Do We Live in a Black Hole? Here's What Experts Say

There are speculations that we may be living in a black hole. However, even experts are divided on whether their theory is true.

Are We Living in a Black Hole?

Astronomers have different opinions about the theory that we are inside a massive black hole.

Paul M. Stutter, a Science educator and theoretical cosmologist, said we are not living in a black hole. However, it is possible that our universe was born from one.

Scott Field, an associate professor of Mathematics, said we are inside a massive black hole. He said the galaxy is its center, and the size of the black hole is similar to the size of the Earth. If this were the case, experts would notice distortion caused by gravitational pull, and one example would be spaghettification or objects being stretched out because of the gravity of a black hole. If the theory is true that we live in a black hole, then the Schwarzschild black hole equation should be answered.

A Schwarzschild black hole is the simplest type of black hole theory, yet it can't exist in the real world. It is a massless object in spacetime that does not rotate or have any electric charge. This resulted from Karl Schwarzschild's 1916 accurate solution to Einstein's general relativity equations.

There are three essential features of a Schwarzschild black hole -- (1) a photon sphere 1.5 times bigger than the Schwarzschild radius; (2) an event horizon or the outer surface of the black hole; its distance from the singularity is the Schwarzschild radius; and (3) a point singularity where space and time have infinite curvature.

However, other experts argue that it doesn't always mean a universe is inside a black hole if the Schwarzschild radius encloses all its mass. So, if the mass of our universe is five times smaller than the Schwarzschild radius, it remains unclear if we are indeed inside a black hole because we are constantly expanding.

Meanwhile, physicist David Kahana said a black hole swallowing the Earth a billion years ago could not have happened because we would have been destroyed.

Although there seem to be clues suggesting we live inside a black hole, the possibility that we are not is also present. So, it remains unclear whether we live in a black hole.

What Is a Black Hole?

A black hole is a celestial object so powerful in its gravitational field that nothing can escape it, not even light. The "surface" of a black hole, also known as its event horizon, is the point in space where the speed limit of light is exceeded by the velocity required to escape. Radiation and matter enter, but they are unable to exit.

Two major categories of black holes have been well-studied. Supermassive objects, weighing between 100,000 and billions of solar masses, are located in the centers of most large galaxies, including ours. Stellar-mass black holes, which have masses ranging from three to dozens of times that of the Sun, are dispersed throughout the Milky Way galaxy. After they are created, black holes can expand by absorbing material like gas from nearby stars and other black holes.

A stellar-mass black hole is created when a star with more than 20 solar masses runs out of nuclear fuel in its core and collapses under its weight. The collapse generates a supernova explosion that blows off the star's outer layers. However, no known force can arrest the collapse of the crushed core into a black hole if it has more mass than roughly three times that of the Sun. Although their formation is poorly understood, supermassive black holes have been known to exist since the very beginning of a galaxy's existence.

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