Russ Frizzell
12/24/14
Our understanding of the Universe is vitally important to us for our long term existence as a species. The sun will go through a life cycle which effects earth and dangerous meteor impacts are a rare but realistic threat. Also, it is just plain fun to think about how mysterious, wonderful, and amazing the Universe is.
Nobody really understands how the Universe came to be. Our sky is filled with beautiful stars at night. Quasars, supernovae, and galaxies spread out over awesome distances which boggle the mind. The weird condition of the Universe being curved like a saddle is very strange.
Astronomers and cosmologists everywhere insist that the Universe is flat and it is expanding from some super bizarre big bang event. Exact numbers are kind of hard to get in astronomy so scientists must estimate, approximate, and round off their figures. The very best possible guessing goes as follows:
Standard Model Cosmology
Hubble's law tells us the size, age, and expansion rate of the Universe. Hubble's constant (H) is measured by astronomers and very close to 21.7. A galaxy one million light years away is moving away from us at about 21.7 kilometers per second (14 miles per second). A galaxy 100 million light years away is flying away at 2170 km/s. A million light years is a great distance, light speed (C) rounds up to 300,000 km/s. So one light year is 9.5 trillion kilometers:
LY=300,000x365x24x3600
LY=9,500,000,000,000 km.
The farthest galaxies we can observe at the edge of the visible Universe, are the same distance in every direction. I'll call the distance (R). Observing as if from the center is the only view we have. We can imagine things from different views and compare what we see with what we expect. The velocity (V) of galaxies flying away from us follow the simple rule named above, Hubble's Law: V=HxR.
If we use the speed of light as our velocity we find the edge of the visible Universe: R=C/H. Anything beyond there is traveling away from us faster than light and it will never be observable.
R=300,000x1,000,000 LY/21.7
R=13.8 billion light years.
The age of the Universe is described the same way. The age (A) is the speed of light (C) divided by (H) given in millions of years. A=C/H. This works because (H) is 21.7 kilometers per second for each one million light years.
A=300,000x1,000,000 Y/21.7
A=13.8 billion years.
The visible Universe is a sphere around us 13.8 billion light years in radius. The cosmic microwave background from a sphere that size is the oldest artifact from the big bang we see. The age of the Universe is the same as the time light has taken to arrive here from the big bang.
If the Universe were much smaller in the past, everything must once have been within the radius for a black hole of the same mass. How would the entire Universe have escaped from this condition? The well known fact of black holes is that nothing can escape their gravitational pull, not even light. Everything must still be inside.
The only way to have escaped is if the Universe were always infinite and gravity pulled the same in every direction. What would being inside a black hole really look like? Possibly, a saddle shaped universe.
Saddle Shaped Universe
Not only is space expanding but it is expanding faster and faster over time, the expansion is accelerating. This is what is meant by saddle shaped space. Two parallel light beams traveling into the future must separate and travel away from one another. The space between them is expanding faster over time.
Astronomers looking far out into space notice galaxies much closer together in the distant past. This vista is described by Roger Penrose as hyperbolic geometry, the Universe is very much like an M. C. Escher world. Space has expanded more over time than flat space predictions can account for.
Suppose the acceleration is the result of free fall toward a black hole singularity. The event horizon of the black hole is what is observed as a cosmic microwave background seen from the inside. All other observations from this freely falling view should match the standard model of cosmology.
Frame dragging is how space-time is created in an accelerating way. Centripetal acceleration may perfectly balance the acceleration of gravity. Angular momentum may be the only condition which could limit compression of the singularity due to gravity. Conservation of gravitational mass and conservation of angular momentum must work together in some very amazing way. The modern hypothesis called loop quantum gravity may one day describe the singularity but this science is not fully developed as yet.
Space is stretched by tidal effects along the direction if the inward spiral and not along the radius. Freely falling matter will orbit faster and faster as it spirals closer to the singularity but space is created by frame dragging faster that matter can fall through it.
The black hole we reside in is probably still growing. Black holes grow by absorbing matter and energy from their surroundings. Our Universe, in other words, is embedded in a nutrient rich area of a larger universe. Perhaps it is a supermassive black hole in the center of a large galaxy. A small black hole evaporates rapidly by Hawking radiation and would not make a very good universe.
Consider again the standard model of big bang cosmology. Galaxies are expanding away from us at an accelerating rate. Estimating 300 billion galaxies and 150 billion times the mass (Ms) of our sun for each galaxy, the radius (Rs) of the black hole in multiples of (Ms) is:
Rs=3 km/Msx300,000,000,000x150,000,000,000
Rs=135,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 km.
Divide this by 9.5 trillion kilometers per light year:
R=14,000,000,000 LY.
14 billion light years, just larger than what we found earlier for the Hubble radius of the Universe. The mass of our Universe is equal the mass of a black hole of our known radius. Let that sink in a while (pun intended).
If angular momentum continues to be conserved and if the speed of light continues to be the speed limit of the Universe, the singularity should form a ring. Centripetal acceleration will limit the mass from falling all the way to the center point. The rotation of this ring drags space out, effectively expanding it.
By crossing the event horizon, space and time are distorted so much that matter should feel new physical laws and fresh parameters. What are time, space, and velocity have new meaning across the horizon. A place where entropy itself could be inverted. From the inside it looks just like a big bang event.
This strongly supports the hypotheses of cosmological natural selection as described by Lee Smolin. Universes may reproduce this way. Smolin feels the parameters are adjusted by by the singularity. The minor difference to Smolin's version is the mechanism for adjusting parameters occurring at the event horizon. People in there will conclude the parameters of physics are unaccountably well fine tuned for their existence.
Conclusion
Everything about black holes that we don't know could fill a library the size of the entire Universe. Better research is surely needed to confirm or falsefy the saddle shaped universe hypothesis. Observations of the Cosmos are becoming more and more accurate with modern telescopes and space science is improving all the time. Because ultimate causes for the big bang are still open to debate, every possible cause should be carefully considered. Others surly must have thought of how it all could all be inside a black hole. The mechanism of frame dragging to cause accelerated expansion of space is not found in the literature anywhere.
Cosmological Natural Selection is not entirely understood in modern cosmology and the saddle shaped universe hypothesis still might easily be disproved. The standard model with inflation is currently the most popular idea for the birth of our Universe but this is not by any means a complete description.
Any oversight or mistake is entirely the responsibility of the author. Infinite space, future observations, or better research can surely falsify the saddle shaped universe hypothesis.
By necessity so many estimates, simplifications and approximations abound in cosmology that much interesting physics is yet to be uncovered. It is hoped that the saddle shaped universe hypothesis will stimulate debate and generate research that will compliment Cosmological Natural Selection or refute it. The state of free fall into a black hole is not an idea to fear, the singularity is demonstrated to create space and time faster than the entire universe can approach it.
[1] Smolin, Lee, Time reborn, 2013.
[2] Serway, Raymond, et al, Modern Physics, 3rd edition, 2005.
[3] Susskind, Lenard, General Relativity Lectures, Stanford University, YouTube 2012.
[4] Gezari, Suvi, The tidal disruption of stars by Supermassive Black Holes, Physics Today, May 2014, page 37.
[5] Penrose, Roger, The Road to Reality, 2005.
[6] Giddings, Steve, Black Holes, Quantum Information, amd the Foundations of Physics, Physics Today, April 2013, page 30.
