Ok I’ve been meaning to ask this in the Space community or the NoStupidQuestions community. I’ve seen this news circling around the past 2 weeks and have been watching videos of people talking about it.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I think the gist is that astronomers discovered with the JWST that some galaxies at the end of the observable universe appear to be younger than they are supposed to be. So it kinda blows a hole in the big bang expansion where objects farther away should be older. And that somehow ties in with the theory that our universe is inside a blackhole.
It’s fascinating but I don’t know what to do with that information other than just be fascinated. I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who said “So what does this new discovery matter to us? Nothing”, because us being in a blackhole doesn’t change anything in the grand universal scheme of things.
Maybe the far away galaxies are just the close galaxies seen from the other side?
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I was joking. Unless it was genius of course.
I seem to remember that the science isn’t totally settled on the distance to stars in our own galaxy so I am quite chill about cosmology.
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I’ve always liked this theory, imagining the cosmos is just a series/web/tree of black holes draining into the next. Everything gets recycled eventually.
actually, we are inside the dream of someone else, and that one too is again in a dream …
Am I a man dreaming I’m a butterfly?
It meshes well with my occasional feeling that reality is just circling the drain.
Clockwise or counterclockwise?
I gave it some thought and got vertigo. I’m going with counterclockwise.
I think it depends if you’re in Australia.
note that we’re all circling the sun but still not getting closer an inch per year
It doesn’t answer where it all came from. Whatever theory or religion you choose, there’s no answer to this question apart from it suddenly appeared which implies something can be created out of nothing and that creates a whole lot of new questions and possibilities.
It’s also just whitehole theory which is possible but we’ve never seen one and we likely should have by now.
the network of causality is like a big river, and if you follow individual lines, they either lead in circles or they stretch infinitely into the past and future or they spring out somewhere spontaneously
only in the third case is there a “spontaneous creation”
All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls. But the Greater Will made a mistake.
We also have to remember that we can only see a bounded sphere of the universe from our frame of reference.
If we were to move our observation points to elsewhere in the universe, we’ll be able to see more of the universe and challenge our current theories.
The JSWT sees only what it can, and our theories about the universe can only extend as far as that evidence. Those galaxies might appear to be younger, but the science is never finished!
Probably goes without saying
Another big part of it is that if the big bang happened evenly then galaxies and other objects should be spinning in random directions. So far that’s not what’s been observed. There seems to be a preferred direction everything spins in.
The direction the black hole “toilet” flushes as it sucks stuff in and smashes it against each other?
Maybe there’s a parallel universe called Astraliastra where the black hole flushes the other direction!
It’s amazing to me that an episode of the Simpsons like 30 years ago created such a widely believed completely made up fact.
That fact wasn’t as cromulent as they made it out to be.
ETA: also, the myth about birds exploding by eating rice. An entire generation used bubbles at their weddings instead, in part because Lisa didn’t fact-check a myth. (Not complaining about the result though: bubbles are lovely floating orbs of happiness, whereas thrown rice is a messy waste of food.)
The bird myth predates the Simpsons though. I did hear it was greatly spread by all the churches\wedding venues because they all didn’t want to keep cleaning up all the rice.
For sure, Lisa doesn’t tend to make up such ideas whole-cloth. It was just the first place I heard the myth and I remember kids at school spreading it after that episode. So it definitely spread the idea.
There seems to be a preferred direction everything spins in.
I’m sorry but i think that’s just not true?
Inside the solar system, yes, planets more or less spin around the same axis than the whole solar system does.
But the axis of the solar system and of the whole milky way are like 63° towards each other. Source So, not the same direction at all.
I don’t think they meant everything literally goes in the same direction, but more like what is discussed here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-inside-a-black-hole/ (this article was shared elsewhere in this post)
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Don’t get me wrong, understanding the nature of the universe is valuable and noteworthy. But how would that information meaningfully impact anyone’s life or change their behavior or worldview beyond a general awe at the unfathomable mysteries we already have towards space as we’ve understood it for centuries? Especially in a way that would ne noticeable to this person. Am I meant to stare up at the sky from 8:15 to 8:30 every other night with my mouth agap while I try to wrap my mind around the spacetime bubble we all exist on the surface of? Or can I just eat dinner?
Astronomy is critical towards understanding the foundational principles of reality. Observing the universe around us is the guide for where physics should follow
And I think most people would agree that understanding how our world works, the physics of it all, is very very useful in unforeseen ways. Cannot hope to make a circuit if you don’t know how electricity works, right?
Again, I’m not poopooing scientific endeavor. I love science. But this person seemed to be mystified that we weren’t all majorly reacting to this news as if this possible fact, in itself, was life changing. For most people, it changes nothing about their day to day lives.
Am I meant to stare up at the sky from 8:15 to 8:30 every other night with my mouth agap while I try to wrap my mind around the spacetime bubble we all exist on the surface of?
At scale that sounds better for society than going to church. We need a little more memento mori (memento minima?) in modern life.
The reason research like this exists is because we don’t know what we don’t know. Results like these are meant to stoke curiousity so that more research can be done.
So on and so forth until one day you have horseshoe crabs saving millions of lives. But they didn’t know that would be the case when they started researching them crabs, function comes after exploration.
For sure, not undervaluing scientific research and exploration by any means. But Angie’s post seemed to be a call to action or an expectation of a greater reaction to potential findings from the general public. But A) it’s honestly the first I’ve heard about any such news. And B) I don’t think the vast majority of people would have any idea how to even process that information, let alone get excited about it or understand it’s full implications, or to have any sort of reaction to it at all.
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Why would the universe being a black hole invalidate religion, any more than, for example, the universe being really big already does? Don’t most religions focus more on some entity or entities they think made or govern the universe more than what physical processes are “used” to do that, or what the ultimate shape of the universe is? Even when a contradiction is found, it’s easy enough for a religion to just say “well, that was metaphorical”, or “just the limited understanding given by (insert deity here) to our ancestors” or something along those lines to make it fit.
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paying rent sometimes feels like throwing money into a black hole
Don’t worry, the money goes to paying your landlord’s mortgage.
The same for mortgages too really. All these people out there toting new construction and how it’s good for property values seem to forget that higher property values means 1) higher property taxes, and 2) higher priority values, for when you sell your home and need to buy a new one.
Not to mention mortgage rates are so damn high that your mortgage payment is basically like paying rent to the bank because you’re barely touching the principal on the loan
This is part of why I’m planning on over saving for my downpayment. If I’m not paying less than my rent there’s no way in hades I’ll ever be able to afford repairs
I just bought a house, and honestly, dont even try to get a above 20% to knock off pmi (assuming thats a thing where you are). When we sold our previous house and did a recast with the proceeds, the difference between hitting 20% and hitting the 20% + $50k was about $200 in monthly payments
Therefore your landlord’s bank account is a black hole. Therefore black holes are inside banks. Therefore the universe is inside a bank.
cosmic horror
Considering NASA could be canceled by an ass hole, I think we have other problems.
we could acknowledge it as a possibility AND work to better our um… local frame of reference.
Yes, we ignore it. Given the size of the universe, if being inside a black implies any conseqences that will ever hurt us, it will be a process that takes billions of years to develop, giving the human race billions of years to either become extinct or solve the problem.
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There’s that and what seems to be a preferred direction of spin on a galactic scale. But it’s not every galaxy.
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Okay, so now you can barely afford your rent inside a black hole. Enjoy the enhanced granularity of your desperation!
And since you’re in a black hole with your unaffordable rent, you can’t escape it!!!
Evict horizon
Fuck that’s funny!
That would explain why it feels like my bank account is being sucked dry.
What is this black hole, my ex-wife?
tugs collar
Fortunately the universe can get Cosmic Overdraft Protection, for only a small annual fee and 23 squillion bazillion stomptillion dollars per occurrence.
I mean, I think it’s fair to ignore it 99% of the time. Frankly, as much as I love space science and science in general, we all should have a responsibility to solve real problems here and now. That’s been my issue with a lot of science, currently - we need problem solvers rather than idle explorers.
That’s not what science is, though. Science is about pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. Science isn’t about having a problem and trying to find a solution – that’s engineering, which is informed by science.
Whenever you get this kind of thoughts, take a moment to also think about the maths behind your CT and MRI scans, which originated from early radio astronomy. Alas, I don’t have a source for this other than it was said by an astronomy professor during a lesson for an exam I never even attempted.
You’re not wrong though, I’ve heard the same anecdote. But it sort of sticks by my point. It was solving problems. Radio astronomy is important, and so is someone looking at the math and the machine and saying “hey, we can do stuff that X-Rays can’t with this!”
The problem is that most of our problems aren’t really science problems. Or at least the thing holding them up isn’t the lack of practical applied scientists. They’re political ones. We’ve known what we needed to do about climate change for decades but their are capitalists who stand to lose from doing anything about it, so we don’t. We have plenty of housing, it’s just being hoarded by people who do nothing with it but extract free money from people who are desperate to have a place to live. We have amazing medicine, but corporations are able to abuse IP laws to price gouge people who need it to live.
A scientist or engineer could come up with some amazing sci-fi tech that has the potential to save us and capitalists would find some way to make it bleed us dry.
I can barely afford rent!
Well… the good news is you can stretch your income a bit further with spaghettification!
nuclear pasta is very energy dense
Beans are economical too
I took a physics course at a community college over 20 years ago and one of the things that stood out to me was the professor telling us not to overthink or assign too much romanticism to the idea of black holes.
His message was basically “it just means the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light… if you plug the size and mass of the universe into the escape velocity formula, the result you get back is greater than the speed of light, so our entire universe is a black hole.”
If this was being discussed at a community college decades ago then I think the new discoveries aren’t as revelatory as they would at first appear to the general public.
Theory is one thing.
Observation is the next step.Absolutely. I don’t want to minimize the importance of the new discoveries in any way; I’m just saying this isn’t the great surprise the original post seems to think it is.
Orr, you’re missing the obvious alternative here - the guy was a legendary level scientist, but the government stole his research and threatened his family and sidelined him into being a community college professor so that no one pays attention to his “drivel” so that they continue to control us into being workers for the capitalist pigs
I mean, the model was first developed in the 70s so maybe not that specific guy
Nah really it was probably some small thing the media got a hold of and just ran with. I think you’re spot on
And a relevant smbc for good measure.
Where’s PBF?
Smbc is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, but what does xkcd stand for?
Xaturday Korning Creakfast Dereal
Xerry kible cellow dip
It’s a random unique string, chosen to make the comic easily searchable.
Your SMBC link doesn’t work for me, it just opens the index.
Try now.
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On the contrary; while I have heard the explanation that the commenter you replied to has said I have also heard a slightly different theory:
Our universe is the 3 dimensional event horizon of a 4th dimensional black hole. By extension we may find that black holes in our universe have similar funky 2 dimensional areas at their even horizons.
I am sure clickbait articles are part of it but there also seems to be several actual theories surrounding the idea of the nature of our universe relating to black holes.
Our universe is 4 d not 3 d
Three spacial dimensions, which is normally what people mean when they say that, unless they specify otherwise. For example, we call them 3D game engines, not 4D. Yes, there’s also a time dimension that is special. It cannot be moved through freely.
How not? Do you not save your progress? Do you not old up old files? Really think bud
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YOU can’t move freely in time. Don’t speak for me.
Ok, I can’t either. But still…
I think I can move freely in time, just not voluntarily…
Sometimes I go through a whole day in like a minute, sometimes I blink and it’s Monday already.
Or maybe it’s working nights has that effect?
lol everything is relative.
So, I can freely move through time if I consider alcohol as my time machine.
Freely means both directions, not just different speeds in one direction.
You move through time every second…
Walk in the other direction then, let’s see how that goes.
That not how you do it. Watch a documentary called edge of all we know. Someone much smarter then you has that opinion.
Nah, this universe is 3d.
I’m assuming you are thinking that time is the 4th dimension and we have time here so we are 4d?
Time may be the 4th dimension, but in our universe, time doesn’t actually behave like a proper dimension. For one thing, dimensions should be spatially perpendicular to each other and time is not. We also seem to only be able to move one way through time whereas we can move back and forth through the other 3 dimensions.
Dimensions get weird and complicated. For the intents and purposes of this conversation it’s correct to say that the universe were experiencing now is 3 dimensional.
That’s actually a crazy take that time isn’t a dimension. We’ll if someone say the sky is purple who am I to argue?
Like I said, time is likely a dimension. It just doesn’t behave like a proper dimension in our universe / reality.
Neither does light…
Yes, but if you’re beyond the event horizon of a black hole time becomes basically* irrelevant. You could literally turn around, look back out towards the rest of he universe, and watch all of time play out in the blink of an eye.
You know that scene in Interstellar where they land on the planet for 5 minutes, but 20 years passes for everyone else due to the planet’s mass? It’s the same thing, but a billion-billion-billion times more severe.
No, time does not become irrelevant. It’s perfectly normal for things inside the black hole. Here’s the space time diagram for our universe on the right, and a black hole at the top-left. Time is the vertical axis, space is the horizontal. The speed of light is a 45° angle, and the solid lines are event horizons. The hourglass shapes are the cones of all your possible futures and pasts (aka, anywhere that isn’t faster than the speed of light from a position). Notice the space-time diagram looks exactly the same on the other side of the horizon. To get back through though you’d have to travel faster than that 45° angle, which is impossible.
Edit: I remembered there’s a PBS Space Time video that will help you understand this if you don’t. It goes a lot further than just this version of the diagram.
I’m aware of the Penrose diagram and also watch PBS SpaceTime :)
But I was referring more to the frame of reference of our universe vs that of being inside a blackhole (assuming you could magically avoid being ripped apart by gravity). To an observer inside a blackhole, “time” on the outside would blink by almost instantly. I wasn’t talking about moving through an infinite universe or near/into a black hole. Just stationary, floating just beyond the event horizon, looking out. Hence the asterisk on basically*.
I was leading them to what MotoAsh posted. But they beat me to it while I was typing.
Edit: He even references what I’m talking about at 0:44 in the SpaceTime video. But from the frame of reference of an outside observer.
Do you have any idea how little that narrows things down?
another thing I learned at some point: Just because a physics formula returns a result, doesn’t mean that it’s reality
Iff the rules of physics are accurate then it does, but we don’t know that they are. In fact, we’re pretty sure we’re missing some things. See: The Crisis in Cosmology.
TBF black holes themselves were originally just the result of a Physics formula, but they eventually turned out to be a “reality”. Sometimes that shit happens, yo.
Scientist: Scientific discoveries are meaningless when taken out of context.
Journalist: Scientific discoveries are meaningless.
Journalist: What is context?
Context is text that served time in prison.
It balances out protext, figure it out rookie
Protext is what the really good journalists are writing.
Interestingly, galaxies at the edge of our ability to perceive are in fact receding away from us at velocities greater than the speed of light.
Maybe it’s because they are outside the black hole and aren’t time dilated.
Wouldn’t that mean if we can see them that light can enter/escape a black hole?
Entering and escaping are two wildly different things.
It can enter, but not escape.
So that’s what Hotel California was about all along?
Why is there a warm smell of colitis in the air?
Light can enter a black hole perfectly fine - we would be able to see things outside of it, because the light is still following us. No light leaves the black hole (if it’s past the event horizon), so you can’t see into it.
When I first saw pictures of galaxies as a kid I noticed they all looked like black holes.
In a way we’re all just bits of organic matter mid-flush, waiting for the Drainpipe of Destiny
In a way we’re all just bits of organic matter mid-flush, waiting for the Drainpipe of Destiny
Word
I mean, we can talk about it for a bit, Angie, if it’d make you feel better, but that’s really about it, honestly.
What if we’re not in a black hole, but in the aftermath of a vacuum decay event?
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Well, that might suck slightly less in the long run?
That depends. The chances of finding other life are lower. That would also make a cosmic horizon that we would never be able to see beyond. It would make us unable to find the beginning of everything.
Those are all really interesting factors to consider and I appreciate the response!
I’ll come clean, when I wrote it, I was just making a funny, like… A “decaying vacuum” would suck less over time. . .than a black hole. Lol XD
To your point though, less likelihood of finding other life is such a wildcard, for sure. (Less likelihood of meeting cool benevolent spacefarers…but also less likely to be spotted by something like Mass Effect’s Reapers, or accidentally bring home Xenomorphs or extragalactic pathogens lol)
And…not being able to ever see the beginning of everything…my curious mind says that’d be such a bummer but also…oddly beautiful? I’ll have to ponder that…
Frankly, I’d love to be able to explain how the universe started. That would be the final nail in the coffin for religion.
That is literally what the current big bang theory says! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflationary_epoch?wprov=sfla1
Look up vacuum decay. It’s theoretically a thing that can rewrite spacetime at a lower energy level, and would expand out from a point in a bubble. The expanding bubble would erase and rewrite everything it touched into the lower energy level.
Yes I know what vacuum decay is, and the thing I referenced, the inflaton field, is a hypothetized false vacuum near the very start of the universe, that went through this exact process, giving rise to our current vacuum and ending the hypothetized inflation era
I know there’s a hypothesis that our current vacuum could be metastable as well, but that’s a seperate thing
Yeah, I believe the Higgs field showed us to be metastable, unless new findings have invalidated that.
We’re inside a dust cup?
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But is your refrigerator running?
Haven’t been able to get the fucker to stop after storing my meth in it!
I think she’s on lap 24,512 now.
Anyone got a link to either nasa or a good article explaining it?
Scientific American points to an important fact.
"With our latest surveys, such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and Euclid, by my very rough estimation, we’ve taken pictures of somewhere around 100 million galaxies out of the two trillion or so estimated to exist in the entire observable universe.
Shamir’s paradigm-shattering conclusion relies on 263 of them."
They are discussing bias in the selection.
“Unfortunately, this kind of extreme selection introduces many opportunities for bias to creep in. When we test a new idea in cosmology—indeed, in all of science—we work to make our conclusion as robust as possible. For example, if we were to change any of these filtering steps, from the selection of survey region to the threshold for deciding whether to include a galaxy in the analysis, our results should hold up or at least show a clear trend where the signal becomes stronger. But there isn’t enough information about such methodological checks in Shamir’s paper to make that judgment, which casts doubt on the validity of the conclusions.”
Tax breaks for the rich is the only solution
I suddenly feel something trickling down from above. Is this what they were talking about all these years? Is this a good thing? It smells bad, like really bad. Like somebody is cooking meth while they have a near fatal case of diarrhea. What am I supposed to do?
Get hooked on meth, it’ll wildly change your priorities.
(This is a joke, please do not do this)
Wouldn’t it even be more helpful to just relieve the ultrarich from taxes? So they could better pay their rent too. I’d throw in one or two moneyz to help.
You better start believing in compression systems you’re in one
