Are black holes the cause of the Big Bang over and over again?

[Ilumirath]

Black holes do the opposite of what the Big Bang did, instead of expanding they compress everything. I think that this might have been happening for a long time: Big Bang happens - everything goes about for years and years beyond human comprehension - black holes become bigger and bigger, merging with one another - until at the very end there's only One insanely massive black hole and all the swirling matter around it eventually falls into its core - now this Black Hole contains the universe - it keeps being compressed until it is impossible to go any further and then explodes again into a Big Bang

[Marvo]

Why does it explode?

[Replicon]

Seeing as current observation is that the universe's expansion is accelerating, that's highly unlikely.

[CryoDragoon]

Hawking radiation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .. This might be a bit of a problem for this hypothesis.. Black holes can theoretically evaporate, which would be a very simple alternative to the 'explode all over again' idea.. Also, do remember that black holes do not simply 'merge' all together.. They aren't all-reaching gravity wells.. They have the same amount of gravity as the star (+ the things it omnomnoms of course) it came from had before, their actual size is just tiny (i.e. a point). In other words: anything that's not in 'range', or is able to escape the gravitational pull from the black hole, will not be sucked in (which, as the universe is ever-expanding, happens to just about anything that's not directly near the black hole)... And, of course, why would it explode/expand again to begin with? Especially if it contains the entire universe's worth of gravity.. Good luck exploding/expanding that.. ;p Plus, let's not forget that this question has pretty much already been looked into. It appears that the ultimate fate of the universe is more probable to be a heat death, rather than a big crunch..

[Original Poster]

I thought it was concluded that the universe will ultimately succumb to The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief

[ZeraCook]

Seeing as current observation is that the universe's expansion is accelerating, that's highly unlikely. Current Observations change, Remember when The world was flat? Me either but way more people used to think so. Anyways I guess it could be possible for this to happen, Considering that we don't know as much as we would like to think, and we have never seen two black holes meet... Also some scientists observations now a days are that blackholes actually have a whole universe inside them.

[Supernova]

way more people used to think so As proposed in a time before science as we know it existed.

[Original Poster]

What scientists (or at least more empirical thinkers) there were concluded it was round by planting poles in the ground on a level beach and comparing their shadows. Anways it's already been explained that black holes don't have any more gravity than a star, even if they used to be extremely large stars they're still no more capable of swallowing up the universe than our sun is capable of swallowing mercury.

[ZeraCook]

As proposed in a time before science as we know it existed. Yeppers and science is always learning and changing, so to say that something can't happen based on what we believe to be but are not absolutely sure of yet, could become an outdated statement, like the world is flat.

[Wayfaerer]

Haha.. that's a pretty interesting theory. I just wonder what the space would be like around the final black hole: would it be infinite or have a boundary of some sort? What would be beyond that, "nothing"?

[Xei]

The Big Bang isn't really the opposite of a black hole. A black hole is a point in space, with a strong gravitational field in its vicinity, which attracts objects. The Big Bang was not a point in space which repelled objects; in fact it wasn't even a point in space. It was just an expansion of space. There is an asymmetry in other ways. For instance, at the moment of the Big Bang, the universe had extremely low entropy. This accounts for the ordered state of our universe today. But black holes have high entropy, in other words, a very low level of regularity; a high level of disorder. For this reason, a black hole could not be the progenitor of a universe like ours.

[Wayfaerer]

But black holes have high entropy, in other words, a very low level of regularity; a high level of disorder. For this reason, a black hole could not be the progenitor of a universe like ours. First of all, one question I've always wanted to ask is what's so significant about entropy? It sort of seems like a synthetic property we've made up and jaded more than what it matters for. Sometimes I even consider it just being a sad attempt at philosophy in the science field. Even if not, what observation based law goes against a process of low entropy turning into or creating a process of high entropy? Would the law that entropy (or "disorder") must increase in an isolated system apply to the cosmos? I've also seen that there are a few sound theories of black holes creating universes, not that there's anyway we can make progress on proving things like that anytime soon lol.

[Xei]

Entropy is a subject in the field of statistical physics, which I have never studied. But it is mathematics and solid physics... it has nothing to do with philosophising. It is quite a clear fact that the number of ways you can put a number of discrete parts into an orderly form is vastly outnumbered by the number of ways you can put them into disorderly forms (counting each individual arrangement). By definition of probability, we can express this as, 'it is vastly more probable that a given state will be disorderly rather than orderly'. As inanimate matter does not have intention, and will simply move through the space of states at random, we can say that low entropy systems will almost always increase in entropy. The expression of entropy in terms of order (which is the later and more refined expression) can be proven to be equivalent to the older way in which it is more usually expressed; that is, in terms of usable energy.

[Wayfaerer]

My question really is how do we decided what is "ordered" outside of subjective interpretation? The "law" only really applies to isolated systems, right? I mean life evolving on earth would pretty much be the opposite example of entropy naturally increasing.

[Xei]

My question really is how do we decided what is "ordered" outside of subjective interpretation? My definition isn't subjective. Think about... a cube made of sand. You can measure its degree of order by comparing the number of ways you could arrange the grains of sand into the same cube shape (by, for example, swapping two grains of sand) with the number of ways you can arrange the grains of sand not into the cube shape (by, for example, jumping on the cube). This is an objective and quantitative measure of the degree of order of a macroscopic object made of constituent parts. The "law" only really applies to isolated systems, right? Yes.

[Oneironaut Zero]

I believe I might have started a thread about this before. I know that it's something that is being discussed in many circles of science today. Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe? Black Holes May All Contain Other Universes Black holes may harbour their own universes - space - 31 October 2007 - New Scientist Every black hole contains a new universe: A physicist presents a solution to present-day cosmic mysteries

[Wayfaerer]

My definition isn't subjective. Think about... a cube made of sand. You can measure its degree of order by comparing the number of ways you could arrange the grains of sand into the same cube shape (by, for example, swapping two grains of sand) with the number of ways you can arrange the grains of sand not into the cube shape (by, for example, jumping on the cube). This is an objective and quantitative measure of the degree of order of a macroscopic object made of constituent parts. To me, the concept of cube seems like it could very well be subjective, with no basis in the external cosmos unless space is perfectly granular somehow (not really like sand though lol).

[Xei]

Well if you want to go down to the level where we say that amalgamations of atoms don't actually exist, there's not really much we can say, is there? By those standards, chemistry isn't real because there is no such thing as a molecule, biology isn't real because there is no such thing as a tiger, and so on. We have to take it as understood what we mean by macroscopic objects.

[Wayfaerer]

Ok, I understand that we have to use it and that it's of great functional use, but it would still be subjective wouldn't it?

[Xei]

I don't understand what you mean by subjective. The sentence 'the universe will become more and more disorderly and will have less and less useful energy in it as time passes' is, exactly as we understand the language, a true sentence. I don't know what subjectivity has to do with it, any more than I understand what 'evolution by natural selection is of great functional use but is still just subjective' means.

[Wayfaerer]

Well, sure species could be seen as subjective, so I get what you mean there. I'm just saying "order" (such as particles in a perfect cube) seems a little too imposing of our self-made ideas on the properties of the universe than other things, like the idea of movement. Anything we're ever going to know is going to be subjective, so I guess you have to think about them with relative degrees of trustworthiness. Species seem a little more self-evident, as surely distinct eras of evolving cell patterns as seen by the average human. Imposing "order" on the universe as a natural property just seems kind of out there to me for current science.

[Wayfaerer]

subjective as in dependent on our mental faculties to be anything at all.

[Oneironaut Zero]

Actually, Xei (and bare with me, because I'm not all that versed on entropy), the idea is that black holes may not have a 'singularity', as we have come to believe that they do. A point is being made that, at some point near the center of the black hole, the 'singularity' is actually a kind of ever-rotating stasis that is so compact as to leave little to no room for further convergence. It is in this state, that some propose that a sense of 'order' would eventually come about in the system. The idea would also explain the speeding up of the universe's expansion, as our universe (were this hypothesis true) would likely, eventually, become influenced by another outside force, namely a black hole larger than our own universe - just as the particle/gas jet from any other black hole might be affected by another black hole in its vicinity. And forgive me if I misinterpreted what you meant about the order/disorder thing. That's just what I got out of it.

[Supernova]

Yeppers and science is always learning and changing, so to say that something can't happen based on what we believe to be but are not absolutely sure of yet, could become an outdated statement, like the world is flat. Yes, but the difference is that the observation that the universe is expanding is based on empirical data gathered from the best available technology. It has scientific rigor.

[Xei]

It was never a scientific belief that the world is flat. The most you can say is that it was once a scientific belief that the world is flat within certain bounds of accuracy. This is not wrong and was never proven wrong, nor does it make any sense that it could be proven wrong, because as Supernova says, it was just a codification of an observation. Actually, Xei (and bare with me, because I'm not all that versed on entropy), the idea is that black holes may not have a 'singularity', as we have come to believe that they do. A point is being made that, at some point near the center of the black hole, the 'singularity' is actually a kind of ever-rotating stasis that is so compact as to leave little to no room for further convergence. It is in this state, that some propose that a sense of 'order' would eventually come about in the system. I'm not sure what you mean by order, or how it'd come about. I think the current understanding is that black holes still obey the second rule of thermodynamics. The idea would also explain the speeding up of the universe's expansion, as our universe (were this hypothesis true) would likely, eventually, become influenced by another outside force, namely a black hole larger than our own universe - just as the particle/gas jet from any other black hole might be affected by another black hole in its vicinity. I'm not sure what inference you're making. Has there been any quantitative work done on this? And is there any evidence for it? Well, sure species could be seen as subjective, so I get what you mean there. I'm just saying "order" (such as particles in a perfect cube) seems a little too imposing of our self-made ideas on the properties of the universe than other things, like the idea of movement. I don't see how spacial arrangement is any more of an artificial property than movement. If physicists literally just said 'order' and, I don't know, made subjective guesses about how ordered something is, then you would be right, but I've explained already, it's a precise, objective, mathematical notion.