We’ve already talked about what would happen to you if you dove head first into a black
hole.
The coles notes answer: nothing good.
But here’s something that’ll put a wrench in even the most gruesome black hole death
scenarios: What if black holes don’t exist at all?
Hey guys, Amy here for DNews.
We have learned a lot about black holes over the years.
Through observations and calculations, scientists have told us that black holes form when a
dying star collapses to a point under its own gravity, and that the resulting high gravitational
environment produces a black hole from which nothing, not even light, can escape.
And it gets weirder.
Time slows down the closer you get to a black hole, and some can even contain full galaxies.
But Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton, a theoretical physicist at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, has a different opinion.
She’s done the math behind collapsing stars creating black holes and says it just doesn’t
add up.
Specifically, she points to the so-called "black hole information loss paradox” that
allows black holes to exist in Einstein’s theory of relativity but not in quantum theory.
The problem in the quantum theory world is that "information" can never completely disappear
from the universe, which is essentially what happens when something is sucked into a black
hole.
According to Mersini-Houghton, a collapsing star actually sheds mass as it shrinks, so
instead of collapsing it shoots its mass out and explodes.
There’s no superdense core left behind to become an all-consuming black hole.
A universe without black holes is slightly simpler to explain.
No black holes means no singularities, those bizarre points where the density of matter
becomes infinite, the fabric of space-time tears, and laws of physics cease to have any
meaning.
A universe without singularities means living in a universe of certainties about stars,
matter, and the physics that govern it all.
But physicists aren’t entirely convinced by the “no black holes” idea.
Because while the math might point to a universe without black holes, we have observational
evidence that they do exist, like light and star’s orbits bending around the strong
gravitational environments.
But that’s one of the greatest things about space: we know a lot, but there is so much
more to find out!
So what do you guys think: is it possible that the observations are wrong and we actually
live in a Universe without black holes?
Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe for more DNews every day of the
week.