My understanding is that the singularity is not proven to exist and many physicists believe it is an artifact of our incorrect understanding of the physics involved.
Well, what exactly is inside the event horizon is unproven because we cannot possibly look. All of the rest of the physics seems to check out, though, and we know that there are things out there that behave just like our models of black holes predict. It’s an incomplete understanding rather than a necessarily incorrect one. If it is something else, it’d have to be something that looks more or less exactly like a black hole to an outside observer
I would think an object of extremely high density could be difficult to distinguish from a point of infinite density, especially given the nature of the event horizon.
I’m not saying the models are definitely wrong but usually when one of your terms goes to infinity it is a good reason to be skeptical.
There’s lot’s of issues with current physics, mostly in cosmology. String Theory was partly invented to describe the interior of a black hole. The characteristics of the Higgs field are still unknown. Gravity is still not unified with the other forces, despite appearing to couple with everything. Our current best models for the formation of the universe predict huge amounts of invisible matter, and we have no idea what that could be, from new particles to microscopic black holes formed in the first nanoseconds of the universe, to reinterpretations of relativity. Those same models also predict that out universe is dominated by strange energy inherent to space itself, which has no basis in the Standard Model at all. I wouldn’t call these perfectly fine answers.
And even if the nature of the interior of a black hole what the only issue, the final part of physics we haven’t explained, I would say we’ve thought that before. About a century ago, the scientific community though they had mostly solved physics. The last big question was why ultraviolet light didn’t extend out to infinite energy as predicted. Then photons happened and we discovered quantum physics.
The comment above was about the singularity, so “the rest” clearly does not include the singularity
I don’t think “no interpretable meaning in physics” is a reasonable description, though. In classical mechanics, sure, but we’ve got plenty of physics that doesn’t work in classical mechanics
Non-classical mechanics includes things like quantum physics and (depending on who you ask) special relativity. They feel extremely counterintuitive but they provide pretty reliable explanations for how things work. That infinite density doesn’t make sense in our regular understanding of the world doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a useful model. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true, of course, but the fact that it seems weird isn’t really important. It might just be that physics inside a black hole permit for something that we can best describe as infinitely dense
Infinite density doesn’t seem “weird”, it is meaningless and indicates that our model incomplete and simply cannot make predictions beyond a certain point. You don’t look at an equation that divides by zero and think, “maybe someday this will make sense.” It will never make sense because it will always be undefined, and you need to start looking for your mistake.
You seem to be suggesting that there is a non-classical physical model that resolves the paradox. But you don’t claim that any such one exists. The physics inside a black hole might be different than here on Earth, but mathematics is not. There is no mathematical way to interpret the singularity, and so there can never be a physical interpretation. The model is meaningless deep inside a black hole. We will not know what happens until we develop a more complete model, not a better interpretation of this bogus prediction.
I am not suggesting that there is a non-classical model that accurately explains the inside of black holes, I am saying that due to our inherent lack of any evidence we should not be immediately discounting the models that work exceptionally well where we do have evidence just because they give us results that feel weird to us. Quantum superpositions were also widely rejected early on because they seemed impossible to meaningfully interpret, and yet now we can make computers do maths with them
You don’t look at an equation that divides by zero and think, “maybe someday this will make sense.” It will never make sense because it will always be undefined, and you need to start looking for your mistake.
This is like saying that the equation of velocity = distance divided by time doesn’t make sense because if you travel somewhere in zero time then you have to divide by zero. The equation is correct and has physical meaning, it just so happens that moving somewhere always takes some time. We can understand just perfectly what moving somewhere in zero time would be, we just don’t know of any way to make it happen. Loads of useful and practically-applicable equations have vertical asymptotes. Maybe there’s something that prevents the inside of a black hole from collapsing to an actual point. Maybe space-time really does just collapse inside the black hole. The model would still be useful and mostly accurate, just incomplete
If the whole universe comes from the singularity and you need just a tiny fraction of it in a limited space to create a black hole, why the universe even exists and even more so, it’s expanding each day faster?
The theories on why are a fair bit beyond my knowledge of physics, but I do know that they’re not necessarily the same kind of singularity. Inside a black hole (assuming our models are correct), spacetime curvature goes towards infinity. At the big bang, there may not have even been spacetime as we see it in our current universe, or whatever causes the expansion of spacetime may have been so powerful that it caused the earliest spacetime to not curve despite all the gravity
The singularity of a black hole is located in space.
The initial singularity of the big bag happened “everywhere” the whole universe was supposed to have infinite density.
The mass of the black hole is finite. It’s very dense but it have a quantifiable amount of mass.
For the big bang the mass was also infinite as far as we know. Everything was singularity, every “energy” in your body was part of that infinitely large singularity. Not only everything but everywhere. Where you sit there was singularity during the big bang. As far as we know every single point in space was part of the initial singularity. We don’t come from a single point that exploded towards empty space. Expansion is more like the surface of a balloon. Maybe it’s better to think of it as stretching rather than expanding.
Beyond that we don’t know much about both, there are barriers which prevent direct observation of both.
The expansion of the universe is a completely different matter, as it’s not only expanding, it’s expanding faster that out gravitational models predict, like the universe is not only “ignoring” black holes, it’s expanding despite all observable matter, and all untraceable matter (dark matter), and it’s expanding faster and faster driven by an unknown phenomenon we call “dark energy” for giving it a name, because we have remotely not idea of what’s going on.
The initial singularity of the big bag happened “everywhere” the whole universe was supposed to have infinite density.
If the density throughout all space was truly infinite, then the volume of space had to be ZERO. Otherwise the density would have been a very very large but finite number. And if it were infinite and non-zero volume, no amount of inflation would cause it to stop being infinite. Infinity divided by any positive number is infinity.
My understanding is that the singularity is not proven to exist and many physicists believe it is an artifact of our incorrect understanding of the physics involved.
Well, what exactly is inside the event horizon is unproven because we cannot possibly look. All of the rest of the physics seems to check out, though, and we know that there are things out there that behave just like our models of black holes predict. It’s an incomplete understanding rather than a necessarily incorrect one. If it is something else, it’d have to be something that looks more or less exactly like a black hole to an outside observer
I would think an object of extremely high density could be difficult to distinguish from a point of infinite density, especially given the nature of the event horizon.
I’m not saying the models are definitely wrong but usually when one of your terms goes to infinity it is a good reason to be skeptical.
All models are wrong. Some are useful
What is the entire problem, because all of the rest of the physics don’t get you coherent answers around a black hole.
In one, you mean? They get you perfectly fine answers around one
There’s lot’s of issues with current physics, mostly in cosmology. String Theory was partly invented to describe the interior of a black hole. The characteristics of the Higgs field are still unknown. Gravity is still not unified with the other forces, despite appearing to couple with everything. Our current best models for the formation of the universe predict huge amounts of invisible matter, and we have no idea what that could be, from new particles to microscopic black holes formed in the first nanoseconds of the universe, to reinterpretations of relativity. Those same models also predict that out universe is dominated by strange energy inherent to space itself, which has no basis in the Standard Model at all. I wouldn’t call these perfectly fine answers.
And even if the nature of the interior of a black hole what the only issue, the final part of physics we haven’t explained, I would say we’ve thought that before. About a century ago, the scientific community though they had mostly solved physics. The last big question was why ultraviolet light didn’t extend out to infinite energy as predicted. Then photons happened and we discovered quantum physics.
At the close vicinity where they don’t actually agree if it’s inside or outside.
You know, except for the actual singularity which has no interpretable meaning in physics
The comment above was about the singularity, so “the rest” clearly does not include the singularity
I don’t think “no interpretable meaning in physics” is a reasonable description, though. In classical mechanics, sure, but we’ve got plenty of physics that doesn’t work in classical mechanics
okay what does infinite density mean in avant-garde mechanics?
Non-classical mechanics includes things like quantum physics and (depending on who you ask) special relativity. They feel extremely counterintuitive but they provide pretty reliable explanations for how things work. That infinite density doesn’t make sense in our regular understanding of the world doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a useful model. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true, of course, but the fact that it seems weird isn’t really important. It might just be that physics inside a black hole permit for something that we can best describe as infinitely dense
Infinite density doesn’t seem “weird”, it is meaningless and indicates that our model incomplete and simply cannot make predictions beyond a certain point. You don’t look at an equation that divides by zero and think, “maybe someday this will make sense.” It will never make sense because it will always be undefined, and you need to start looking for your mistake.
You seem to be suggesting that there is a non-classical physical model that resolves the paradox. But you don’t claim that any such one exists. The physics inside a black hole might be different than here on Earth, but mathematics is not. There is no mathematical way to interpret the singularity, and so there can never be a physical interpretation. The model is meaningless deep inside a black hole. We will not know what happens until we develop a more complete model, not a better interpretation of this bogus prediction.
I am not suggesting that there is a non-classical model that accurately explains the inside of black holes, I am saying that due to our inherent lack of any evidence we should not be immediately discounting the models that work exceptionally well where we do have evidence just because they give us results that feel weird to us. Quantum superpositions were also widely rejected early on because they seemed impossible to meaningfully interpret, and yet now we can make computers do maths with them
This is like saying that the equation of velocity = distance divided by time doesn’t make sense because if you travel somewhere in zero time then you have to divide by zero. The equation is correct and has physical meaning, it just so happens that moving somewhere always takes some time. We can understand just perfectly what moving somewhere in zero time would be, we just don’t know of any way to make it happen. Loads of useful and practically-applicable equations have vertical asymptotes. Maybe there’s something that prevents the inside of a black hole from collapsing to an actual point. Maybe space-time really does just collapse inside the black hole. The model would still be useful and mostly accurate, just incomplete
If the whole universe comes from the singularity and you need just a tiny fraction of it in a limited space to create a black hole, why the universe even exists and even more so, it’s expanding each day faster?
The theories on why are a fair bit beyond my knowledge of physics, but I do know that they’re not necessarily the same kind of singularity. Inside a black hole (assuming our models are correct), spacetime curvature goes towards infinity. At the big bang, there may not have even been spacetime as we see it in our current universe, or whatever causes the expansion of spacetime may have been so powerful that it caused the earliest spacetime to not curve despite all the gravity
Different things.
The singularity of a black hole is located in space.
The initial singularity of the big bag happened “everywhere” the whole universe was supposed to have infinite density.
The mass of the black hole is finite. It’s very dense but it have a quantifiable amount of mass.
For the big bang the mass was also infinite as far as we know. Everything was singularity, every “energy” in your body was part of that infinitely large singularity. Not only everything but everywhere. Where you sit there was singularity during the big bang. As far as we know every single point in space was part of the initial singularity. We don’t come from a single point that exploded towards empty space. Expansion is more like the surface of a balloon. Maybe it’s better to think of it as stretching rather than expanding.
Beyond that we don’t know much about both, there are barriers which prevent direct observation of both.
The expansion of the universe is a completely different matter, as it’s not only expanding, it’s expanding faster that out gravitational models predict, like the universe is not only “ignoring” black holes, it’s expanding despite all observable matter, and all untraceable matter (dark matter), and it’s expanding faster and faster driven by an unknown phenomenon we call “dark energy” for giving it a name, because we have remotely not idea of what’s going on.
If the density throughout all space was truly infinite, then the volume of space had to be ZERO. Otherwise the density would have been a very very large but finite number. And if it were infinite and non-zero volume, no amount of inflation would cause it to stop being infinite. Infinity divided by any positive number is infinity.
There are no naked singularities
But I read there were naked singularities in my area.
It’s a scam, you get there and find it’s all horny housewives.
A hole is a hole.