Don’t look at Black Holes Too Closely, They Might Disappear

http://www.universetoday.com/118794/do-time-and-space-exist-at-the-smallest-scales/
Don’t look at Black Holes Too Closely, They Might Disappear

We’ve come a long way in 13.8 billion years; but despite our impressively extensive understanding of the Universe, there are still a few strings left untied. For one, there is the oft-cited disconnect between general relativity, the physics of the very large, and quantum mechanics, the physics of the very small. Then there is problematic fate of a particle’s intrinsic information after it falls into a black hole. Now, a new interpretation of fundamental physics attempts to solve both of these conundrums by making a daring claim: at certain scales, space and time simply do not exist.


Let’s start with something that is not in question. Thanks to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, we can all agree that the speed of light is constant for all observers. We can also agree that, if you’re not a photon, approaching light speed comes with some pretty funky rules – namely, anyone watching you will see your length compress and your watch slow down.

But the slowing of time also occurs near gravitationally potent objects, which are described by general relativity. So if you happen to be sight-seeing in the center of the Milky Way and you make the regrettable decision to get too close to our supermassive black hole’s event horizon (more sinisterly known as its point-of-no-return), anyone observing you will also see your watch slow down. In fact, he or she will witness your motion toward the event horizon slow dramatically over an infinite amount of time; that is, from your now-traumatized friend’s perspective, you never actually cross the event horizon. You, however, will feel no difference in the progression of time as you fall past this invisible barrier, soon to be spaghettified by the black hole’s immense gravity.

So, who is “correct”? Relativity dictates that each observer’s point of view is equally valid; but in this situation, you can’t both be right. Do you face your demise in the heart of a black hole, or don’t you? (Note: This isn’t strictly a paradox, but intuitively, it feels a little sticky.)

And there is an additional, bigger problem. A black hole’s event horizon is thought to give rise to Hawking radiation, a kind of escaping energy that will eventually lead to both the evaporation of the black hole and the destruction of all of the matter and energy that was once held inside of it. This concept has black hole physicists scratching their heads. Because according to the laws of physics, all of the intrinsic information about a particle or system (namely, the quantum wavefunction) must be conserved. It cannot just disappear.

Why all of these bizarre paradoxes? Because black holes exist in the nebulous space where a singularity meets general relativity – fertile, yet untapped ground for the elusive theory of everything.

Enter two interesting, yet controversial concepts: doubly special relativity and gravity’s rainbow.

Just as the speed of light is a universally agreed-upon constant in special relativity, so is the Planck energy in doubly special relativity (DSR). In DSR, this value (1.22 x 1019 GeV) is the maximum energy (and thus, the maximum mass) that a particle can have in our Universe.

Two important consequences of DSR’s maximum energy value are minimum units of time and space. That is, regardless of whether you are moving or stationary, in empty space or near a black hole, you will agree that classical space breaks down at distances shorter than the Planck length (1.6 x 10-35 m) and classical time breaks down at moments briefer than the Planck time (5.4 x 10-44 sec).

In other words, spacetime is discrete. It exists in indivisible (albeit vanishingly small) units. Quantum below, classical above. Add general relativity into the picture, and you get the theory of gravity’s rainbow.

Physicists Ahmed Farag Ali, Mir Faizal, and Barun Majumder believe that these theories can be used to explain away the aforementioned black hole conundrums – both your controversial spaghettification and the information paradox. How? According to DSR and gravity’s rainbow, in regions smaller than 1.6 x 10-35 m and at times shorter than 5.4 x 10-44 sec… the Universe as we know it simply does not exist.


“In gravity’s rainbow, space does not exist below a certain minimum length, and time does not exist below a certain minimum time interval,” explained Ali, who, along with Faizal and Majumder, authored a paper on this topic that was published last month. “So, all objects existing in space and occurring at a time do not exist below that length and time interval [which are associated with the Planck scale].”

Luckily for us, every particle we know of, and thus every particle we are made of, is much larger than the Planck length and endures for much longer than the Planck time. So – phew! – you and I and everything we see and know can go on existing. (Just don’t probe too deeply.)

The event horizon of a black hole, however, is a different story. After all, the event horizon isn’t made of particles. It is pure spacetime. And according to Ali and his colleagues, if you could observe it on extremely short time or distance scales, it would cease to have meaning. It wouldn’t be a point-of-no-return at all. In their view, the paradox only arises when you treat spacetime as continuous – without minimum units of length and time.

“As the information paradox depends on the existence of the event horizon, and an event horizon like all objects does not exist below a certain length and time interval, then there is no absolute information paradox in gravity’s rainbow. The absence of an effective horizon means that there is nothing absolutely stopping information from going out of the black hole,” concluded Ali.

No absolute event horizon, no information paradox.

And what of your spaghettification within the black hole? Again, it depends on the scale at which you choose to analyze your situation. In gravity’s rainbow, spacetime is discrete; therefore, the mathematics reveal that both you (the doomed in-faller) and your observer will witness your demise within a finite length of time. But in the current formulation of general relativity, where spacetime is described as continuous, the paradox arises. The in-faller, well, falls in; meanwhile, the observer never sees the in-faller pass the event horizon.

“The most important lesson from this paper is that space and time exist only beyond a certain scale,” said Ali. “There is no space and time below that scale. Hence, it is meaningless to define particles, matter, or any object, including black holes, that exist in space and time below that scale. Thus, as long as we keep ourselves confined to the scales at which both space and time exist, we get sensible physical answers. However, when we try to ask questions at length and time intervals that are below the scales at which space and time exist, we end up getting paradoxes and problems.”

To recap: if spacetime continues on arbitrarily small scales, the paradoxes remain. If, however, gravity’s rainbow is correct and the Planck length and the Planck time are the smallest unit of space and time that fundamentally exist, we’re in the clear… at least, mathematically speaking. Unfortunately, the Planck scales are far too tiny for our measly modern particle colliders to probe. So, at least for now, this work provides yet another purely theoretical result.

The paper was published in the January 23 issue of Europhysics Letters. A pre-print of the paper is available here.
http://www.universetoday.com/118794/do-time-and-space-exist-at-the-smallest-scales/

 

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The creation will always think that it is the creation that is significant leading to eternal blindness..."Asymptote"

Great post Paddo

 

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The discrete version of space-time you describe is an artifact derived of the discrete energy nature of matter, not of energy, nor of space-time itself.

There is fundamentally only energy and time, neither of which is discrete until or unless the energy becomes bound, as it is in matter. There is no smallest element of space or of time. Below a certain threshold, however, all energy becomes virtual.

 

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Here is the full paper at.....
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.1980v2.pdf

If I'm discussing cosmology with anyone, I generally quote the BB as the evolution of space and time [spacetime] as we know them.
I believe a similar description could be given to spacetime at below the Planck level, as spacetime, as we don't know it.

And please note, the article itself concludes with
" So, at least for now, this work provides yet another purely theoretical result".
Nice article that is food for thought.

 

And energy becomes bound because time compresses space forcing distance into a singularity this is why space time can transcend the speed of light, spacetime at an infinite speed pushing backwards on space creates the force of gravity. spacetime is absolute energy is absolute so the more time is expanded the more energy becomes bound and the more unique kinds of matter is created. so spacetime is essentially sqrt{space} this is why the CMB has that little marking that hints of pre big bang origins. Spacetime is the eather the fabric that holds everything together. And spacetime is essentially compressed space witch is the big crunch that has already taking place. The future essentially creating the past "call me crazy all you want..."But please feel free to constructively critisize because this is just an idea and I love fine tuning. So space with out spacetime is completely deterministic but once distance is added and it becomes spacetime then we get the probable universe we all know and love, becuase now we can move around and do things and have matter(s) particle's and duality plus multidimensionality. And I also believe the mathematics for this is contained in the series of infinite "Primes" just an inference though.

 

"Infinite regression" and mass...

 

If mean by virtual " almost being " , I disagree

Energy , as being plasmic never becomes " almost being " it will aways exist under any circumstances , for if the virtual were true then the energy would be completely annihilated , eventually

Which would imply that something came from nothing , which I disagree with

 

All things beyond perceptual capabilities is undefined and the limited capacity owned by the observer will call it "nothing" "0" these are constructs of the ego a concept arising out of lack and incompleteness and ultimately insecurity and fear the descent of consciousness. Hence the creation of the electron -1 for the creation will cease to exist without feeding of the perpetual energy of the creator "1"

 

Yes it seems one is more thinking upon the observer rather than the object(s) themselves , which I tend to do

The observer is unimportant to the object

 

...noted!

 

You are allowed to disagree with whatever you like, and believe in whatever myth you chose. That's your choice.
Science operates via a tried and true methodology that sorts out the wheat from the chaff, and explains why that long dead defunct Plasma/Electric Universe theory is no longer considered.

Although cosmological knowledge is still limited somewhat, reasonable speculative scenarios, based on current knowledge have been put forward.
see......
The Universe: the ultimate free lunch:
http://fisica.ciencias.uchile.cl/~gonzalo/cursos/termo_II-04/seminarios/EJP_Stenger-bigbang_90.pdf

or this......
https://www.astrosociety.org/publications/a-universe-from-nothing/


A Universe from Nothing
by Alexei V. Filippenko and Jay M. Pasachoff

In the inflationary theory, matter, antimatter, and photons were produced by the energy of the false vacuum, which was released following the phase transition. All of these particles consist of positive energy. This energy, however, is exactly balanced by the negative gravitational energy of everything pulling on everything else. In other words, the total energy of the universe is zero! It is remarkable that the universe consists of essentially nothing, but (fortunately for us) in positive and negative parts. You can easily see that gravity is associated with negative energy: If you drop a ball from rest (defined to be a state of zero energy), it gains energy of motion (kinetic energy) as it falls. But this gain is exactly balanced by a larger negative gravitational energy as it comes closer to Earth’s center, so the sum of the two energies remains zero.

The idea of a zero-energy universe, together with inflation, suggests that all one needs is just a tiny bit of energy to get the whole thing started (that is, a tiny volume of energy in which inflation can begin). The universe then experiences inflationary expansion, but without creating net energy.

What produced the energy before inflation? This is perhaps the ultimate question. As crazy as it might seem, the energy may have come out of nothing! The meaning of “nothing” is somewhat ambiguous here. It might be the vacuum in some pre-existing space and time, or it could be nothing at all – that is, all concepts of space and time were created with the universe itself.

Quantum theory, and specifically Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, provide a natural explanation for how that energy may have come out of nothing. Throughout the universe, particles and antiparticles spontaneously form and quickly annihilate each other without violating the law of energy conservation. These spontaneous births and deaths of so-called “virtual particle” pairs are known as “quantum fluctuations.” Indeed, laboratory experiments have proven that quantum fluctuations occur everywhere, all the time. Virtual particle pairs (such as electrons and positrons) directly affect the energy levels of atoms, and the predicted energy levels disagree with the experimentally measured levels unless quantum fluctuations are taken into account.

Perhaps many quantum fluctuations occurred before the birth of our universe. Most of them quickly disappeared. But one lived sufficiently long and had the right conditions for inflation to have been initiated. Thereafter, the original tiny volume inflated by an enormous factor, and our macroscopic universe was born. The original particle-antiparticle pair (or pairs) may have subsequently annihilated each other – but even if they didn’t, the violation of energy conservation would be minuscule, not large enough to be measurable.

If this admittedly speculative hypothesis is correct, then the answer to the ultimate question is that the universe is the ultimate free lunch! It came from nothing, and its total energy is zero, but it nevertheless has incredible structure and complexity. There could even be many other such universes, spatially distinct from ours.

 

Pad

Your so concentrated on what or what believe that you miss the point

 

Pad

No matter how small , something is always there

Zero-Point is a mathematical expression , given to a physical thing , which clearly isn't non-existent

 

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Thanks for your advice and knowledge. I'll stick to more reputable, knowledgable sources though.

 

So you can't reason it out on your own .......ahhh....

 

If that's the way you wish to interpret it, great.
Far far more sensible than believing and reading cheap trash about giants, ghosts, goblins, the Burmuda triangle woo and other outstandingly stupid illogical myths you chose as reality.

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I investigate them

You don't

 

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Not really. In fact in reality not at all. Unless you interpret reading cheap trash and contrived nonsensical controversies as investigating.
I mean really, your history here, and what you chose to believe, rather than investigate, borders on the childhood beliefs of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

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Your knowledge, or lack thereof of the physics of the Sun, is a good example of that.

 

To your last statement who knows it all pad. Nobody that I know of .....by the way this not a discouragement to those who try , by the way

 

This at least we can all agree on.