What happens in black holes. Where do cosmic black holes lead? Black holes evaporate over time

E1.RU continues the project in which we, together with UrFU scientists, debunk various scientific and pseudo-scientific myths. In the previous publication, this time we will talk about space - more precisely, about those stereotypes that blockbusters and the revelations of futurologists plant in our heads. We asked an employee of the Department of Astronomy and Geodesy of the Institute to debunk them natural sciences UrFU Pavel Skripnichenko.

– The thing that irritates me most in science fiction films is the sound. aircraft engine when it flies spaceship, - Pavel admits. – For a long time I could not come to terms with this, because sound as such cannot exist, it does not spread. If you start talking in space, you won’t hear each other, because the density of the medium is less, the sound travels worse. In general, it spreads through the soil and through the air. There are no sounds in space, stars explode, but they don’t bang.

The asteroid belt, through which spaceships maneuver in the movies, is a real thing; between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter there are about 700 thousand objects, ranging in size from 10 meters to one and a half thousand kilometers. The films show that they are located close, but, in fact, the distances between the asteroids are quite large. An asteroid collision is a fairly rare thing, but it happens, that is, in principle it is possible. If you lose control of your ship, you can crash somewhere, but you can’t maneuver between them.


Myth one: Someday it will be possible to live on Mars like on Earth class="_">

- This is not a myth. Setting up some kind of permanent colony on the Moon or Mars is at the level modern technologies. The same film "The Martian" is 80 percent technologically advanced, there are no mistakes in the basis as such, there are some small things that you can ignore, but on the whole it is believable.

The hero lives on Mars, but does not go to the surface without protective suit, the rest of the time he is in an airlock - a special design where pressure is maintained similar to atmospheric pressure on Earth, this is quite real. The only thing that a person will feel is gravity - he will be less attracted to the planet. He will be able to lift more weight, he himself will weigh less, and it will be easier to do some physical work if he gets used to it. For example, if you fly up to an object larger than you and push it, you will fly away from it - you will be given twice the speed.


According to the scientist, in space we will have to come up with different rules for sports - playing as we are used to will not work due to gravity.

For a long time it was believed that, but now something wrong is happening in the foreign policy arena, and many state corporations are pushing these plans further away. We had a similar project in China, with the European Space Agency. There are private entities that want to do this.

The first 3-4 expeditions will be unmanned in order to supply the appropriate equipment. There will be an appropriate structure that will create conditions for life - air composition, temperature. The only thing you have to put up with is gravity. We will have to change the rules for sports, play by different rules. This is a big task for humanists. Everyone says that there is no place for humanities in astronomy. This is not so, for example, jurisprudence should develop.


“On Mars, like in Oymyakon, you just can’t breathe on the surface,” the astronomer gives an example.

You can fly to Mars only at certain times when Mars and Earth are closest to each other. I won’t talk about amounts now, but I heard that the cost of holding the Olympics in Sochi is comparable to organizing a colony on Mars for 80 people. The scientific value of the expedition is obvious, the question is economic profitability - what will people do there? As soon as economic feasibility appears, as, for example, in the era of geographical discoveries many goods were found, it became profitable, everything will be possible.

– Will it be necessary to return from Mars before the Earth moves away again? class="_">

– Modern programs are not set up to bring people back from there. Imagine that 7 people fly to a planet that is 4.5 billion years old, which has not been explored, not discovered, and you live there. It will be possible to leave the gateway using special vehicles, in special spacesuits. For the surface of Mars you need a different spacesuit than for open space, the design could be lighter, there is still some kind of atmosphere there, there is no such strong radiation from the Sun, the level of safety is higher there. There is a lot of water there, oxygen is dissolved in the surface, there are a lot of metals, no one has carried out ore mining there, that is, all these resources are intact.

– In the same film, the hero grew vegetables – is it really possible to plant a vegetable garden there? class="_">

– Obviously, the soil on Mars is not identical to the earth, it is different, but if you carry out certain processing, it is quite possible to do something, this is actually a reality.

– And as for the temperature, will a person survive there? class="_">

– Mars is a cold metal desert, but, in fact, in the summer at the equator there can be quite comfortable temperatures, around +20 °C, +25 °C. But again, you will not find yourself on the surface without a special suit that will provide thermal protection. In the polar regions, temperatures can reach -180 °C, but there is a wonderful city of Oymyakon, where the temperature drops to -90 °C. We can say that on Mars, as in Oymyakon, you just can’t breathe on the surface. Temperature won't really solve anything.


The hero of "The Martian" set up a vegetable garden on the Red Planet. This is, in general, real, says the scientist.

– Movies often show that if people leave a spaceship, they will explode. class="_">

– In fact, there is such an effect, but not like in the movie “Total Recall” with Arnold Schwarzenegger, where on Mars the characters’ eyes bulged out. Due to the fact that there is no atmospheric pressure, and people are accustomed to it, cosmonauts are forced to wear spacesuits and special suits in order to maintain this pressure. Due to the fact that there is no atmospheric pressure in space, problems begin with blood supply, heart, alveoli, and breathing.

To put it simply, there is internal pressure and external pressure. If there is no external one, then it’s bad. A person cannot remain in this state for a long time. It, of course, does not explode, but this will certainly lead to death.


– Will this happen instantly? How will the person feel? class="_">

– This will not happen instantly, but quickly enough – within a few minutes. You can freeze in space for a very long time. The thing is that when the temperature outside is -30 °C, we are in air environment, and this air has the appropriate temperature, the air removes heat from our body. In space, where there is no atmosphere, temperature will be lost only due to heat radiation, not due to exchange with the environment, and this process is much slower. It is impossible to freeze in space; you can die from some other things, for example, from the fact that the pressure will be different.

– Can blood boil in space? class="_">

- Yes. But we have such a typical idea of ​​boiling that when water boils, it bubbles. In fact, when we go up mountains, water will boil at a lower temperature due to pressure. When we completely remove the pressure, it begins to turn into gas; a similar thing can happen to blood in space. Within a few minutes the person will be gone, but again this is not such a spectacular sight as shown in the film.

Myth two: black holes are a hole into another world class="_">

– One of the most popular hypotheses is that a black hole is an entrance somewhere to end up at another point in space and time, but from the point of view of modern science it is too early to talk about this. This is not just fantasy, it may well turn out to be real, but while they are arguing, while they are thinking, while they are still considering, let’s keep the intrigue. Most likely, everything will turn out to be almost similar to the idea that we have, but with some details that we are not even aware of.

Myth three: aliens are trying to contact us class="_">

– I am absolutely sure that there is a lot of extraterrestrial life in the Universe. The closest place where we will discover a real form of life will be one of Jupiter's satellites - Europa. A planet that is covered with a thick layer of ice, under which there is a warm ocean. There are all the conditions for life to form, but there is no Sun there. But even in our oceans there is no sun at the bottom, but there is life there. Life is formed wherever there are conditions. It is clear that life will develop one way or another; it is not unique,” ​​says the scientist.

We must move away from the idea that everything on earth is the best, that we are the only ones. We used to think that the solar system revolved around the earth, but then it turned out that this is not so. Then they thought that only on Earth there is water in liquid form, now this water in liquid form is being discovered everywhere. Then we thought that only we had organic compounds. We need to move away from the concept that we are the most important thing, life is not unique. And, accordingly, the next step is that the mind is not unique.

I am sure that there are a lot of intelligent life forms, but flying saucers, abductions... this will never happen and has never happened before. Because there is no point.


If you are at such a level of development that you can move around the universe without any problems, then you do not need to seek contact. A very simple example. Now Americans are actively working with chimpanzees and have invented a language for them. And Europeans are experimenting with dolphins - they study language, repeat sounds, behavior, try to interact, but they do not respond, even if you crack them. Why don't they answer? Because there is nothing to talk about, we simply have nothing to talk about.

There is nothing to be afraid of, we will perceive aliens as a natural phenomenon, we will also be part of nature for them. We are doomed to live among people.

Myth four: if a huge meteorite falls on Earth, the Earth will end class="_">

- But this is quite real threat planetary scale. The Chelyabinsk meteorite will definitely happen again. Meteorites like the Chelyabinsk one fall approximately every 20-30 years. When he fell, it seemed that they were falling every 100 years, but it turned out that they were falling more often. Large ones are much less common, but it happens.

When the Solar System was formed, there were about 80 planets, 8 remained, which means that all the rest became part of other planets during the collision process. From point of view solar system, when one object falls on another - this is a normal natural process, from our point of view, if something large falls, for us it is a disaster. All threats are divided into several types: up to 100 meters - regional, global, when an object is more than 1 kilometer - there are large casualties, climate change, destruction. 10 kilometers is the end of civilization. A Chelyabinsk meteorite– that’s it, fireworks, memes, jokes, but nothing so terrible. If it were bigger, it would be much worse.


I will say that the end of the world will not happen, we know what to do: observe, we know how to act, everything will be fine. But this won’t happen because a huge meteorite arrives and kills everyone. You can calm down, the world will not end. Meteorites are falling all over the earth, there were tasks to find out the places of concentration. Russia is the largest state in the world, so the likelihood of a fall is greater. The Chelyabinsk event showed that coordination is needed between the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Roscosmos, scientists, the observatory, and so on. If it had been larger, serious evacuation measures would have had to be taken, and so on. But such security programs have been created for a very long time.

  • As part of a cosmic nesting doll, our universe may be located inside a black hole, which itself is part of the larger universe. All black holes discovered in our universe - from microscopic to supermassive - may be doorways to alternate realities.

    One of the latest "Hallucinogenic" theories says that a black hole is a tunnel between universes - something like a wormhole. The black hole does not collapse to one point, as expected, but becomes a "White Hole" at the other end of the black hole.

    In a paper published in the journal Physics Letters B, Indiana University physicist Nikodem Poplavsky presented a new mathematical model spiral motion of matter falling into a black hole. His equations show that such wormholes are viable alternatives to the spacetime singularities that Albert Einstein hypothesized to be at the center of black holes.

    According to the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity, singularities are created when matter in a region becomes too dense, as in the superdense heart of a black hole.

    Einstein's theory suggests that singularities do not occupy space, are infinitely dense and infinitely hot - which, in principle, is supported by numerous indirect evidence, but remains difficult to understand for many scientists.

    If Poplavsky is right, there may be no need to understand.

    According to the new equations, the matter that the black hole absorbs and apparently destroys becomes building material for galaxies, stars and planets in another reality.

    Can wormholes solve the mystery of the big bang?

    Poplavsky says understanding black holes as wormholes could explain certain mysteries in modern cosmology. For example, the big bang theory states that the universe began with a singularity. But scientists are not satisfied with the explanation of how such a singularity could have formed in the first place. Thus, if our universe was born from a white hole rather than from a singularity, "this Solves the Problem of Black Hole Singularities and the Big Bang Singularity."

    Wormholes may also explain gamma-ray bursts, the second most powerful explosions in the universe after the Big Bang. Gamma-ray bursts occur on the periphery of the known universe. They have been linked to supernovae, or star deaths, in distant galaxies, but their exact sources are a mystery. Poplavsky suggests that the bursts may be ejections of matter from alternative universes. Matter enters our universe through supermassive black holes - wormholes - at the hearts of galaxies, although it is not clear how this is possible.

    “The idea is crazy, but who knows?” says the scientist.

    There is at least one way to test Poplavsky's theory. Some of the black holes in our universe are spinning, and if our universe was born inside the same spinning black hole, then it should inherit the rotation of its parent object. Thus, if future experiments show that our universe rotates in the expected direction, this could be indirect evidence of the wormhole theory.

    Can wormholes produce "Exotic Matter"?

    The wormhole theory may also explain why some features of our universe deviate from what the theory predicts, according to physicists. Based on the standard model of physics, after the big bang, the curvature of the universe should increase with time, so after 13.7 billion years, which is today, we should be sitting on the surface of a closed spherical universe.

    However, observations show that the universe is flat in all directions. Additionally, light data from the young universe shows that the temperature after the big bang was roughly the same everywhere. This means that the most distant objects we see at the opposite end of the universe were close enough to each other that they were in equilibrium, like gas molecules in a sealed chamber.

    Again, the observations do not match the predictions because the opposite objects in the known universe are so far apart that the time it would take to travel between them at the speed of light exceeds the age of the universe.

    To explain the discrepancies, astronomers developed the inflationary theory.

    Inflation suggests that shortly after the universe was created, it experienced a rapid growth spurt during which space itself expanded at faster than the speed of light. The universe stretched from the size of an atom to astronomical proportions in a fraction of a second.

    The universe therefore appears flat because we are on a sphere which is extremely large from our point of view; so the earth seems flat to someone who stands in a field.

    Inflation also explains how objects that are far apart could once be close enough to interact. But even if we assume that inflation is real, astronomers struggle to explain what caused it. And this is where a new theory of wormholes comes to the rescue.

    According to Poplavsky, some inflationary theories say that the event was caused by "Exotic Matter", a theoretical substance that is different from normal matter in part because it is repelled rather than attracted by gravity. Based on these equations, Poplavsky concluded that such exotic matter could have arisen when some of the first massive stars collapsed into wormholes.

    "There may have been some interaction between the Exotic Matter That Formed the Wormholes and the Exotic Matter That Caused Inflation," he says.

    Wormhole Equations - "Good Solution".

    The new model is not the first to suggest that other universes exist inside black holes. Damien Isson, a theoretical physicist at the University of Arizona, had previously suggested this.

    "What's new? The fact that the solution of wormholes in the oto is a transition from the outside of the black hole to the inside of the new universe," says Isson, who did not take part in Poplavsky's research. - “We Just Assumed that Such a Solution Could Exist, but Poplavsky Found It.”

    However, the idea seems very controversial to Isson.

    “Is this possible? Yes. Is such a scenario probable? I don’t even know. But it’s definitely interesting.”

    Future work in quantum gravity—the study of gravity at the subatomic level—will refine the equations and potentially confirm or refute Poplavsky's theory.

    There is nothing surprising about the wormhole theory.

    Overall, the wormhole theory is interesting, but not groundbreaking, and does not shed any light on the origins of the universe, said Andreas Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, who was also not involved in the study.

    By asserting that our universe was created from a piece of matter from the parent universe, the theory simply shifts the event of the origin of all things into an alternative reality. In other words, it does not explain how the parent universe arose or why ours has the properties it does - moreover, the properties must be inherited, which means the parent universe will be the same.

    “There are Several Current Problems We're Trying to Solve, and It's Not Clear Where This Will Lead,” he says, noting Poplavsky's research.

    However, Albrecht doesn't find the idea of ​​wormholes connecting universes any "stranger" than the idea of ​​singularities in black holes, and he's not going to throw out a new theory just because it looks a little crazy.

    "Everything People Do in This Sphere Is Quite Strange," he says. - “You have no right to say that the Less Strange Idea will win, because it will not Happen, under any Circumstances.” Source: hi-News.

    Not so long ago (by scientific standards) an object called a black hole was purely hypothetical and was described only by superficial theoretical calculations. But the progress of technology does not stand still, and now no one doubts the existence of black holes. A lot has been written about black holes, but their descriptions are often extremely difficult for the average observer to understand. In this article we will try to understand this very interesting object.
    A black hole usually forms due to the death of a neutron star. Neutron stars usually very massive, bright and extremely hot, when compared with our Sun, it’s like a flashlight bulb and a giant spotlight with a bunch of megawatts, which are used when filming movies. Neutron stars are extremely inefficient; they use huge reserves of nuclear fuel in relatively short periods of time, essentially like a small car or some kind of Gelik, if again compared with our star. By burning nuclear fuel, new elements are formed in the core, heavier ones, you can look at the periodic table, hydrogen turns into helium, helium into lithium, etc. Nuclear fusion fission products are similar to exhaust smoke, except that they can be reused. And just like that, the star gains momentum until it comes to iron. Iron accumulation in the core is like cancer... It begins to kill her from the inside. Because of the iron, the mass of the core grows rapidly and eventually the gravitational force becomes greater than the forces of nuclear interactions and the core literally falls, which leads to an explosion. At the moment of such an explosion, a colossal amount of energy is released, and two directed beams of gamma radiation appear, as if a laser gun is shooting into the universe from both ends, and everything that is in the path of such beams at a distance of about 10 light years is penetrated by this radiation. Naturally, nothing living survives from such rays, and anything close to it completely burns up. This radiation is considered the most powerful in the entire universe, except that the energy of the big bang has more energy. But not everything is so bad, everything that was in the core is emitted into space and is subsequently used to create planets, stars, etc. The pressure from the force of the explosion compresses the star to a tiny size; given its former size, the density becomes incredibly enormous. A hamburger crumb made from this substance would weigh more than our planet. The result is a black hole, which has incredible gravity and is called black because even light cannot escape from it.
    The laws of physics near a black hole no longer work in the way we are used to. Space-time is curved and all events proceed completely differently. Like a vacuum cleaner, a black hole absorbs everything that is around it: planets, asteroids, light, etc. Previously, it was believed that a black hole does not emit anything, but as Stephen Hawking proved, a black hole emits antimatter. That is, it eats matter and releases antimatter. By the way, if you combine matter and antimatter, you get a bomb that will release energy E=mc2, well, that’s it powerful weapon on the planet. I believe the collider was then built to try to achieve this, since when protons collide inside this machine, miniature black holes also appear that quickly evaporate, which is good for us, otherwise it could be like in films about the end of the world.
    Previously, they thought that if you throw a person into a black hole, then his pipe will tear into subatoms, but as it turned out, according to some equations, there are certain trajectories of travel through a black hole in order to feel normal, although it is not clear what will happen behind it, another peace or nothing. The region around the black hole that is interesting is called the event horizon. If you fly there without knowing the magic equation, it will certainly not be very good. The observer will see how the spacecraft flies into the event horizon and then moves away very slowly until it freezes in the center. For the astronaut himself, things will go extremely differently, the curved space will mold him like plasticine various shapes until it finally breaks everything into subatoms. But to an outside observer, the astronaut will forever remain smiling and waving out the window, a frozen image.

    black hole - explanation for children: description with photos, how to find them in the cosmos of the Universe, how they appear, the death of stars, supermassive black holes of galaxies.

    For the little ones, parents or at school should explain that perceiving a black hole as an empty space is a grave mistake. On the contrary, an incredible amount of matter is concentrated in it, which is confined in a small space. To make the explanation more colorful for kids, just imagine that you took a star 10 times more massive than the Sun and tried to squeeze it into an area the size of New York City. Due to this pressure, the gravitational field becomes so strong that no one, not even a light beam, can escape. With the development of technology, NASA is able to learn more and more about these mysterious objects.

    A good place to start for kids is that the term “black hole” didn’t exist until 1967 (coined by John Wheeler). But before this, for several centuries it was mentioned about the existence of strange objects that, due to their density and massiveness, do not release light. They were even predicted by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity. She proved that when a massive star dies, a small dense core remains. If a star is three times the mass of the sun, then gravity overcomes other forces, and we get a black hole.

    Black star formation process

    Of course, it is important to explain to children that researchers are unable to observe these features directly (telescopes only detect light, X-rays and other forms of electromagnetic radiation), so there is no need to wait for a photo of a black hole. But it is possible to calculate their location and even determine their size due to the influence they have on surrounding objects. For example, if it passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, then in the process it will begin to draw matter inward - accretion. The same thing will happen if a star passes nearby. True, a star can explode.

    At the moment of attraction, the substance heats up and accelerates, releasing x-rays into space. Recent discoveries have spotted several powerful bursts of gamma rays, demonstrating that the hole is devouring nearby stars. At this moment, they stimulate the growth of some and stop others.

    The death of a star is the beginning of a black hole

    Most black holes arise from the leftover material of dying large stars (supernova explosions). Smaller stars become dense neutron stars, which lack the massiveness to trap light. If the mass of a star is 3 times greater than that of the Sun, then it becomes a candidate for a black hole. It is important to explain one strange thing to children. When a star collapses, its surface approaches an imaginary surface (event horizon). Time on the star itself becomes slower than that of the observer. When the surface reaches the event horizon, time freezes and the star can no longer collapse - a frozen, collapsing object.

    Black holes at the centers of merging galaxies

    Larger black holes can appear after a stellar collision. After its launch in December 2004, the NASA telescope was able to detect strong, fleeting flashes of light - gamma rays. Chandra and Hubble then collected data on the event and realized that these flares could be the result of a collision between a black hole and a neutron star, which creates a new black hole.

    Although children and parents have already figured it out in the process of education, one point remains a mystery. The holes seem to exist on two different scales. There are many black holes - the remains of massive stars. Typically, they are 10-24 times more massive than the Sun. Scientists constantly see them if an alien star comes critically close. But most black holes exist in isolation and simply cannot be seen. However, judging by the number of stars large enough to be black hole candidates, there must be tens of millions of billions of such black holes in the Milky Way.

    There are also supermassive black holes, which are a million or even a billion times larger than our Sun. It is believed that such monsters live in the centers of almost all large galaxies (including ours).

    It will be interesting for the little ones to know that for a long time scientists believed that there was no average size for black holes. But data from Chandra, XMM-Newton and Hubble show that they are there.

    It is possible that supermassive black holes arise from a chain reaction caused by the collision of stars in compact clusters. Because of this, a lot of massive stars accumulate, which collapse and produce black holes. These clusters then occupy the galactic center, where the black holes merge and become a supermassive member.

    You may have realized by now that you won't be able to view a black hole in high quality online because these objects don't emit light. But children will be interested in studying photographs and diagrams created based on the contact of black holes and ordinary matter.

    A laconic explanation of the phenomenon goes like this. A black hole is a space-time region whose gravitational attraction is so strong that no object, including light quanta, can leave it.

    The black hole was once a massive star. Bye thermonuclear reactions they maintain high pressure in its depths, everything remains normal. But over time, the energy supply is depleted and heavenly body, under the influence of its own gravity, begins to compress. The final stage of this process is the collapse of the stellar core and the formation of a black hole.


    • 1. A black hole ejects a jet at high speed
    • 2. The disk of matter develops into black hole
    • 3. Black hole
    • 4. Detailed diagram of the black hole region
    • 5. Size of new observations found

    The most common theory is that similar phenomena exist in every galaxy, including the center of our Milky Way. The hole's enormous gravitational force is capable of holding several galaxies around it, preventing them from moving away from each other. The “coverage area” can be different, it all depends on the mass of the star that turned into a black hole, and can be thousands of light years.

    Pressure in a black hole. Answers

    Bob Bee

    We don't know any pressure. In fact, we don't really know what's inside a black hole (BH).

    Classic solutions for BHs have a horizon (or two for a rotating BH Kerr solution) where the inner region is causally related to the outer region. In the inner region, space-time is empty, there is nothing there except a singularity, where the curvature of space-time becomes infinite.

    Moreover, a person (or particle) walking towards the horizon (and in the coordinate frame of one of them, or in the particle's coordinate frame, it does so over a finite period of time) does not see anything strange happening towards the horizon (possible exception later in this answer ), and inevitably ends up in a singularity, and does it quite quickly. The gravitational effect that the observer experiences inside the horizon increases until it becomes infinite in classical solutions.

    The exceptions or caveats to this story are that it does not take quantum gravity into account. We don't have an accepted theory of quantum gravity yet (we have some hypothetical theories like string theory and quantum loop gravity) as we approach the singularity. General relativity becomes invalid and we don't yet know that it is taking over. In fact, there are claims that there is something on the horizon called a firewall, and everything there is destroyed. There are problems with storing physical information in BHs, and some hypotheses are that information freezes at the horizon and is stored there. This entire issue is under active ongoing research.

    Perhaps tidal forces can be seen as a kind of pressure. If you end up with a black hole at your feet first, the other gravitational force at different ends of your body will cause you to be stretched and pulled like spaghetti. Google "spaghettification".

    Spaggettification is tidal forces, it will be a gravity field with a gradient. Pressure is not like that, it just pushes or pulls, and it is related to field or matter.

    Pressure is usually determined by the force per surface area. Since there is no physical dimension "inside" the BH and therefore no surface, there is no way to determine the pressure. In fact, we don't understand anything inside a black hole.

    Video What is a Black Hole?

    A black hole is a self-sustaining gravitational field concentrated in a highly curved region of space-time (image from www.science.nasa.gov)

    A black hole is neither matter nor radiation. With some figurativeness, we can say that this is a self-sustaining gravitational field concentrated in a highly curved region of space-time. Its outer boundary is defined by a closed surface, the event horizon. If the star did not rotate before the collapse, this surface turns out to be a regular sphere, the radius of which coincides with the Schwarzschild radius.

    The physical meaning of the horizon is very clear. A light signal sent from its outer vicinity can travel an infinitely long distance. But signals sent from the inner region will not only not cross the horizon, but will inevitably “fall” into the singularity. The horizon is the spatial boundary between events that can become known to terrestrial (and any other) astronomers, and events, information about which under no circumstances will come out.

    As expected “according to Schwarzschild,” far from the horizon the attraction of a hole is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, so for a distant observer it manifests itself as an ordinary heavy body. In addition to mass, the hole inherits the moment of inertia of the collapsed star and its electric charge. And all other characteristics of the predecessor star (structure, composition, spectral type, etc.) fade into oblivion.

    Let's send a probe to the hole with a radio station that sends a signal once a second according to onboard time. For a remote observer, as the probe approaches the horizon, the time intervals between signals will increase - in principle, unlimitedly. As soon as the ship crosses the invisible horizon, it will become completely silent for the “over-the-hole” world. However, this disappearance will not be without a trace, since the probe will give up its mass, charge and torque to the hole.

    In the acclaimed science fiction film Interstellar, the plot revolves around a colossal “black hole”. The existence of these cosmic objects truly remains one of the most intriguing mysteries of the Universe. And perhaps, having figured out how they work, humanity will gain access to worlds that they don’t even know about yet.

    Death of a Star

    The discovery of “black holes” is directly related to the new vision of the physical structure of the Universe, which was proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915, showing that massive bodies bend time and space. Subsequently, his theory received numerous experimental confirmations. It is not easy to explain what such a curvature looks like, so physicists resort to an analogy, imagining space as a kind of rubber surface on which metal balls press. Moreover, the more massive the ball, the larger the dent under it. In real four-dimensional space, the “dent” faces the fifth dimension, the presence of which we determine only indirectly - by the distortion of the beam or the delay of the radio signal passing near the Sun or stars.

    It is clear that the “dent” created by the Sun is relatively small (its radius is only 50 kilometers larger than the radius of our star), but almost immediately after Einstein formulated the postulates of his revolutionary theory, German astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild mathematically proved that somewhere in the Universe there can be objects with a mass that bends space so much that even light cannot escape from it. Over time, such objects began to be called “black holes” with the light hand of the American John Wheeler.

    For a long time, “black holes” remained in the eyes of scientists beautiful hypothesis. In 1939, the young physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the future “father” of American atomic bomb, showed that under certain conditions a star can turn into a real “black hole”. Indeed, astronomers soon discovered that towards the end of their “life” stars behave differently. For example, the Sun, gradually burning out, will begin to expand, and then turn into a white dwarf the size of the Earth, which will cool over billions of years, becoming a dark dense clump of matter. Those stars whose mass is much greater than the Sun burn their fuel much faster and then implode (collapse), forming a neutron star or “black hole”. Neutron stars are composed almost entirely of atomic nuclei, and "black holes" are made of curved space and curved time. Although a “black hole” does not contain matter, it has a surface - it is called an “event horizon”, through which nothing can escape.

    Over time, they learned to detect “black holes” by the influence they have on the surrounding space. About a thousand such objects have been found, but astronomers say there are hundreds of millions of them. It turned out that there are also giant “black holes” in the centers of galaxies, which may have appeared as a result of the collapse of massive gas clouds.

    Hawking's discovery

    Many physicists have tried to understand how “black holes” work. The greatest success in this field was achieved by the Englishman Stephen Hawking. In 1975, he not only managed to link the existence of “black holes” with fashionable quantum mechanics, but also showed how she should interact with the outside world.

    Before Hawking, it was believed that a “black hole” only absorbs matter without giving anything back. Studying the behavior of quantum fields near a “black hole,” Hawking suggested that it necessarily radiates particles into outer space and thereby loses mass. This effect is now called “Hawking radiation” (or “Hawking evaporation”). Hawking calculated that such radiation would have a thermal spectrum - accordingly, it could be detected by a certain temperature. However, this temperature is so low that astronomers cannot detect it for observed “black holes,” so Hawking’s hypothesis is not confirmed by observations.

    The theory of "black holes", created by Stephen Hawking, is disputed by a number of scientists. The fact is that in the classical view, a “black hole” can only grow, absorbing more and more masses of matter. It follows from this that information, as one of the characteristics of matter inside a “black hole,” is not destroyed, but is stored forever or transferred from our Universe to some other. Hawking argues that the “hole” always remains in its original state, destroying information and dumping excess mass in the form of radiation. Thus, the two models come into conflict, and the construction of a quantum gravity model depends on who is right, which directly leads to the creation of the notorious “theory of everything”, which will someday revolutionize our understanding of the Universe.

    In 2004, Stephen Hawking claimed to have resolved the discrepancy between the models. His new discovery is based on the fact that in real processes of formation and evaporation of “black holes” information is not destroyed. This happens because those “holes” that are described within the framework of numerous theories simply do not exist in nature. What astronomers observe in the centers of galaxies are “apparent black holes,” that is, objects that are in many ways similar to the models invented by physicists, but do not have a real “event horizon.” Roughly speaking, according to the old theory (also called the “wall of fire concept”), an astronaut falling into a “black hole” will be instantly vaporized on the “event horizon”, and according to the new one, he will penetrate inside, but will acquire some special physical properties.

    However, the new discovery also caused sharp criticism from colleagues. It turns out that Hawking took for granted a number of assumptions that themselves still need to be justified, therefore it is premature to say that the topic is finally closed.

    Door to another world

    Christopher Nolan's acclaimed sci-fi film Interstellar clearly shows how to penetrate and study a black hole. internal properties will influence modern physics. In fact, we are talking about gravity control technologies and superluminal flight. Furthermore, the film even shows people of the future - creatures who have mastered a space with more dimensions than ours.

    All these ideas were brought into the film by the famous physicist Kip Thorne (by the way, he is one of those who managed to substantiate the theoretical possibility of building a “time machine”). In 1991, he made a bet with Stephen Hawking about the existence of “naked singularities,” that is, objects that have all the properties of the center of a “black hole,” but do not have an “event horizon.” Moreover, Thorne argued that such objects could exist in reality, but Hawking considered them fantasy. And just five years later, the dispute was resolved in Thorne’s favor: Texan Matthew Choptyuk, using mathematical modeling, proved that when a gravitational wave collapses, it is possible to achieve a state where something like boiling space and time arises. It generates new gravitational waves until eventually an infinitesimal “naked singularity” is formed.

    Kip Thorne clarifies that there are no “naked singularities” in nature: the laws of physics prohibit their spontaneous occurrence. However, some powerful civilization that has studied “black holes” and managed to construct a technology for generating gravitational waves may well create an artificial “naked singularity.” And then such a civilization will not only have the opportunity to travel through our Universe faster than the speed of light, but will also penetrate into other universes. Perhaps, Thorne further reports, such a civilization is already operating in our space, watching us and is ready to intervene if something goes wrong with us. His idea sounds like a fantasy, but who can know for sure?..

    Anton Pervushin

    As part of a cosmic nesting doll, our universe may be located inside a black hole, which itself is part of the larger universe. All black holes discovered in our Universe - from microscopic to supermassive - may be doorways to alternative realities.

    One of the latest "hallucinogenic" theories says that a black hole is a tunnel between universes - something like a wormhole. The black hole does not collapse to one point, as expected, but becomes a "white hole" at the other end of the black hole.

    In a paper published in the journal Physics Letters B, Indiana University physicist Nikodem Poplavsky presented a new mathematical model for the spiraling motion of matter falling into a black hole. His equations show that such wormholes are viable alternatives to the spacetime singularities that Albert Einstein hypothesized to be at the center of black holes.

    According to the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity, singularities are created when matter in a region becomes too dense, as in the superdense heart of a black hole.

    Einstein's theory suggests that singularities do not occupy space, are infinitely dense and infinitely hot - which, in principle, is supported by numerous indirect evidence, but remains difficult to understand for many scientists.

    If Poplavsky is right, he may not have to understand.

    According to the new equations, the matter that the black hole absorbs and apparently destroys becomes the building material for galaxies, stars and planets in another reality.

    Can wormholes solve the mystery of the Big Bang?

    Poplavsky says understanding black holes as wormholes could explain certain mysteries in modern cosmology. For example, the big bang theory states that the universe began with a singularity. But scientists are not satisfied with the explanation of how such a singularity could have formed in the first place. If our universe was born from a white hole rather than a singularity, “that solves the problem of black hole singularities and the big bang singularity.”

    Wormholes may also explain gamma-ray bursts, the second most powerful explosions in the universe after the Big Bang. Gamma-ray bursts occur on the periphery of the known universe. They have been linked to supernovae, or star deaths, in distant galaxies, but their exact sources are a mystery. Poplavsky suggests that the bursts may be ejections of matter from alternative universes. Matter enters our universe through supermassive black holes - wormholes - at the hearts of galaxies, although it is not clear how this is possible.

    “The idea is crazy, but who knows?” says the scientist.
    There is at least one way to test Poplavsky's theory. Some of the black holes in our universe are spinning, and if our universe was born inside the same spinning black hole, then it should inherit the rotation of its parent object. If future experiments show that our universe rotates in the expected direction, this could be indirect evidence of the wormhole theory.

    Can wormholes produce “exotic matter”?

    The wormhole theory may also explain why some features of our universe deviate from what the theory predicts, according to physicists. Based on the Standard Model of physics, after the Big Bang, the curvature of the Universe should increase with time, so after 13.7 billion years, that is, today, we should be sitting on the surface of a closed spherical Universe.

    However, observations show that the Universe is flat in all directions. Additionally, light data from the young Universe shows that the temperature after the big bang was roughly the same everywhere. This means that the most distant objects we see at the opposite end of the universe were close enough to each other that they were in equilibrium, like gas molecules in a sealed chamber.

    Again, the observations do not match the predictions because the opposite objects in the known universe are so far apart that the time it would take to travel between them at the speed of light exceeds the age of the universe.

    To explain the discrepancies, astronomers developed the inflationary theory.

    Inflation suggests that shortly after the universe was created, it experienced a rapid growth spurt during which space itself expanded at faster than the speed of light. The universe stretched from the size of an atom to astronomical proportions in a fraction of a second.

    The universe therefore appears flat because we are on a sphere which is extremely large from our point of view; so the Earth appears flat to someone standing in a field.

    Inflation also explains how objects that are far apart could once be close enough to interact. But even if we assume that inflation is real, astronomers struggle to explain what caused it. And this is where the new wormhole theory comes to the rescue.

    According to Poplavsky, some inflationary theories say the event was caused by "exotic matter," a theoretical substance that is different from normal matter in part because it is repelled rather than attracted by gravity. Based on these equations, Poplavsky concluded that such exotic matter could have arisen when some of the first massive stars collapsed into wormholes.

    "There may have been some interaction between the exotic matter that formed the wormholes and the exotic matter that caused the inflation," he says.
    Wormhole equations - "a good solution"

    The new model is not the first to suggest that other universes exist inside black holes. Damien Isson, a theoretical physicist at the University of Arizona, has previously suggested this.

    "What's new? That the solution to wormholes in general relativity is a transition from the outside of the black hole to the inside of the new universe,” says Isson, who was not involved in Poplavsky’s research. “We simply assumed that such a solution could exist, but Poplavsky found it.”
    However, the idea seems very controversial to Isson.

    "Is it possible? Yes. Is such a scenario likely? Don't even know. But it’s definitely interesting.”
    Future work in quantum gravity—the study of gravity at the subatomic level—will refine the equations and potentially confirm or refute Poplavsky's theory.

    There is nothing surprising in the wormhole theory

    Overall, the wormhole theory is interesting, but not groundbreaking, and doesn't shed any light on the origins of the universe, said Andreas Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, who was also not involved in the study.

    By asserting that our universe was created from a piece of matter from the parent universe, the theory simply shifts the event of the origin of all things into an alternative reality. In other words, it does not explain how the parent universe arose or why ours has the properties it does - moreover, the properties must be inherited, which means the parent universe will be the same.

    "There are a few current problems that we are trying to solve, and it is not clear where all this will lead,” he says, noting Poplavsky’s research.
    However, Albrecht doesn't find the idea of ​​wormholes linking universes any weirder than the idea of ​​singularities in black holes, and he's not about to throw out a new theory just because it looks a little crazy.

    "Everything people do in this industry is pretty weird," he says. - “You have no right to say that the less strange idea will win, because this will not happen, under any circumstances.”

    As part of a cosmic nesting doll, our universe may be located inside a black hole, which itself is part of the larger universe. All black holes discovered in our Universe - from microscopic to supermassive - may be doorways to alternative realities.

    One of the latest "hallucinogenic" theories says that a black hole is a tunnel between universes - something like a wormhole. The black hole does not collapse to one point, as expected, but becomes a "white hole" at the other end of the black hole.

    In a paper published in the journal Physics Letters B, Indiana University physicist Nikodem Poplavsky presented a new mathematical model for the spiraling motion of matter falling into a black hole. His equations show that such wormholes are viable alternatives to the spacetime singularities that Albert Einstein hypothesized to be at the center of black holes.

    According to the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity, singularities are created when matter in a region becomes too dense, as in the superdense heart of a black hole.

    Einstein's theory suggests that singularities do not occupy space, are infinitely dense and infinitely hot - which, in principle, is supported by numerous indirect evidence, but remains difficult to understand for many scientists.

    If Poplavsky is right, he may not have to understand.

    According to the new equations, the matter that the black hole absorbs and apparently destroys becomes the building material for galaxies, stars and planets in another reality.

    Can wormholes solve the mystery of the Big Bang?

    Poplavsky says understanding black holes as wormholes could explain certain mysteries in modern cosmology. For example, the big bang theory states that the universe began with a singularity. But scientists are not satisfied with the explanation of how such a singularity could have formed in the first place. If our universe was born from a white hole rather than a singularity, “that solves the problem of black hole singularities and the big bang singularity.”

    Wormholes may also explain gamma-ray bursts, the second most powerful explosions in the universe after the Big Bang. Gamma-ray bursts occur on the periphery of the known universe. They have been linked to supernovae, or star deaths, in distant galaxies, but their exact sources are a mystery. Poplavsky suggests that the bursts may be ejections of matter from alternative universes. Matter enters our universe through supermassive black holes - wormholes - at the hearts of galaxies, although it is not clear how this is possible.

    “The idea is crazy, but who knows?” says the scientist.
    There is at least one way to test Poplavsky's theory. Some of the black holes in our universe are spinning, and if our universe was born inside the same spinning black hole, then it should inherit the rotation of its parent object. If future experiments show that our universe rotates in the expected direction, this could be indirect evidence of the wormhole theory.

    Can wormholes produce “exotic matter”?

    The wormhole theory may also explain why some features of our universe deviate from what the theory predicts, according to physicists. Based on the Standard Model of physics, after the Big Bang, the curvature of the Universe should increase with time, so after 13.7 billion years, that is, today, we should be sitting on the surface of a closed spherical Universe.

    However, observations show that the Universe is flat in all directions. Additionally, light data from the young Universe shows that the temperature after the big bang was roughly the same everywhere. This means that the most distant objects we see at the opposite end of the universe were close enough to each other that they were in equilibrium, like gas molecules in a sealed chamber.

    Again, the observations do not match the predictions because the opposite objects in the known universe are so far apart that the time it would take to travel between them at the speed of light exceeds the age of the universe.

    To explain the discrepancies, astronomers developed the inflationary theory.

    Inflation suggests that shortly after the universe was created, it experienced a rapid growth spurt during which space itself expanded at faster than the speed of light. The universe stretched from the size of an atom to astronomical proportions in a fraction of a second.

    The universe therefore appears flat because we are on a sphere which is extremely large from our point of view; so the Earth appears flat to someone standing in a field.

    Inflation also explains how objects that are far apart could once be close enough to interact. But even if we assume that inflation is real, astronomers struggle to explain what caused it. And this is where the new wormhole theory comes to the rescue.

    According to Poplavsky, some inflationary theories say the event was caused by "exotic matter," a theoretical substance that is different from normal matter in part because it is repelled rather than attracted by gravity. Based on these equations, Poplavsky concluded that such exotic matter could have arisen when some of the first massive stars collapsed into wormholes.

    "There may have been some interaction between the exotic matter that formed the wormholes and the exotic matter that caused the inflation," he says.
    Wormhole equations - "a good solution"

    The new model is not the first to suggest that other universes exist inside black holes. Damien Isson, a theoretical physicist at the University of Arizona, has previously suggested this.

    "What's new? That the solution to wormholes in general relativity is a transition from the outside of the black hole to the inside of the new universe,” says Isson, who was not involved in Poplavsky’s research. “We simply assumed that such a solution could exist, but Poplavsky found it.”
    However, the idea seems very controversial to Isson.

    "Is it possible? Yes. Is such a scenario likely? Don't even know. But it’s definitely interesting.”
    Future work in quantum gravity—the study of gravity at the subatomic level—will refine the equations and potentially confirm or refute Poplavsky's theory.

    There is nothing surprising in the wormhole theory

    Overall, the wormhole theory is interesting, but not groundbreaking, and doesn't shed any light on the origins of the universe, said Andreas Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, who was also not involved in the study.

    By asserting that our universe was created from a piece of matter from the parent universe, the theory simply shifts the event of the origin of all things into an alternative reality. In other words, it does not explain how the parent universe arose or why ours has the properties it does - moreover, the properties must be inherited, which means the parent universe will be the same.

    “There are several pressing problems that we are trying to solve, and it is not clear where this will all lead,” he says, noting Poplavsky’s research.
    However, Albrecht doesn't find the idea of ​​wormholes linking universes any weirder than the idea of ​​singularities in black holes, and he's not about to throw out a new theory just because it looks a little crazy.

    "Everything people do in this industry is pretty weird," he says. - “You have no right to say that the less strange idea will win, because this will not happen, under any circumstances.”

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