Black Holes

Speaking of big black holes, did anyone catch the Starr Jones wedding?

The age of the universe is around 13.8 billion years, buts its diameter is best calculated as 100 billion light years and could be growing faster than lightspeed still I guess - that's a remanent of inflation!

g__day wrote:

The age of the universe is around 13.8 billion years, buts its diameter is best calculated as 100 billion light years and could be growing faster than lightspeed still I guess - that's a remanent of inflation!

This is the one that really bothers me, because it violates Einstein's laws (ie the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit.) If the universe is 100 billion light years across, how the hell did it happen? I do buy this is the correct distance, I work with some of the greatest astrophysicists alive, and they derived the size of the universe by measureing backround radiation.

Any answers guys?

My original post was a bit cryptic sorry! Basically Einstein's physics of relativity with a constant speed of light in a vacuum for any observer hold in most domains of the universe for most times - but not at its creation when the four forces where combined into a single force. During this earliest stage of its existence the universe was ruled only by the laws of quantum gravity. The c lightspeed limit didn't apply before c came into existence. C can't exist until all four of the fundamental forces we know today are seperated entities.

The Universe we observe now didn't start with Einstein's physics - M-theory might be a better guess. Lets guess M-Theory triggered inflation from a singularity. Well that singularity we supposed was ruled by a unified force known as quantum gravity until the Universe blew itself apart. This big bang explosion caused spacetime to fly apart way, way faster than lightspeed before light even came into existence.

In that briefest moment of creation called Inflation after the big bang the universe was unfolding outwards we guess at a speed around 50,000 * of what relativity when it latter came into existence would define as lightspeed.

Things cooled down with the expansion of spacetime until the average temperature dropped below a few trillion, trillion, trillion degrees. This drop in energy density caused quantum gravity theoretically to decompose into the four seperate forces we know of today.

Now by this point in the Universe's creation gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism (including light) are travelling too slow to cross the breadth of the expanding universe to keep it a connected whole. By this point in its creation the Universe might only have been as large as a basketball.

So at time around 10 ^ -34 seconds after the big bang the cooler parts of the Universe (i.e. the surface of its expanding sphere of existence, not its core) start to transition at slightly uneven rates (and timeframes) across its whole from being governed by quantum gravity to relativistic physics. But its initial momentum from the Big Bang is still preserved until relativistic forces as they start to come into existence start to interact with whatever parts of the universe they can reach to slow it down and form working subsystems or "hubble spheres".

Accepting this theory and doing the maths tell us that today basically most of spacetime is disconnected.

Here's a thought experiment - shrink the universe we know today so that a billion light years equals an inch. So the Universe we know and can see is 14 inches in radius but we believe the full universe is over 100 inches in radius.

Now imagine scattering or floating many 14 inch balls inside a 100 inch inflated beach ball in space. Just one of those 14 inch balls is our observable universe today. To an observer at the centre of one of those 14 inch balls we can see only our ball - that is the limit of our Einstein's relativistic physical world reality we can experience today. All those other balls can never see or experience anything that affects anything but their own ball. This means that way more than two thirds of the universe could already be gobbled by a blackhole and we could never discover this - it's too far away for us to ever see it or feel its gravity - ever until the end of time...

Now add the momentum of the initial big bang to this model. Inflation is accelerating today. Each of the balls expanding at close to lightspeed whlist nearly all are flying further apart from each other. Lightspeed only governs what happens with any of these balls. Between these balls one can not say what laws of the Universe exist to govern anything.

Finally most balls are further away from the centre than near it - so net gravity is stronger near the edges than the centre of this 100 inch ball, given you can't experience anything outside your own ball! However as you travel with time outwards you may cross the path of another balls expansion trail. This might if the timing was right allow you to experience the remenance that other travelling ball's gravity well! This might just be the dark gravity / dark matter force scientists hypothesis is fuelling the acceleration of inflation occuring today. Call that the Kendall hypothesis!

Finally black holes are also areas where relativity breaks down. Einstein's laws don't hold there (within an event horizon), you need a new physics (possibly quantum gravity again) to map that existence.

One way is that because of the light bending properties of a black hole, they could theoretically locate one just about anywhere they see two exact copies of the same star.

Except Hawking radiation, right? Or is that something different entirely?

Gravity - the curvature of spacetime appears to be the only force that can escape a black hole's event horizon