|
| > In a classical system, two things moving away from each other
| stores potential energy that can be recouped at some later
| time. Dark energy doesn't work this way - things accelerate
| away from each other the further apart they are. From a global
| perspective, it's an energy loss.
|
| Note that there is no global energy conservation in General
| Relativity[2], only at a local scale[3]. Heck, you'll already
| struggle to define what the energy _is_ of a given piece of
| spacetime in a meaningful and generic manner[4, 5]. In other
| words, violations of energy conservation due to spacetime
| expanding or contracting (a strictly non-local phenomenon),
| like in the case of the cosmic redshift, are expected and our
| intuition from classical mechanics only takes you so far.
|
| > It somehow feels more appropriate to me to think of dark
| energy as energy being extracted out of the universe, in some
| form never to return.
|
| Dark energy aka the cosmological constant term in the Einstein
| field equations is a constant term, as the name suggests. Yes,
| there can be energy loss due to spacetime expanding (see above)
| but that doesn't change the gravitational _constant_.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_web
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhomogeneous_cosmology
|
| [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
|
| [3]:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress%E2%80%93energy_tensor
|
| [4]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.02931
|
| [5]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_general_relativity
| timewizard wrote:
| > As the size of the black hole goes up, its overall density
| must decrease.
|
| The center of a black hole is infinitely dense. That's why it
| even exists. The event horizon is not the black hole.
|
| > and the fixed density of our observed universe
|
| Our universe is expanding. It's density is not fixed.
|
| You really want to be thinking about this in terms of entropy
| and not matter.
| DrammBA wrote:
| > The center of a black hole is infinitely dense. That's why
| it even exists. The event horizon is not the black hole.
|
| Arguing semantics is rather boring when it's obvious you
| understood the point he was trying to make.
|
| > Our universe is expanding. It's density is not fixed.
|
| None of that precludes uniform density at large scales.
| danieldrehmer wrote:
| I sympathize with Lee Smoolin's cosmological natural selection
| hypothesis, which would require that black holes give birth to
| new universes within
| bglusman wrote:
| I can't beleive you and I are the only ones familiar with, and
| that no one else referenced or responded to this connection!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44251438
| tehjoker wrote:
| This was an interesting read, but I didn't understand exactly
| what leads to the big crunch. I get the exclusion principle leads
| to pressure, and this causes the bounce, but why would it
| continue to accelerate and then decelerate resulting in a big
| crunch?
|
| https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.1...
| chasil wrote:
| I don't understand where the rest of the parent universe is if
| all of the matter has emerged from the event horizon. Twisted
| into a new dimension, perhaps?
| tehjoker wrote:
| My take away was that it's still somehow causally
| disconnected from our universe. They make an assumption that
| the space outside is empty and that makes the numbers
| correspond closely with observations. Maybe there is stuff
| there but very very far away?
| meindnoch wrote:
| I've read somewhere an article which posited that our 3D universe
| might be inside a 4D black hole. When you cross a black hole's
| event horizon, the radial coordinate becomes timelike, so you
| lose one degree of spatial freedom. Movement is still possible in
| the tangential directions however, so what you get is basically
| an N-1 dimensional universe. So maybe our 3D universe is actually
| matter that fell into a 4D black hole, and our 3D black holes
| contain 2D flatland universes. And of course, the outer 4D
| universe might be in a 5D black hole, etc.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Yes, and then there's the parlor game of guessing what familiar
| property of our known universe is actually a spaghetified
| fourth dimension.
|
| I guessed c once. It _would_ be a constant. Maybe all the
| constants are spaghettified remains of a superior universe.
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't think c is a good candidate, because it's not really
| a parameter. It's just a correction factor for our mis-
| judgment in picking different units for time and space.
|
| In "natural units", we define the units so that the important
| conversion factors (c, G, h-bar, etc) work out to exactly 1.
| You can say that c is one light-year per year and then forget
| about it.
|
| The true parameters of the universe are the dimensionless
| constants: the fine structure constant, proton-electron mass
| ratio, 3+1 dimensions, etc.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| > I don't think c is a good candidate, because it's not
| really a parameter.
|
| dont be so sure! there is no way to experimentally know if
| c is a parameter or not. there are consistent physics
| formulations which have variable, even anisotropic c.
| physicists dont usually explore them (e.g. tangherlini
| relativity) though because the math is considerably harder.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I thought that's what the high dimension counts of string
| theories were: taking constants and turning them into
| dimensions.
|
| Or is that too simplified?
| account-5 wrote:
| What's in a 1D black hole?
| codethief wrote:
| > When you cross a black hole's event horizon, the radial
| coordinate becomes timelike, so you lose one degree of spatial
| freedom.
|
| The second half is incorrect. Since the time coordinate becomes
| spacelike in turn you'll still have 3 spatial degrees of
| freedom. Dimensions can't just vanish if you believe that
| spacetime is a 4D Lorentzian manifold (as physicists do).
|
| Moreover, the singularity is not a place you can poke with a
| stick, once you've entered the black hole. It lies in your
| future, in the same way as death.
| twothreeone wrote:
| What? Wouldn't that mean an object's speed in some direction
| determines how time passes once it crossed over, and
| conversely, it would experience its old time dimension as
| spatial and be able to "move through (old) time" freely after
| crossing the event horizon?? My head hurts.
| molticrystal wrote:
| If the crux of the article is the fermion bounce, and you compare
| that to how much matter and energy we are aware of, that is quite
| the black hole, which leads one to start wondering what
| environment it existed in to become that size. Even if it is now
| stuck due to a positive curvature of just bouncing back and
| forth.
|
| I would like the article to acknowledge a bit more though that
| blackhole universe theories and speculation are quite old now,
| not radical and a striking alternative, as it is natural to think
| about it once you learn of the concept of event horizons. What
| differentiates this though is the analytical solution.
| pontifier wrote:
| There was a youtube lecture I saw years ago that showed exactly
| what you'd see as you fell into a black hole and passed through
| the event horizon.
|
| You'd see EVERYTHING that EVER crossed the event horizon. But
| critically, you'd see it EXACTLY as it was at the monent it
| crossed.
|
| Sounds a bit crowded to me. Sounds a bit like I'd expect the big
| bang to look.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I thought you were supposed to get spaghettified and die
| instantly ?
| ogou wrote:
| The word "research" in this title is a handy placeholder for
| indeterminate conjecture. No research happened, it's a theory he
| made up.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I would argue that theory is a critical part of the research
| process and is therefore research.
|
| There's of course a line between simply coming up with ideas
| that are quickly provably wrong or inconsistent vs generating
| ideas that are consistent and not quickly falsified. It's
| especially valuable the ideas are falsifiable and it seems like
| this is the case here.
|
| As such, theory finds patterns in existing knowns, makes some
| leaps and tries to connect them. Then empirical evidence can
| help solidify or falsify those ideas. But we tend not to just
| connect dots of empirical data without attempting to know the
| casual relationship, otherwise the connections can be rather
| nonsensical or may have weak predictive power.
|
| With all that said I didn't read the paper in detail nor am I
| qualified in this domain to say if it's quackery or a
| reasonable shot a developing some new theory. It is peer
| reviewed and published in APS so I suspect it's not complete
| quackery:
| https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.1...
| ogou wrote:
| A research paper makes use of multiple sources of known
| provenance and various degrees of authority and relevance. It
| tries to establish a consensus of knowledge, as close to fact
| as possible. The phrase "research suggests" is an appeal to
| authority that implies some kind of academic rigor. A theory
| paper, which is still useful and important, can be published
| without any kind of authority. You can just make things up.
| namenotrequired wrote:
| Would you say Einstein was not a researcher?
| codingclaws wrote:
| Could a computer simulation also contain another universe, with
| virtual black holes that have universes?
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Sean Carroll says this is absolute nonsense:
| https://youtu.be/U3uIiv48q98?feature=shared&t=6046
| lkmill wrote:
| If this is true it almost literally means black holes are a way
| for universes to make children. If we apply Darwin's principles
| of the strongest survive this must mean that universes that
| produce the most black holes are the "best". If correct, what
| does this actually mean?
| henry2023 wrote:
| Darwinian logic requires a feedback loop. And because those
| universes are isolated then there's no "incentive" of a
| universe to have more "offspring"?
| ben_w wrote:
| It requires imperfect reproduction where the imperfections
| alter the probability of further reproduction.
|
| If each black hole in our universe contained a pocket
| universe with very slightly different laws of physics (to
| each other and to us), but the same amount of mass-energy on
| the inside as our universe had when it started, then (1)
| those pocket universes able to create stars and black holes
| would also go on to create black holes with pocket universes,
| but also (2) those pocket universes not able to create black
| holes, would not create more pocket universes.
|
| I have never seen a reason to think that this could happen,
| nor why such pocket universes might have more mass on the
| inside than they appear to have on the outside, but that's
| the argument.
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| There is a theory of cosmological evolution. The child
| universes have slightly different physical constants and
| universes that produce more black holes will leave behind
| more offspring universes so over many generations, the
| universes evolve toward parameters that favour black hole
| production.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| That's what Blowtorch theory predicts, it notes three
| stages of black hole formation:
|
| - direct collapse after the big bang. Those supermassive
| black holes now from the center of galaxies and are the
| earliest and simplest form of how universes reproduced
|
| - stellar collapse, requires the formation of stars, but
| those can be much more plentyfull than previous
| supermassive direct collapse black holes, so many more
| universes will have those
|
| - black holes created by technology. Since black holes are
| incredibly efficient at converting mass to energy, in a
| universe that has the capability to form intelligent life,
| this life will eventually find a way to harness black holes
| as an energy source. In doing so they would create even
| more tiny black holes (maybe to power spaceships?), so such
| universes would form the most offspring.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_natural_selection
|
| https://theeggandtherock.com/p/the-blowtorch-theory-a-new-mo...
| hybrid_study wrote:
| I thought this was already an old general idea; that each black
| hole ignites the birth of a new universe?
| m3kw9 wrote:
| This theory actually makes sense. Vs big bang where half of the
| theory is "let's assume that there is this thing that explodes"
| lagrange77 wrote:
| If universes can exist in black holes and obviously black holes
| exist in universes, doesn't that smell like infinite recursion?
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| What reason do we have to believe that every universe can
| support black holes? We only have a sample size of 1 here.
| EasyMark wrote:
| What reason do we have to believe that there is more than one
| universe?
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Black holes all the way down
| Toby1VC wrote:
| "In my room, redefinin' the meanin' of black holes"
|
| - Earl Sweatshirt
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| I went to school in a very bad neighborhood. Once I was sent to
| the office because my math teacher asked me what I was reading
| about that was soo much more interesting than our textbook. I
| happened to be reading "A Brief History of Time", so I answered
| "black holes."
|
| At the time I couldn't understand why my dad laughed about that
| particular phone call from the principal.
| afroboy wrote:
| I'm not a scientist or astrophysicist but i do believe in
| science, is it ok to believe that we as humans and all our
| scientific development still very very far from proving anything
| remotely close to how the universe got created? I feel this
| subject is for humanity in year 2600 to start discussing it.
|
| Scientist still can show their theories and search papers and i
| can't understand a shit but i don't believe in any theory that
| proves how the universe got created.
| philipov wrote:
| Before we can prove, we must first wonder. We proceed by small
| steps, and if we don't start discussing it now, 2600 will still
| be too early.
| belter wrote:
| If we can't even predict inflation rates maybe we should hold
| off on explaining the birth of the entire universe, yeah?
| daedrdev wrote:
| Predicting inflation rates may be harder than discovering the
| birth of the universe actually, because it would require
| perfect knowledge of the present and by the time you compute
| it it's out of date.
| belter wrote:
| We can claim to simulate the first femtoseconds of the
| universe...model nuclear detonations in software down to
| quantum effects....but 340 million citizens buying gas and
| groceries? That's somehow beyond our grasp... :-)
|
| Maybe the problem isn't complexity, but that science gets
| arrogant when it drifts into realms where its claims can't
| be falsified ;-)
| ptmcc wrote:
| It's not about belief, it's about observing, collecting data &
| evidence, and proposing possible explanations. As new
| observations and evidence are found the possible explanations
| are refined. No one credible is claiming hard proof of anything
| at this point.
| didibus wrote:
| Agreed, people often mix that up, but you have to adopt a
| probabilistic mindset, you can believe the coin with land on
| its head, but you also know that based on the weight and
| curvature of the coin it will land on its tail 68% of the
| time you flip it, etc. Then choosing tail is no longer a
| belief, it is simply going with the choice that is backed by
| prior observation, experiments, models, etc.
|
| You might still lose, and so you might choose to also believe
| it will land on tail this time, but the rationale for
| choosing tail was not based on a belief system, but the going
| information and where it points too.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| "Proving anything" is kind of fuzzy. We've got very solid
| evidence that some sort of big bang happened. We can see the
| galaxies flying away from a common point, and since we can
| count backwards, we can know roughly when they probably
| would've been in the same spot. The how and why, and the what
| happened before, those are very unknown, although we've got a
| surprising amount of knowledge of what the first few seconds
| were probably like.
| echelon wrote:
| I have immense respect for astrophysicists, but the data we're
| dealing with is extremely far away and relies on a lot of
| interlocking assumptions.
|
| I stumbled upon this paper [1, 2] last night that challenges
| the CMB, and thus the underpinning of much of our understanding
| about the age and evolution of the universe. As a layperson, I
| don't know the impact factor of the "Nuclear Physics B" journal
| - if this is just junk or if this is a claim that will pan out.
|
| My point is that it feels like we're building on a lot of
| observations that are all super indirect. I know I'm just a
| layperson, but that feels weird when reading assertions about
| these things.
|
| Our understanding of the universe is relatively new. We don't
| have a lot of energy or resolution in our observations. The
| fact that we can sniff the molecular spectra of exoplanets is
| so amazing and that part feels totally concrete and rock-solid.
| But I get skeptical when I see claims that we know how the
| universe began or how it will end. Is our evidence that good?
| Are our models? Are we basing everything on assumptions?
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.04687
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb69yPNgX-Q
| didibus wrote:
| > But I get skeptical when I see claims that we know how the
| universe began or how it will end
|
| Absolutely, but you are interpreting it in the rewritten
| headline money making attention grabbing version.
|
| The original version of the claims always say that from some
| observation, experiments, and projection from known models it
| derives that the universe likely began this way, or will end
| that way, etc.
|
| That means, of all the going hypothesis, this might be the
| one with the best chances of being true, or close to the
| truth. It's not an absolute, but its the one that has the
| most chances due to the evidence behind it.
| didibus wrote:
| Science is a process, not a source of truth. It has a very
| practical lens, which is very utilitarian, does the knowledge
| and models allow for invention or prediction that works in our
| reality for some current need.
|
| The assumption is, you never really know, but if the model in
| which the theory says X, is able to predict something in the
| future or some experiment for Y, than that model appears to
| better approximate reality. Or is that knowledge and model
| allowing us to now do something we could not before, etc.
|
| Over time, it course corrects to improve its knowledge and
| models in ways that show better results for prediction or
| invention.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Belief is acting as if something, for which no evidence has
| been given, is true. Imagination, taken too far. No one is
| telling you to believe anything here, they're suggesting we
| search for clues to support or disprove a theory. Or don't,
| it's up to you.
| EasyMark wrote:
| But that's why science is so cool, it doesn't matter what we
| believe, it only matters if your theory fits the facts and
| makes good predictions. If it doesn't, you can chuck it in the
| bin without guilt. Unlike beliefs, which often can cause
| psychic trauma if reality doesn't match the belief of the
| individual.
| serf wrote:
| I think the phrase 'believe in science' is weird; it's nearly
| as problematic as "I have faith in science".
|
| It can be, but generally the concept of 'belief' isn't
| attributed to ground truths; it's just 'the truth', you rarely
| hear the phrase "I believe 2 and 2 is 4." , it's just '2 and 2
| is 4.' -- I think that's important.
|
| In fact, a lot of people insert the word 'believe' to insert a
| concept of self-doubt. "What was our last test results passing
| rate?" "I believe it was around 95 percent.."
|
| But semantics aside here's the real question : Why do you have
| some kind of notion that you should 'believe' anything without
| being able to understand it? Just trust in the world and those
| around you?
|
| We haven't figured origin yet, so let's get off that, but when
| a scientist of some sort makes a discovery, they release
| evidence and methods , and you decide to believe the
| conclusions without an understanding of the work -- well that's
| just a display of faith. Faith in the scientist themselves, the
| system they work within, and the society you're in.
|
| Which leads me to say this : If you make an effort to begin to
| understand the frameworks and systems which lead to scientific
| conclusions you can largely remove the faith and belief
| elements up until you hit the very highest spectrums of each
| field where speculation comes back into play.
|
| tl;dr : if you 'cant understand a shit', you don't put any leg-
| work in and make an effort to speak the language, you'll
| probably end back up in beliefs rather than an ever increasing
| codex of knowledge -- regardless of the field. That's okay --
| but it doesn't offer the same benefits as knowledge -- it just
| lets one say things like "I don't believe in any theory..."
| mkoubaa wrote:
| You don't believe in science, you believe in a metaphysical
| claim about science that you haven't articulated.
| HocusLocus wrote:
| Suggested hard sci-fi light reading: "Cosm" by Gregory Benford,
| 1999. A universe the size of a bowling ball created in a
| laboratory. The scientist responsible for it, keeping it safe and
| on the run from gvt spooks. They want to protect it for as long
| as it lasts, and since its time is as relative as its size, they
| won't have long to wait.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| Added.
|
| Opinions:
|
| A) I love all the scifi book recommendations that cone up on HN
|
| B) i wish you'd all stop recommending great and amazing books.
| My queue is so backlogged and jammed I'm never going to catch
| up.
| arto wrote:
| So many books, so little time...
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| If only we had an even bigger universe, we would have more
| time... is that how it works?
| figassis wrote:
| Like this? https://hacker-recommended-
| books.vercel.app/category/5/past-...
| baw-bag wrote:
| There needs to be some kind of hackernews library or
| goodread. I have enjoyed many books (and some no so much)
| but always on the look out for books.
| RGamma wrote:
| What's a couple dozen books (and video games) in my backlog
| when I have a thousand websites there?
| fibonachos wrote:
| Same here. My interest in the Sci-Fi genre started with an HN
| comment recommending Blindsight, by Peter Watts.
|
| Several comments and sci-fi series later, and I'm currently
| reading about spacefaring sentient spiders.
| landtuna wrote:
| This sounds similar to Horton Hears a Who.
| Xophmeister wrote:
| I seem to remember a similar Star Trek episode; DS9, IIRC.
| ars wrote:
| I remember that, and the enormous plot hole that they could
| move the thing in a transporter!
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| "playing god", s2e17
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Rick and Morty episode (season 2 episode 6, 'The Ricks Must be
| Crazy') where it turns out rick has created a whole universe
| inside his spaceship battery who's whole purpose is to produce
| energy to run his spaceship. A scientist within this microverse
| creates a miniverse ....
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Reminds me very much of Blowtorch Theory that was discussed here
| recently
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44115973
| profsummergig wrote:
| The big bang sounds like how a computer would interpret being
| turned on.
|
| Anyone else think this is what happened?
| bigbuppo wrote:
| Nope, it's just you applying the thing you think you know to
| something you don't know.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Computers refer to this as 'the Big Boot'.
| larodi wrote:
| it is funny the fact that author decided to explain who Galileo
| was
| johnwheeler wrote:
| So that's what that big blob in the Mandelbrot set is. It's a
| diagram of our fractal universe.
| ck2 wrote:
| There's a PBS Space Time for that (from three years ago)
|
| https://www.pbs.org/video/could-the-universe-be-inside-a-bla...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeRgFqbBM5E
| tug2024 wrote:
| Why does it always have to by "hyperbolic" instead of parabolic?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Very high "Time started when someone clicked start" - "cool, how
| did events happen before they clicked start?" factor title.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Big bang theory no longer excites me. As long as we can't explain
| consciousness all these theories are pointless. All theories mere
| appearances in consciousness including the universe and
| everything we experience.
|
| Consciousness has the property to render infinite universes and
| theories.
|
| But we have no clue how universe creates consciousness.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| First define consciousness such that the definition
| differentiates you from a computer with a webcam.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| You cannot define consciousness. You can only experience it.
| In fact consciousness is the only thing you will ever
| experience.
| saulpw wrote:
| Perhaps you should use 'sentience' or something more
| precise to mean 'qualia-experiencing'. The word
| 'consciousness' is quite overloaded and thus trips people
| up who haven't thought about this as extensively as you
| have. In particular many people take it to mean "self-
| awareness" (whether correctly or not), but it seems obvious
| to me that there are many sentient beings which lack self-
| awareness but still have an internal experience.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Yes. Self awareness is just another content inside
| consciousness.
| legohead wrote:
| You can measure various aspects of a computer. You can't
| measure consciousness.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| That's not a definition. Depending on the definition, it
| may be possible to measure it.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| You cannot measure consciousness. You are consciousness
| thinking of itself as the human. Measurement is an event
| appearing in consciousness done by humans.
|
| It's like persons inside GTA talking about measuring the
| Samsung monitor. It makes no sense cause they can never
| see the monitor or locate it. They appear in the monitor.
| everdrive wrote:
| Consciousness is a specific biological adaptation which is
| primarily focused in the management of social relationships,
| status, and the prolonged adolescence of children. (and their
| required care)
|
| There's no reason to think that consciousness is an important
| question in the objective sense; it just matters to people.
| (and rightfully so) People wondering about consciousness in the
| universe might be akin to dogs wondering what the big bang
| smelled like.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Are we both talking about the same thing?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
| woopsn wrote:
| What is an important question in the objective sense? Is
| life, or no because that just matter to life? It seems
| oxymoronic, "objective question", "objectively important".
|
| I don't follow GP's sort of solipsist (?) take, but would say
| question of whether big bang took place in a black hole is
| pointless compared to life/experience and how they arise.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Solipsism is like whether it's all made up by mind. I am
| not interested in that. I am interested in the thing in
| which all the made up stuff appears.
| afarah1 wrote:
| Interesting read, but even if we assume the author is correct,
| and the cosmos formed as a black hole in a larger universe, the
| question remains, how did this larger universe formed, then?
| Might just be impossible to know.
| paleotrope wrote:
| A larger black hole
| alkonaut wrote:
| It's turtles all the way down
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Black holes all the way up.
| kgwxd wrote:
| if we assume the author is correct, it would cease to be a
| scientific endeavor.
| timewizard wrote:
| It may just be that the physical conditions of our universe
| just prior to the big bang are indistinguishable from that of
| the interior of black holes.
|
| In that sense black holes are areas where our universe has
| reverted from it's low entropy state all the way back to the
| initial nearly infinite entropy state.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| But who would be as cruel to put us here without giving us
| those answers? Who? And where did that entity come from?
| mrbungie wrote:
| Maybe there was no cruelty, and we were just plain matter
| that fell into our encapsulating black hole. Like what
| happenswith our own universes black holes.
| amelius wrote:
| There is no other entity. We're nothing. An algebra of
| nothing. Combine nothing with nothing in various ways (like
| S-terms) and it gives you physics, among many other things.
| From the inside we see a universe, from the outside you would
| see nothing.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| As an agnostic I agree, but none the less it is a whole,
| absurd joke to be here without any answers and I demand
| someone to answer me.
| largbae wrote:
| We apologize for the inconvenience.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| My theory: There's no such thing as before and after "it". It
| is it.
| ckdot wrote:
| Block Universe. The more you think about it, the more
| probable it seems. Why should a universe pass time like a
| movie, if all moments could exist simultaneously? If there is
| no time, and it's just a simulation formed in our brain,
| there doesn't have to be a beginning nor end.
| sullivantrevor wrote:
| my feeling is that the beginning of the universe is so
| unbelievably unexplainable and strange that we will never truly
| understand its origin
| GodelNumbering wrote:
| This brings to mind something I keep thinking about for years
| (mostly from watching too many physics videos).
|
| - Gravity "slows" the time down, gravitational singularity should
| bring the time to a halt
|
| - Suppose there is a quantum process that makes the true
| singularity impossible, so all black holes immediately expand
| right back
|
| - Looking at it from our time scales, even if the singularity
| existed for a moment, it would appear that "infinite" time has
| passed while from the black hole's perspective, the expansion was
| instantaneous.
|
| - From earth's perspective, if the singularity ever existed in a
| black hole, it stands to reason that when the time "resumes" from
| a black hole expansion, it won't fall into any of our known
| timelines since infinite time would have passed.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Along those lines, makes me wonder if the "bang" is in fact the
| fact that after the time compression, all matter/energy is
| effectively arriving at the same point all at once.
|
| Assuming our universe eventually collapses into a few black
| holes, perhaps the spawn of a new universe is simply all the
| matter and energy of our universe arriving at a new point in...
| time? an infinite amount of time in the future.
|
| Also, really mind bending to think the universe may just be an
| infinite series of black hole explosions with no beginning. It
| is because it always was.
| avmich wrote:
| > But how come Penrose's theorems forbid out such outcomes? It's
| all down to a rule called the quantum exclusion principle, which
| states that no two identical particles known as fermions can
| occupy the same quantum state (such as angular momentum, or
| "spin").
|
| > And we show that this rule prevents the particles in the
| collapsing matter from being squeezed indefinitely. As a result,
| the collapse halts and reverses. The bounce is not only possible
| - it's inevitable under the right conditions.
|
| Then how comes the neutron stars collapse into black holes
| despite obeying the exclusion principle?
| nick3443 wrote:
| Is it because the black hole is a macro distortion of spacetime
| and not a local quantum property?
| 1270018080 wrote:
| With enough mass, there is enough energy from gravity to put
| all fermions into different states, so the collapse continues
| truculent wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the authors' "bounce" would only
| happen if the energy was not enough to put them into
| different states?
| colechristensen wrote:
| >Then how comes the neutron stars collapse into black holes
| despite obeying the exclusion principle?
|
| One of the ways to overcome one of the levels of this
| degeneracy pressure is electron capture which is the opposite
| of a kind of beta decay. Squeeze hard enough and a proton
| combines with an electron to form a neutron and a neutrino.
|
| But there are several proposed levels of degenerate matter in
| neutron stars, the idea being that one (final?) level of this
| degenerate matter is dense enough to make an object smaller
| than its schwarzschild radius. Uncertainty is high because we
| have no current methods to observe any of this kind of matter.
|
| What goes on inside the schwarzschild radius is another mystery
| we don't have answers from, but there are lots of ideas with
| various levels of legitimacy.
|
| Quantum physics in and around singularities or things we think
| are singularities is not understood.
| holoduke wrote:
| I still don't understand from the article why the bounce effect
| results in an accelerated expansion of space time. Is the black
| hole (our universe) in the parent universe getting bigger? And
| why is that non linear?
| normalaccess wrote:
| I've always liked the Idea that black holes accelerate matter
| faster than light behind the event horizon propelling it back in
| time creating a singular white hole at the first moment.
|
| There are many many reasons why this is a dumb idea and it's just
| as much of a paradox as any other naturalistic creation theory.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| So the expansion comes from the bounce. And we are in a dormant
| supermassive black hole of sorts. How would it look like in our
| world if the mother blackhole is actively gobbling up matter from
| the parent universe?
| wrcwill wrote:
| while it doesn't take away from the article, i find it worrying
| that it seems mostly written with chatgpt
|
| "This is not just a technical glitch; it's a deep theoretical
| problem that suggests we don't really understand the beginning at
| all."
|
| "The bounce is not only possible - it's inevitable under the
| right conditions."
|
| ugh
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I thought the Pauli exclusion principle is why we have neutron
| stars, ie the degeneracy of a star results in the fusion of
| electrons and protons to form neutrons and emit neutrinos.
|
| What is preventing the collapse in this case and results in a
| bounce?
| ahuth wrote:
| Cool article!
|
| I can hear Sean Carrol saying, though, that:
|
| 1. We know general relativity isn't complete, because it doesn't
| take quantum mechanics into account.
|
| 2. We can't say whether this is right because we don't know the
| quantum theory of gravity.
|
| But I don't actually know what I'm talking about.
| truculent wrote:
| > The black hole universe also offers a new perspective on our
| place in the cosmos. In this framework, our entire observable
| universe lies inside the interior of a black hole formed in some
| larger "parent" universe.
|
| What specifically is meant by interior? Does this mean "within
| the event horizon" or something else?
| brtkwr wrote:
| Notebook LM version
| https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/bb55f273-a5e8-461a-b7...
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