In fiction, black holes are usually
what's called a deus ex machina--
I didn't even know how to say that phrase before now--
a convenient and contrived solution to an apparently
insoluble difficulty.
They've been the keys to hyperspace travel
and semi-evil personified monsters, time dilators,
giant mask crushing galactic trashcans,
portals to other places, bookshelves.
And if you're a smart person, which
I'm sure you are because you're watching Uno Dos of Trace,
then you know what happens when a human being falls
into a real black hole right?
Spaghettification, crushing death, horribleness, duh.
But a new paper from mathematicians and physicists
at UMass Dartmouth says otherwise.
They say that a ship could essentially
pass through the event horizon unscathed.
Yes, it would experience something,
but it wouldn't be dead.
And I have to say I have questions.
Hey, there, humans.
Welcome to Uno Dos of Trace.
Hello.
The black hole is the edge of astrophysics.
It's big.
No one can see inside the event horizon,
which is the point at which light can't even escape.
And allegedly anyone who does try and go in there
will be doomed to a crushing death in a universe
without the laws of physics and devoid of spacetime.
No problem.
And yet maybe not.
This new paper and mathematical model say otherwise.
They say a ship passing through a black hole
would be like a hand passing over a flame of a candle.
You could go inside the event horizon,
and it doesn't actually affect the ship that much at all.
And, in fact, a traveler in a spaceship
flying into this specific type of black hole
could potentially use that astronomical singularity
to travel into hyperspace.
And this is like an upheaval of the physics
that we know and love.
So I called the researcher who did it to find out more.
We had suspected that passing through this particular type
of singularity wouldn't necessarily destroy something
that was falling through.
By not necessarily, I mean that the strain--
the distortions that don't become the infinite.
So we ran the simulations to show
that that is, in fact, what happened
that you got an isolation that got bigger,
and then it went back down again.
Basically what they're saying is if you
flew past a very specific type of black hole, a gargantuan
or super massive one, that is rapidly
rotating without an electric charge called a care
black hole, then your spacecraft would experience the stretching
and squeezing that's expected.
The thing that they discovered is that the stretching
and squeezing wasn't unlimited.
It wasn't infinite.
You don't get intricately distorted by these things.
The tidal forces very briefly do become infinite,
but it's so brief, it actually doesn't necessarily
rip an object apart because it's not
exposed to it for long enough.
You're just falling through the singularity really quickly.
You could survive this.
This model allows, according to the lead researcher,
quote, "for a rather comfortable passage
through the singularity."
The reason you're not crushed when you do this
is because of how the black hole in your ship and spacetime
interact.
Let me try and explain this.
Some black holes are spinning, and those that spin
are spinning spacetime along with them.
Spinning black holes actually have two horizons,
the event horizon that you can see here, and inside it
the Cauchy horizon.
From what I understand, this is where
you would go from traveling through space to traveling
through time.
This horizon is inside the event horizon,
so we never actually see this one
but mathematically it does exist.
The reason we would want to do this is because it increases
the possibility-- again this is a quote
from the researchers-- "that humans
could use large rotating black holes as portals
for hyperspace travel."
Holy schnikes!
Let's just let that marinate for a second.
This is bonkers.
Your mind is blown right now.
Consider subscribing because you're definitely one of us.
What this means for you and me right now today
other than fodder for the science fiction novel
that you're working on Andy Weir is not actually a lot.
This paper was really about what happens
leading up to the singularity.
It doesn't-- we don't actually make any suggestions about what
happens on the other side.
We have some idea of what might be behind it,
but it could connect to the other side of the galaxy.
It's just you can cut and paste spacetime like you want there
because it's not continuous.
It breaks there.
I guess hyperspace makes good headlines so.
We can't actually do experiments on black holes,
so we just know this is one more thing about them for when
we do encounter one in space.
What it means for the future is that black holes
are more interesting than we thought.
If humans can set sail into a black hole
and harness these monsters for our own purposes, what?
I have no idea what that could mean.
More research is definitely needed.
There is one last consideration here.
This mathematical model, it was too good.
It didn't take into account the interaction
of the traveler with radiation or gas or dust
or the remnants of the star the black hole was
eating at the time.
It assumed the black hole was solitary and perfect like me.
There's more to learn here for sure, so watch this space.
So what do you think about this.
Is your mind expanded because holy crap mine--
I'm going to have to sit and think about this for a bit.
Super, super huge thanks to Caroline Mallory
for joining us at the last minute
to just tell you all about this.
I'm sorry if I talk really fast.
This stuff just gets me jazzed, and it's just
the edge of what I know and I love it so much.
Thanks for tuning in to Uno Dos of Trace everyone.
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