Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio or
Speaker 1: Hit Him, And today we are answering the question what's
Speaker 1: inside a black hole? There's some of the most mysterious
Speaker 1: objects in the universe. Can we even tell what's inside
Speaker 1: of them? To find out, I asked three black hole
Speaker 1: experts this question, and they each gave me a different answer.
Speaker 1: That's how mysterious black holes are. We'll talk about each
Speaker 1: of these three ideas, and I have to warn you
Speaker 1: they each get wilder and wilder. So get ready to
Speaker 1: take the ultimate dive into the unknown as we get
Speaker 1: sucked into the question what's inside a black hole? Welcome
Speaker 1: to Sign Stuff, Hi everyone. Okay, Like I said, I
Speaker 1: asked three black hole experts what's inside a black hole?
Speaker 1: And they each gave me a different answer. So on
Speaker 1: the program today we'll hear what each expert said, and
Speaker 1: it's going to get crazier and crazier, not just because
Speaker 1: our experts have wild imaginations, but because that's what the
Speaker 1: math of black holes says. Okay. The first person I
Speaker 1: talked to was Professor Julie Commerford from the University of
Speaker 1: Colorado at Boulder. Doctor Cummerford and I made a video
Speaker 1: about super massive black holes for my YouTube channel YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash PhD Comics. They knew she'd be a
Speaker 1: fun person to talk to about black holes. So here's
Speaker 1: my conversation with Professor Julie Commerford. All Right, doctor Comerford,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Can you go into a black hole and tell us
Speaker 1: what's inside?
Speaker 2: I know I'm having too much fun on Earth at
Speaker 2: the moment, but on my one hundredth birthday, I will
Speaker 2: vouch right now, I will volunteer to go on a
Speaker 2: rocket and you can send me into the super massive
Speaker 2: black hole.
Speaker 1: Now, before we talked about what's inside a black hole,
Speaker 1: I asked her to tell us what exactly a black
Speaker 1: hole is. Here's what she said, for those of us
Speaker 1: that don't know what is a black hole.
Speaker 2: A black hole is a region of space where the
Speaker 2: force of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape,
Speaker 2: no mass, no light, nothing can escape once you get
Speaker 2: too close to a black hole, and that special invisible
Speaker 2: boundary is called an event horizon, and that's the boundary
Speaker 2: across which you can no longer escape the strong gravity
Speaker 2: of a black hole, no matter how fast you go.
Speaker 2: So black hole is kind of like the Hotel California
Speaker 2: of space in that once you cross the event horizon,
Speaker 2: you can never leave, okay.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Commerford, a black hole is basically what
Speaker 1: happens when you squish stuff, matter or energy so much
Speaker 1: that you make a hole in space, and it's a
Speaker 1: three D hole, so it basically looks like a black ball,
Speaker 1: and inside that ball, inside its event horizon, the gravity
Speaker 1: is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape.
Speaker 1: So if you're inside and you shine a laser or
Speaker 1: flashlight to the outside, that light is just going to
Speaker 1: turn around and fall right back in. And to make
Speaker 1: a black hole, according to doctor Commerford, you can squish anything,
Speaker 1: even the Earth. So how much would you have to
Speaker 1: squish the Earth for it to become a black hole?
Speaker 2: So with the Earth, you'd have to squish it down
Speaker 2: and couppress it down all the way to the size
Speaker 2: of a marble, and at that point grabny would win
Speaker 2: and take over and pull all the Earth's mass into
Speaker 2: a black.
Speaker 1: Hole, and the black hole would be the size of
Speaker 1: a marble.
Speaker 2: Well, the event horizon would be the size of a marble.
Speaker 1: And it also works with our sun. If you take
Speaker 1: our sun and squeeze it to roughly the size of Manhattan,
Speaker 1: you'd get a black hole the size of Manhattan. Okay,
Speaker 1: the next question I asked doctor Comerford was how many
Speaker 1: black holes are there out there? So, how many black
Speaker 1: holes are there that we know about? Space just full
Speaker 1: of black holes or is it something that you rarely
Speaker 1: ever run into?
Speaker 2: Oh, spaces full of black holes. So there are two
Speaker 2: main kinds of black holes that we know about. One
Speaker 2: kind is stellar mass black holes. These are the ones
Speaker 2: that are produced at the end of a massive stars
Speaker 2: life effort it explodes in a big supernova explosion, there's
Speaker 2: a stellar mass black hole that's left behind, and they
Speaker 2: have masses similar to the masses of stars. The other
Speaker 2: kind of black hole that we know about are the
Speaker 2: super massive black holes, which have masses millions to billions
Speaker 2: of times more than the mass of a star. And
Speaker 2: typically each galaxy only has one super massive black hole
Speaker 2: and it's sitting at the center of the galaxy. But
Speaker 2: stellar mass black holes can be anywhere there are stars.
Speaker 2: So our galaxy alone, it's got one super massive black
Speaker 2: hole at the center, but it probably has around one
Speaker 2: hundred million stellar mass black holes. Sprinkled throughout the rest
Speaker 2: of the galaxy, one hundred million in our galaxy alone,
Speaker 2: and think about how many billions of galaxies are on
Speaker 2: the universe.
Speaker 1: It seems a little dangerous to for a walk in
Speaker 1: our galaxy.
Speaker 2: You know, black holes get a bad rap whenever someone
Speaker 2: says that they're dangerous. Black holes are like bears. If
Speaker 2: you give them enough distance, they're not going to bother you.
Speaker 2: So black holes are everywhere. The universe is littered with them.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's where I asked her what's inside a black hole?
Speaker 1: Like what happens to all the stuff that falls into them?
Speaker 1: But let's get to the main question of the episode.
Speaker 1: I would say this is it the biggest question when
Speaker 1: I go around to schools talking to kids. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what they want to know.
Speaker 2: That is a great question that is really hard to
Speaker 2: answer because the whole point of a black holes we
Speaker 2: can't peer inside, We can't peer over the event horizon
Speaker 2: and see what's going on inside there. So we have physics,
Speaker 2: We have our understanding of how the universe works, and
Speaker 2: we can try to apply that physics to understand what's
Speaker 2: going on inside a black hole. And people do that,
Speaker 2: write papers about that, but we don't actually know.
Speaker 1: Okay, Like doctor Comerford said, it's very hard to see
Speaker 1: inside a black hole because that's the whole point of
Speaker 1: a black hole. Even if you were to send in
Speaker 1: a robot to look inside a the robot would be
Speaker 1: stuck in there forever and B the robot wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to send any signals out because the signals would
Speaker 1: also be stuck in there. Remember, not even light can
Speaker 1: get out of a black hole. But as doctor Commerford says,
Speaker 1: we can use science to look inside. We can use
Speaker 1: our theories about how the universe works to reconstruct what's
Speaker 1: going on inside a black hole. Here's how doctor Cumberford
Speaker 1: describes it.
Speaker 2: So what we do know is inside the black hole,
Speaker 2: the force of gravity pulls everything together to one point.
Speaker 2: So all that mass, all that light is going to
Speaker 2: end up at that one infinitely dense point that we
Speaker 2: call the singularity. And there the curvature space time is infinite,
Speaker 2: there's infinite energy density, and so all the known laws
Speaker 2: of physics breakdown. We don't have any existing understanding of
Speaker 2: physics that explains if and it courveragsu're an infinite density.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's what's happening. We have a theory about how
Speaker 1: the universe works called general relativity. You might have heard
Speaker 1: of it. It's one of the things Einstein is famous for,
Speaker 1: and it's a theory that tells us how gravity works
Speaker 1: and how it bends space and time. And the theory
Speaker 1: predicts that when you first go into a black hole,
Speaker 1: when you cross the event horizon, uh, nothing much happens.
Speaker 1: You just keep falling towards the center. So part of
Speaker 1: the answer to what's inside a black hole is that
Speaker 1: it's mostly just space. It's super duper warped space because
Speaker 1: of all the gravity, but it's still just space. So
Speaker 1: most of the time you're inside a black hole, you
Speaker 1: just spend it falling to the center. Are you saying
Speaker 1: that inside a black hole is just more space.
Speaker 2: It's face, but it's space that's really curved. So think
Speaker 2: of like a really steep water slide. You know, it's
Speaker 2: pretty frictionless because there's not a lot of stuff in
Speaker 2: the way to slow down your fall. You'd be falling fast,
Speaker 2: but there wouldn't be much to bump into because everything
Speaker 2: that's fallen in before you has ended up at the singularity.
Speaker 1: What you're calling this singularity, which is where all the
Speaker 1: stuff that's in a black hole accumulates. That's right, all right,
Speaker 1: This is where it gets really interesting. At the center
Speaker 1: of a black hole is what scientists call the singularity,
Speaker 1: and this is where the really crazy stuff happens. As
Speaker 1: you'll hear from our experts in that singularity could be
Speaker 1: the end of time, or a portal to another universe,
Speaker 1: or maybe even a universe factory. So when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to our next expert and hear what he
Speaker 1: thinks is inside the inside of a black hole. Stay
Speaker 1: with us, you're listening to sign stuff. Welcome back, Okay.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I talked to three black hole experts,
Speaker 1: and they each gave me a different answer about what's
Speaker 1: inside a black hole. The next person I talked to
Speaker 1: was someone who specializes in the interior of black holes.
Speaker 3: So I'm doctor Tyler McMackin, and I'm a professor of
Speaker 3: physics at the University of Mary So I teach physics
Speaker 3: and I research the interiors of black holes.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, that is the perfect specialty for episode today. And
Speaker 1: you've written several papers on this topic. Actually, what are
Speaker 1: we going to find inside of a black hole?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a good question. There's essentially three different theories
Speaker 3: of what happens inside black holes. First is a portal
Speaker 3: to another universe, the second is some exotic ball of matter,
Speaker 3: and then the third is something we call a singularity,
Speaker 3: which is basically a brick wall where space and time
Speaker 3: itself comes to an unavoidable end.
Speaker 1: Okay, WHOA, that's a lot to digest. Doctor McMackin has
Speaker 1: three ideas for what could be at the center of
Speaker 1: a black hole, so we'll take them one at a time.
Speaker 1: The first one is that at the center of a
Speaker 1: black hole is a portal to another universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for this first idea, there is a portal
Speaker 3: to a new universe. This goes back to the early
Speaker 3: days of when people were first discovering the equations that
Speaker 3: describe black holes. The scientist named Roy Patrick Kerr, he
Speaker 3: was a New Zealander in the nineteen sixties, came up
Speaker 3: with a model that allows for both a black hole
Speaker 3: and a white hole to exist simultaneously. The idea would
Speaker 3: basically be, we fall into the black hole. Once we
Speaker 3: get to the center, then we just go through the
Speaker 3: drain or whatever analogy want to use, and then pop
Speaker 3: up the other side.
Speaker 1: Okay, what doctor mcmackinn is saying is that the equations
Speaker 1: for a black hole also predict something called a white hole,
Speaker 1: which is the opposite of a black hole. So if
Speaker 1: a black hole is a place where stuff falls in
Speaker 1: and can never get out, a white hole is a
Speaker 1: place that constantly throws out stuff and nothing can ever
Speaker 1: go in. It's like a three D cosmic fountain, which
Speaker 1: is the opposite of a hole. So if you fall
Speaker 1: into a black hole and you get to the middle
Speaker 1: and somewhat made it through the singularity, you would come
Speaker 1: out of a white hole somewhere else where.
Speaker 3: Well, it can be basically wherever you want it to be,
Speaker 3: so it'll be a whole new universe. And some people
Speaker 3: have imagined that it could lead to somewhere else in
Speaker 3: our current universe or some when else in our current universe.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. This wormhole could not just take you
Speaker 1: to another part of the universe. It could also take
Speaker 1: you to another top I'm in the universe. You could
Speaker 1: time travel, or it could even take you to a
Speaker 1: whole other universe. But it could be a different universe.
Speaker 1: What does that even mean? Another universe?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it really means that there's no way
Speaker 3: of getting back to where you were originally. So it's
Speaker 3: completely causally disconnected from the current universe that we have.
Speaker 3: We can't communicate by sending light signals from one to
Speaker 3: the other.
Speaker 1: Huh, like a whole different reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anything is possible, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then the other universe does it exist somewhere else
Speaker 1: and we're just kind of using the black hole as
Speaker 1: a tunnel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it would be better to think of
Speaker 3: it as we're using the black hole as a bridge
Speaker 3: between the two universes. So that's why it's often called
Speaker 3: a wormhole.
Speaker 1: Would this other universe be like the opposite of our universe?
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be. It's just not necessarily like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's this parallel universe where you have an evil twin
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Like that, Doctor McMackin. Assuming I'm not the evil twin.
Speaker 3: Yes, we are all the evil twins. The other universe
Speaker 3: is the normal one.
Speaker 1: Right, So that's one thing that the laws of physics
Speaker 1: predict could be inside a black hole. And here I
Speaker 1: should mention this is for a perfectly still black hole.
Speaker 1: We'll get more into that later. But the second thing
Speaker 1: doctor Meke Becken said could be at the center of
Speaker 1: a black hole is a ball of exotic matter, a ball.
Speaker 3: Of y, a ball of exotic matter. The more likely
Speaker 3: outcome is that instead of this infinitely long, dense drain
Speaker 3: at the center, this is replaced by some currently unknown
Speaker 3: process that will stop the collapse and just form a ball.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's some sort of quantum star or something like that.
Speaker 1: A quantum star that sounds like a great name for
Speaker 1: superhero franchise. I agree, what is a quantum star? All right,
Speaker 1: here's doctor Backin's second idea. At the center of a
Speaker 1: black hole, where all the stuff that fell into the
Speaker 1: black hole is coming together and scrunching together, there is
Speaker 1: something that is keeping all that stuff from becoming an
Speaker 1: infinitely dense point. There's some kind of quantum force that's
Speaker 1: preventing all that stuff from collapsing, and so it creates
Speaker 1: a ball that just sits there in the middle of
Speaker 1: the black hole. So it'd just be sort of like
Speaker 1: pure matter or energy. It just as pure as you
Speaker 1: can get it, because it wouldn't be in the form
Speaker 1: of electrons or quarks or anything.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, something strings squanto phoam. There are tons of
Speaker 3: different theories.
Speaker 1: And this would be like at the very center, or
Speaker 1: as soon as we go into the black hole, we
Speaker 1: would run into this ball.
Speaker 3: So it would be at the very center.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, this gets into one of the ultimate frontiers
Speaker 1: of science, and that is mixing together the two most
Speaker 1: successful theories in the history of our understanding of the
Speaker 1: physical world. On the one hand, we have general relativity,
Speaker 1: Einstein's theory that predicted black holes, that predicts that at
Speaker 1: the center of a perfectly still black hole is a
Speaker 1: point of infinite density that could be a wormhole to
Speaker 1: another universe. And on the other hand, we have quantum mechanics,
Speaker 1: the theory that tells you that when you get down
Speaker 1: to the level of super small atoms and particles, things
Speaker 1: are kind of fuzzy and you can't really have points
Speaker 1: with infinite density. So, depending on whose right, at the
Speaker 1: center of a black hole could be a point of
Speaker 1: infinite density, or there could be some sort of strange
Speaker 1: or exotic quantum force that keeps all that stuff from
Speaker 1: collapsing and forms. And I still love this name, a
Speaker 1: quantum star at the center of a black hole. Scientists
Speaker 1: don't really know which is true.
Speaker 3: We don't currently have a theory for how those two
Speaker 3: theories combined together to make one consistent model. And so
Speaker 3: people are searching for this and that it goes under
Speaker 3: the general name of quantum gravity, and so you need
Speaker 3: a full theory of quantum gravity to figure out what's happening.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: The third idea doctor Magneckin had is something he calls
Speaker 1: a wall or time and space end. And this is
Speaker 1: something that comes up when you think about what black
Speaker 1: holes are actually like out there in nature. Remember, I said,
Speaker 1: a lot of the ideas we talked about assume the
Speaker 1: black hole was perfectly still and not moving. It turns
Speaker 1: out that's rarely the case.
Speaker 3: I would say, all of the objects that we see
Speaker 3: in the universe have spin. So everything from planets to
Speaker 3: stars to galaxies has at least some amount of rotation,
Speaker 3: and so we expect that black holes will also have
Speaker 3: some sort of spin to them as well. Then, because
Speaker 3: it's spinning, the Singularity doesn't look like a point anymore.
Speaker 3: It looks like a ring, which is really weird to
Speaker 3: think about.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's what's happening. Nothing in space is really standing still.
Speaker 1: Almost everything out there is spinning. Planet spin, stars and
Speaker 1: sun spin moons, asteroids, even clouds of gas and galaxies.
Speaker 1: They're all turning to some degree. And the same is
Speaker 1: true for black holes. And if a black hole is spinning,
Speaker 1: that means that everything inside of it is spinning, and
Speaker 1: that makes the center of the black hole act like
Speaker 1: a merry go round.
Speaker 3: So if your black hole is spinning a little bit,
Speaker 3: then you get this thing, which we could call a
Speaker 3: centric fugal for us, things that are spinning tend to
Speaker 3: get flung outwards, and so that provides this outward force
Speaker 3: that pushes against the flow of space. So that must
Speaker 3: mean there's some point where the speed of the thing
Speaker 3: that you threw outward matches the inflowing speed of the
Speaker 3: space itself. That's going to happen a special spot called
Speaker 3: the ener horizon.
Speaker 1: Okay, this gets a little complicated, but it's like if
Speaker 1: a thousand people were all trying to ride a merry
Speaker 1: go round, but the merry go round was spinning really fast,
Speaker 1: the merry go round would be flinging people out at
Speaker 1: the same time that people were trying to get on it,
Speaker 1: So you'd get this ring around the merry go round
Speaker 1: where people would just pile up. The same thing happens
Speaker 1: in a rotating black hole, but with space.
Speaker 3: All of this debrie that ever fell into the black
Speaker 3: hole gets caught up in this one part, and eventually
Speaker 3: we might imagine that it blocks up the flow of
Speaker 3: the space itself. And if you then were to try
Speaker 3: to fall into the black hole after that, you would
Speaker 3: just hit this brick wall where all of this mass
Speaker 3: stuff has just built up and accumulated. So this is
Speaker 3: what we call a singularity, where we have basically an
Speaker 3: infant amount of energy that signals the end of space
Speaker 3: itself and the end of time itself.
Speaker 1: So this singularity is not singular.
Speaker 3: It's a whole surface.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe you should pick another name for it.
Speaker 3: That is a good point. Do you have any suggestions?
Speaker 3: I'm open, I'm all.
Speaker 1: Ears, okay to recap Here are the three possibilities for
Speaker 1: what's at the center of a black hole, according to
Speaker 1: doctor mcmackinn Number one. If it's a perfect black hole,
Speaker 1: there could be a point of infinite density at the
Speaker 1: center of the black hole, which could potentially be the
Speaker 1: entrance to a wormhole that connects to a white hole
Speaker 1: somewhere else in another time or maybe even in another universe.
Speaker 1: Possibility Number two. If quantum mechanics wins at the smallest levels,
Speaker 1: then some kind of quantum force which we don't know
Speaker 1: about yet, could keep all this stuff inside a black
Speaker 1: hole from collapsing into an infinite point. And then you'd
Speaker 1: have a ball of exotic quantum matter or a quantum
Speaker 1: star just sitting in the middle of a black hole,
Speaker 1: shining a light that will never get out. And possibility
Speaker 1: number three. If it's a realistic black hole, which means
Speaker 1: it's spinning, then that spinning could also prevent the black
Speaker 1: hole from collapsing into an infinite dot, and you'd get
Speaker 1: a ring where stuff accumulates and where time and space
Speaker 1: just stop. Phe I told you this got crazier and crazier.
Speaker 1: And we haven't even gotten to our third expert. So
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll talk to another theoretical astrophysicist
Speaker 1: who has an even wilder prediction for what could be
Speaker 1: at the center of a black hole. So don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Keep spinning with us as we go deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: into black holes.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Okay, we've now reached the deepest level of black hole mystery.
Speaker 1: We've talked about several wild but still theoretically possible ideas
Speaker 1: about what could be at the center of a black hole,
Speaker 1: from quantum stars to wormholes, to other universes, to walls
Speaker 1: of infinite density where time and space end. But this
Speaker 1: next idea might take the cake as being the craziest,
Speaker 1: and it came up during my chat with Professor Andrew Hamilton.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hamilton is also a professor at the University of
Speaker 1: Colorado at Boulder who studies theoretical astrophysics and in particular,
Speaker 1: the insides of black holes. Thank you, doctor Hamilton for
Speaker 1: joining us today, No problem, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Hey.
Speaker 1: Today we're answering the question what is inside of a
Speaker 1: black hole? What can you tell us about what's inside?
Speaker 4: Oh, this is the most interesting place in the entire universe.
Speaker 4: Uh huh, there's a challenging statement to make.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I have to give you a
Speaker 4: little bit of background on this. Even today, there's certain
Speaker 4: amount of debate as to what happens. So I'm going
Speaker 4: to give you a version which I think is probably
Speaker 4: the most realistic view of what happens.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, In the scenario that doctor Hamilton is about
Speaker 1: to describe, we're assuming that at the center of the
Speaker 1: black hole is the singularity ring we talked about before.
Speaker 1: That's the point where the centerfical force of the spinning
Speaker 1: black hole pushes stuff out and meets with all the
Speaker 1: stuff that's falling in because of gravity. You know, the
Speaker 1: point where time and space end. And doctor Hamilton then
Speaker 1: imagines what happens if you throw two rocks into the
Speaker 1: black hole, one going with the spin of the black
Speaker 1: hole and one going against the spin of the black hole.
Speaker 4: Let's take a rock, Okay, something tangible. I'm throwed in prograde. Okay,
Speaker 4: that means with the spin of the black hole. Because
Speaker 4: it's throw grade, it has extra spin compared to the
Speaker 4: black hole, and as a result of that, it turns
Speaker 4: around inside the black hole and tries to go outwards
Speaker 4: at the inner horizon.
Speaker 1: All right, that's the first rock. You throw it in
Speaker 1: in the same direction as the spin of the black hole.
Speaker 1: That means it's going extra fast. So when it gets
Speaker 1: to the center, it actually overshoots the singularity ring and
Speaker 1: it tries to come out of the black hole.
Speaker 4: Now, if you then throw a rock in retrograde against
Speaker 4: the flow of the black hole, then it doesn't have
Speaker 4: extra centrifugal force, and it just goes down, kind of
Speaker 4: goes with the flow, and those two rocks, one trying
Speaker 4: to get out was the other one going inwards, will
Speaker 4: bang together at very high energy. And the closer they
Speaker 4: get to the inner horizon before they bang together, the
Speaker 4: higher the energy with which they will collide.
Speaker 1: So that's the scenario. If you throw a second rock
Speaker 1: against the spin of the black hole, it's just going
Speaker 1: to fall to the center, and you can imagine that
Speaker 1: at some point it's going to hit the other rock
Speaker 1: you threw in before, the one that overshot the center
Speaker 1: and is trying to get out, And those two rocks
Speaker 1: would have an enormous amount of energy because remember they're
Speaker 1: at the bottom of a black hole, so they're going
Speaker 1: super fast.
Speaker 4: This is not a speculation with animating. This is a
Speaker 4: prediction of general relativity. I'm not pulling you a fast one.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay.
Speaker 4: So it's a very remarkable instability because the closer they
Speaker 4: get to the inner horizon, the faster they go through
Speaker 4: each other, the larger the energy they and if they
Speaker 4: could reach the inner horizon, they would actually have infinite
Speaker 4: energy relative to each other. So let me explain how
Speaker 4: high the energy can get. Are you listening. Okay, let
Speaker 4: me throw in a rock and I'll throw it into
Speaker 4: the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy
Speaker 4: and is having docks thrown at it all the time. Right,
Speaker 4: It's like times square Central when New York got something.
Speaker 4: Everything is happening down at the centers. So you imagine
Speaker 4: a rock falling in throw it in prograde, so it
Speaker 4: becomes trying to go out with the inner horizon and
Speaker 4: then wait a while. And for example, the black hole
Speaker 4: at the center of eye galaxy Sagittarius, a star weighs
Speaker 4: in it four million times the mass of our Sun,
Speaker 4: and it takes about twenty seconds to fall from the
Speaker 4: horizon to the singularities. So wait twenty seconds. Each twenty
Speaker 4: seconds that you wait before throwing in a retrograde rock,
Speaker 4: the energy which they collide doubles. Doubles. Do you get
Speaker 4: there doubles, So if you wait twenty seconds, the energy doubles.
Speaker 4: If you wait a minute, that's three doublings. If you
Speaker 4: wait an hour, it's ten to the sixty. That is
Speaker 4: a huge energy that vastly exceeds the energy that the
Speaker 4: large hadron Collida can do by a huge amount, and
Speaker 4: it easily reaches energies culparable to those of the Big Bang. WHOA, Okay,
Speaker 4: so this is the other place in the universe where
Speaker 4: Big Bang energies are at tanked. And I think that
Speaker 4: is one of the most interesting things that one could
Speaker 4: know about black holes.
Speaker 1: All right, What doctor Hamilton is saying is that any
Speaker 1: black hole, like the big one in the middle of
Speaker 1: our galaxy, there are rocks crashing into each other all
Speaker 1: the time inside the black hole, and they're doing it
Speaker 1: according to current theories, with energies that are as high
Speaker 1: as the energy of the Big Bang. The Big Bang,
Speaker 1: of course, is the big expansion that happened when our
Speaker 1: universe was born. So what happens when you have that
Speaker 1: kind of explosion inside of a black hole?
Speaker 4: I don't know what happens when you're just talk to
Speaker 4: what happens when you bang rocks together at energy use
Speaker 4: which approach and possibly even exceed the quantum limited energy
Speaker 4: ten to the nineteen GV it's more than a trillion times.
Speaker 4: The largest energy that is achievable is the large hadron collide.
Speaker 4: What happens at those very high energies?
Speaker 1: Could new universes be born from that energy?
Speaker 4: I want to say yes because I can't say no.
Speaker 1: In other words, according to doctor Hamilton, inside of a
Speaker 1: black hole, there could be new universes being born. And remember,
Speaker 1: there are millions, if not trillions, of black holes in
Speaker 1: the universe, according to doctor Cummerford, and each of them
Speaker 1: could be having little baby universes being born inside of
Speaker 1: them all the time.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you hypothesize that universe can reproduce, make babies, right,
Speaker 4: that's what we're talking about. Can our university reproduce It's
Speaker 4: not a totally crazy idea because there was a Big Bang.
Speaker 4: What happened at the Big Bang? We just don't know.
Speaker 4: There are curious that somehow the universe spontaneously came into existence.
Speaker 4: All of these ideas are possible, right, There's something called
Speaker 4: eternal inflation. The hypothesis that our university produces is something
Speaker 4: that potentially could be testable. Right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, inside of a black hole there could be
Speaker 1: new universes being born. And that means that our universe,
Speaker 1: the one we live in, could be inside of a
Speaker 1: black hole created inside another universe, and each universe could
Speaker 1: be making trillions of other universes. This hypothesis that universes
Speaker 1: can reproduce. It's something that the Hamilton thinks could even
Speaker 1: be testable, but that's going to have to be the
Speaker 1: subject of another episode for now. The answer to what's
Speaker 1: inside a black hole seems to be we don't know.
Speaker 1: It could be a wormhole to another universe, a ball
Speaker 1: of mysterious quantum matter, a wall at the end of
Speaker 1: time and space, or, with enough imagination and math, a
Speaker 1: source of infinite universes. In other words, reality could be
Speaker 1: black holes all the way down. Thanks for joining us,
Speaker 1: see you next Wednesday, and if you like this podcast,
Speaker 1: please leave us a review. You've been listening to Science
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