- Hey, wanna learn about spacey things?
Okay.
You know up until recently, science had no idea
exactly what existed within a black hole
or, for that matter, what they even were.
No pun intended.
But today, we know more than ever,
not just about space, but about black holes specifically
and what exists within them.
And if you thought that it was just an empty void
full of scary nothingness, you're about to be surprised.
(playful music)
Here are ten surprising things
that exist inside black holes.
Number ten is an event horizon.
It's a common misconception that black holes
vacuum up material, kind of like me
at an all you can eat buffet, up top.
But the truth is, they act like any other body
of mass in the universe only attracting objects
towards them that fall within their gravitational influence.
But once that gravity pulls an object
into the black hole, it comes into contact
with something called an event horizon.
In physics, an event horizon is a boundary
from which events cannot affect outside observers.
For example, let's say you fell into a black hole.
Ahhh!
That would be you.
No, but really, let's say that you fell into a black hole
while the rest of us were watching.
First, yes, that would suck to be you.
Second, while you would come across the event horizon,
to us, you would appear as though
you were just frozen in time.
We would never actually see you cross that event horizon.
Oh, and one more thing, if you did cross
the event horizon, there's no coming back.
Better pack a lunch.
Number nine is spaghettification.
Spaghettification sounds like dinner at me Nona's house, eh.
Spaghettification is the weird term used by physicists
to explain what happens to an object
once it enters a black hole.
If you passed across the event horizon
of one of these black holes,
you would go through something
called the spaghettification process.
This is also known as the noodle effect,
in case you wanted a tastier name for it.
Your body would be stretched vertically from head to toe
into a spaghetti-like formation of atoms.
This happens because the gravitational pull
of the black hole would be much stronger
at your feet than at your head.
At the same time, your right side would be compressed
towards the left and your left side
would be compressed towards your right.
Think of it kind of like squeezing a tube of toothpaste.
In the end, you'd just be a stream of noodle matter
heading towards the center of the black hole.
Worst vacation spot ever.
Number eight is the gravitational singularity.
Also known as a space time singularity,
a gravitational singularity is what many physicists
believe lies at the center of a black hole.
It's a point where matter has become so condensed
that the gravitational field becomes almost infinite.
When this occurs, space and time as we know it breaks down.
In non-rotating black holes, the singularity
is depicted as a single point whereas
in rotating black holes, physicists believe
that it resembles a ring but, because space and time
have broken down, singularities possess bizarre properties
which lead to strange paradoxes,
which we'll get to in a moment.
Until fairly recently, it was believed that singularities,
and therefore black holes, last forever, ever, ever.
But the brilliant Stephen Hawking, rest yo soul,
has shown that they evaporate over time
and though it may take trillions of years,
they will eventually fade away.
Number seven is nothing.
It is in fact possible that there's nothing
at the center of a black hole
because they simply do not exist.
At least not the way we normally think.
While they are predicted in physics and should be out there,
some physicists are still skeptical.
A singularity, or point of infinity,
is often seen by mathematicians as a sign
that something is wrong with a theory,
the argument being that infinity isn't something
that can actually occur in nature.
It's simply a concept mathematicians and scientists use
when a theory reaches a point where
the mathematics break down.
At the core of the black hole,
it may be that there is no true singularity.
So, in other words, the most brilliant minds
in the world have come up with that
it could be something or it could be nothing.
We're gettin' there.
Number six is the firewall.
Yo, man, I just got excited, you mean like a computer?
Maybe, just keep listenin'
A recent theory suggests that inside a black hole,
there's something called a firewall.
Until firewalls were suggested, most physicists
believed that black holes did not violate
a law in quantum mechanics, which states
that information can never be truly destroyed.
So even if information can't escape
a black hole, it still exists inside of it.
It just can't be communicated to the outside world.
However, some suggest that as a black hole evaporates,
information does seep out which causes
all sorts of problems for theoretical physicists.
The solution is a firewall.
As an event crosses the event horizon,
it meets this intense wall of energy,
which essentially destroys it to such a degree
that information cannot be later retrieved.
This literally breaks physics.
Ahhh.
Okay, I'm okay, let's move on.
Number five is the origin of gravity.
Black holes may actually contain the secret to gravity.
Gravity is an integral part of the universe.
Stars, planets, life, none of this would be possible
without this mysterious attractive force
pulling matter together but gravity
is also strangely weak and no one is certain why.
The answer may be within black holes.
Someone speculated that the reason gravity
is so weak is that it doesn't originate
in the three spacial dimensions that we live in.
It's possible that gravity comes from another dimension.
Then this force seeps into our universe in a diluted form,
explaining why it's so weak but inside a black hole,
where space time is so contorted,
you might encounter glimpses into another dimension.
Hey, what else is goin' on in here?
Oh, you got three-faced women, okay.
Stephen Hawking has suggested
that we might create miniature black holes
just to see if they do contain evidence
for the origin of gravity itself.
Oh yeah, I know how this goes.
It starts as a little baby black hole
but then you feed it and it gets bigger
and bigger and bigger, it just eats everybody.
Oh god, run.
Number four is a gravastar.
The term black hole conjures up images of,
well, a black hole in space.
Most theories suggest that at the center of a black hole
is some sort of singularity or even a tear in space time.
But, what if it wasn't a hole at all?
An alternative theory in physics suggests
that black holes are actually gravastars.
A gravastar is a hypothesized structure left behind
by an imploding star but instead of being a hole
in space time, it's actually a bubble structure
with a surface.
Physicists Emil Mottola and Pawel O. Mazur argue
that what we think of as black holes
are these strange bubbles.
What's enticing about this theory is that
these bubbles wouldn't require bizarre explanations,
such as a singularity to exist.
So, in other words, perhaps we'd run into one
of these gravastars if we ever tried to enter a black hole.
Although, you would most certainly die
but you'd know the truth right before the end.
Number three is closed time-like curves.
Some scientists speculate that closed time-like curves
exist inside some black holes.
Every object in space and time
has what's known as a world line.
It can be thought of as a trajectory through time
taking us from our past through the present to the future.
Now usually, we're rigidly stuck in our world line
and have to pass through it from point A to Zedd
but, inside a black hole, the graviational field
could actually bend this line so that
a person's world line would loop back on itself.
So that a person's world line would loop back on itself.
So that a person's world line would loop back,
wait a minute.
In other words, from inside a black hole,
an object, including a person or space craft,
would move in a specific trajectory
which would take it into its own past.
In case you didn't figure it out,
we're talkin' time travel, people.
Now this is debated and no one knows if an object
could survive inside a black hole to even attempt it.
Basically what I'm saying is a DeLorean
and Doc Brown is not gonna cut it.
Number two are wormholes.
It's possible that at the center of some black holes,
there exist portals to another region of our universe.
This portal is called a wormhole
and it was first theorized in 1916
by Austrian physicist, Ludwig Flamm.
He speculated that a solution to the equations
of Einstein's Theory of Relativity suggested
that something called a white hole
might exist inside a black hole.
Einstein himself, along with Nathan Rosen,
then expanded on this to suggest
that this white hole might actually
be part of a bridge to another part of the universe.
Known as the Einstein-Rosen bridge, this hole would make
it possible to travel vast distances in the blink of an eye.
You might of heard of this before because science fiction
writers and filmmakers have been showing this
in movies and talking about what it would look like
to actually pass through a wormhole forever.
But while Einstein's equations predicted they exist,
no one has found evidence of one yet.
And number one are other universes.
Oh yeah, buckle in for this one.
Those singularities that are said to exist
inside black holes, physicists also speculate
that it was a singularity that became the big bang.
If this single point of nearly infinite energy
and mass was what started our universe
and such a thing exists inside a black hole,
then does that mean black holes create universes?
Well it sounds wild but physicists,
such as Nikodem Poplawski, believe that black holes
create new universes which are then birthed from our own.
She argues that some black holes spin at nearly
the speed of light and this creates huge amounts
of torsion inside the singularity.
Eventually, this coiled up energy needs
to release in a big bang.
But because of the event horizon of a black hole,
we never see the explosion.
That means that our universe might actually be inside
of a black hole, like, right now.
Oh, oh mama!
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