This Black Hole Could be Bigger Than The Universe
Summary
TLDRThe 'kurzgesagt Guide to Curiosity' is an interactive adventure across 160 pages that aims to transform one's perspective on the universe. It delves into the mysteries of black holes, revealing their potential to create infinite universes and challenging our understanding of space and time. The script ponders the possibility that our universe might be inside a black hole and explores the cosmic implications of black holes giving birth to new universes. It suggests a cosmos of black holes within black holes, each potentially harboring life. The guide encourages viewers to unlock their curiosity, embarking on quests that awaken their wonder and understanding of the cosmos, all while supporting the creation of more enlightening 'kurzgesagt' content.
Takeaways
- 🌌 The script introduces 'The kurzgesagt Guide to Curiosity,' an interactive adventure book available on the kurzgesagt shop.
- 🕳️ The concept of black holes being much stranger than commonly understood is presented, suggesting that everything could potentially be black holes nested within each other.
- 🌐 It's explained that black holes aren't necessarily formed from ultra-dense matter; they can be created by concentrating mass in a small space, with larger black holes being less dense.
- 🌍 The Earth and the Sun are used as examples to illustrate the concept that any object can become a black hole if compressed to a critical size.
- 🔍 The script challenges the typical explanation of black holes by stating that they can be less dense than expected, with supermassive black holes having densities comparable to air or a mountain range.
- 🌌 The idea that our universe could be inside a black hole is explored, considering the observable universe's mass and density.
- 💥 The script describes the interior of a black hole, where space and time behave differently, and the concept of a singularity as an event in time, not a location.
- 🔁 The possibility of a 'Big Bounce' is introduced, where a collapsing universe could rebound and give birth to a new universe inside a black hole.
- 🌟 The concept of universes creating black holes, which in turn create new universes, is presented as a form of cosmic natural selection.
- 🧬 The script suggests that universes with the right conditions to create many black holes may also be the best at fostering life.
- 🤔 While the ideas are based on real science, they remain speculative and untestable, prompting viewers to consider the philosophical implications of such a cosmos.
Q & A
What is the premise of the kurzgesagt Guide to Curiosity?
-The kurzgesagt Guide to Curiosity is an interactive adventure across 160 pages designed to change one's perspective on the world by exploring various scientific concepts and theories.
How does the script suggest black holes could be formed?
-The script suggests that black holes can be formed by squeezing any object to a critical limit, where even the Earth or the Sun can become a black hole if compressed to the size of a coin or a small city, respectively.
What is the relationship between the size of a black hole and its density?
-As black holes increase in size, their density decreases. A black hole with the mass of the Sun is only about 6 km wide and has a density comparable to one Himalayan range per cubic meter.
How does the script describe the concept of a black hole in the context of the universe?
-The script proposes that the observable universe could theoretically be a black hole itself, given that all the mass within it is enough to create a black hole larger than the observable universe.
What is the role of time and space inside a black hole according to the script?
-Inside a black hole, time and space switch roles at the event horizon. Time becomes finite and space goes on forever, leading to a complex geometry where one could theoretically walk in one direction indefinitely or arrive at the same place from another direction.
How does the script relate the concept of a singularity to the future?
-The script describes the singularity not as a place but as an event in time. Once the black hole universe collapses into a singularity, all of space turns into an infinitely small region with infinite gravity and energy, effectively stopping the existence of time and space as we know it.
What is the 'Big Bounce' scenario mentioned in the script?
-The 'Big Bounce' scenario is a hypothetical event where, after a universe collapses into a singularity during a 'Big Crunch', space might expand again, similar to a rubber ball rebounding after being squeezed, potentially giving birth to a new universe inside a black hole.
How does the script connect the creation of black holes to the potential for life?
-The script suggests that if universes are optimized to create many black holes, they are also optimized to create many galaxies and stars, which in turn provides the conditions for life to emerge. Universes that are best at creating new universes are also best at creating life.
What is the significance of the 'cosmic air' concept in the script?
-The 'cosmic air' concept refers to the average density of the universe, which is about 5 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter. The script uses this to illustrate that even with a low density, the total mass in the observable universe is sufficient to form a black hole.
What is the 'curiosity quest' mentioned in the script?
-The 'curiosity quest' is a part of the kurzgesagt Guide to Curiosity, which involves 18 interactive challenges designed to awaken curiosity and change one's perspective on the world through various activities such as finding creatures, building structures, cooking, and solving riddles.
How does the script encourage the reader to embrace their curiosity?
-The script encourages the reader to embrace their curiosity by presenting the idea that everyone is born with the power to illuminate the darkness of the universe and uncover its mysteries. It invites the reader to join the adventure of the Guide to Curiosity and become a 'chosen birb' capable of mastering this power.
Outlines
🌌 The Mysteries of Black Holes and the Universe
This paragraph introduces 'The kurzgesagt Guide to Curiosity,' a 160-page interactive adventure that aims to shift one's perspective on the world. It delves into the enigmatic nature of black holes, suggesting that everything could potentially be nested black holes. The script challenges traditional notions by explaining that black holes can form without ultra-dense matter and that larger black holes are paradoxically less dense. The paragraph also explores the concept that the observable universe could theoretically be a black hole itself, with a mass sufficient to create one ten times larger than what we perceive. However, it acknowledges the expanding nature of the universe as a contradiction to this idea and hints at a more complex reality involving the potential for universes to be born within black holes.
🕳️ Journey Inside a Black Hole and the Birth of Universes
The second paragraph takes a conceptual leap into the interior of a black hole, describing a reality where space and time are inverted. It discusses the idea that a black hole contains an infinite universe with no center and that time within is finite, leading to a collapse into a singularity. This singularity is not a location but an event in time, where everything is compressed into an infinitely small point with immense gravity and energy. The paragraph then speculates on the possibility of a 'Big Bounce,' suggesting that a new universe could be born from the collapse of a black hole, undetectable from the outside. It further explores the notion of a cosmic cycle where universes are born within black holes, potentially leading to a multiverse with varying physical laws, and ponders whether our universe was born this way, setting the stage for the possibility of infinite black hole universes.
🎓 Unleashing Curiosity: The Ultimate Adventure Awaits
The final paragraph shifts focus to the 'Guide to Curiosity' itself, inviting readers on an adventure across 160 interactive pages designed to awaken and enhance curiosity. It outlines the structure of the guide, which includes quests, challenges, and riddles that encourage exploration and learning. The paragraph emphasizes the development process at kurzgesagt headquarters, highlighting the extensive research and iterative design that went into crafting the experience. It concludes with an invitation to the kurzgesagt shop to discover if the reader is the 'chosen birb,' and expresses gratitude for the support that enables the creation of such content, reinforcing the idea that curiosity is a fundamental human trait that can illuminate the mysteries of the universe.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Black Hole
💡Event Horizon
💡Singularity
💡Cosmic Air
💡Density
💡Supermassive Black Hole
💡Cosmic Self-Reproduction
💡Big Crunch
💡Curiosity
💡Observable Universe
💡Natural Selection
Highlights
The kurzgesagt Guide to Curiosity is an interactive adventure across 160 pages designed to change your perspective on the world.
Black holes are much stranger than commonly explained, potentially destroying and creating space and time, and possibly giving rise to infinite universes.
Everything can become a black hole if compressed to a critical limit, such as Earth to the size of a coin.
Contrary to common explanations, black holes do not require ultra-dense matter; they form from mass concentration in a tiny space.
Larger black holes are less dense, with a sun-mass black hole being only 6 km wide and having the density of one Himalayan range per cubic meter.
A supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's center has a density comparable to 6 blue whales per cubic meter.
An ultramassive black hole, IRAS 20100−4156, has a mass of 3.8 billion suns and is as wide as a solar system, yet its density is similar to air.
Theoretically, a balloon filled with enough air could become a supermassive black hole without physical compression.
The observable universe's mass is sufficient to create a black hole 10 times larger than itself, suggesting we might live inside a cosmic-sized black hole.
The universe's expansion contradicts the idea of being inside a black hole, as an expanding universe is not expected in a black hole.
Black holes warp space-time so much that inside them, space and time switch roles, with space being infinite and time finite.
The singularity of a black hole is not a location but an event in time where everything inside is crushed into an infinitely small region.
The collapse of a black hole could resemble the Big Crunch, leading to a potential Big Bounce and the birth of a new universe inside a black hole.
If universes are born inside black holes, they might undergo natural selection, with some having different physical laws and the ability to create more black holes.
Universes optimized for creating black holes could inadvertently be optimized for creating galaxies, stars, and life.
Our universe might have the characteristics it does because it was born through a process favoring the production of many black holes.
The concept of infinite black hole universes suggests the possibility of an immense number of universes with stars and planets, potentially hosting life.
The ideas presented are speculative and not testable, but they inspire new questions and wonder about the nature of the universe.
Curiosity is the power that drives us to explore and uncover the mysteries of the world, and it is a power that everyone possesses.
Transcripts
We proudly present to you: The kurzgesagt Guide to Curiosity.
Join us on an interactive adventure across 160 thrilling pages that will change your
perspective on the world forever. Available now on the kurzgesagt shop.
You might be inside a black hole that's inside a black hole that is inside a black hole.
Everything in existence could be black holes all the way down.
It turns out black holes are much weirder than you think and they break the universe much more
than is usually explained, destroying time and space – and they may actually create infinite
universes in the process. But before we can get to that, let’s first build a black hole out of air.
Everything can become a black hole if you squeeze it to a critical limit.
You'd need to squeeze Earth down to the size of a coin for it to turn into a black hole.
The Sun needs to be squeezed down to the size of a small city to become a black hole.
And if a lot of mass is concentrated in a really tiny space, you get something super dense.
This is usually how black holes are explained. Stuff becomes super dense and collapses into
a black hole. But actually you don’t need any ultra dense stuff to make them!
We're ignoring some math here, but all you really need to know is one thing:
The larger black holes get, the less dense they are. So really large black holes are kind of thin.
A sun-mass black hole is only about 6 km wide and has a density of about one Himalayan range
per cubic meter. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way has a mass of 4
million suns, a diameter of 24 million kilometers, and a density of 6 blue whales per cubic meter.
The ultramassive black hole IRAS 20100−4156 has a mass of 3.8 billion suns and is as wide
as a solar system. But because it's so large, it is only as dense as air!
This means, at least in theory, that if you take a gigantic balloon and fill it with undecillions
of tons of air, the moment it gets to the size of a solar system, an event horizon suddenly
forms and it turns into a supermassive black hole. Without violence or squeezing.
So now let’s think big. What do we need to make a black hole the size of the universe?
A Universe-Sized Black Hole
The chunk of the universe that we can see from Earth is a sphere with a radius of 45
billion light-years, filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies, lots of gas and a bunch
of other things. If you add them up, it has the mass of about a million billion billion suns.
Which sounds a lot – but on average, the universe is not very dense. If we break up all
the galaxies, stars, gas and energy, and spread them equally inside the volume of the universe,
we get an average density of about 5 hydrogen atoms per cubic meter. You
can imagine this as the sort of ultra thin “cosmic air” that makes up the universe.
What would happen if we take a balloon as big as
the observable universe and fill it with “cosmic air”?
Well, it turns out that all the mass in the observable universe is more than enough to
create a black hole. Actually, it's enough to make a black hole 10 times
larger than the observable universe. But that can only mean one thing – we
should be living deep inside a truly gargantuan, cosmic-sized black hole!
There is one catch though. We know that our universe is expanding – and an expanding
universe is not what you'd expect to see if you were inside a black hole. So
our universe can’t be a black hole – at least not in the naive way we’ve just described.
Except there is a wild and mind-bending trick the universe could play on us.
To find out how, let's jump into a black hole and die!
A Whole Universe Born Inside a Black Hole
We usually imagine black holes as spheres with a singularity at their center,
a point where all their mass is concentrated so much that
our math breaks down. But this is a lie – they are SO much weirder.
From the outside a black hole looks like a normal black sphere. But the inside is
where things stop making sense.
Black holes warp the universe so much that, at the event horizon,
space and time switch their roles. Inside a normal sphere, space is finite but time goes on forever.
But inside a black hole it's the other way around – space goes on forever but time is finite.
So once inside, you see an infinite universe with no center. The geometry is too complicated,
so we're simplifying. But basically you could walk forever in one direction
or walk in another direction and arrive at the same place again.
But not only that. Inside a black hole time is finite, and it's now running out.
So after a while you start to notice that space itself is slowly changing. In one
direction space is being stretched, while in all other directions space is shrinking – the
whole universe is being squeezed, kind of turning into a collapsing spaghetti.
Sooner or later, the whole black hole universe collapses into itself. All of space,
every single part of it, is turning into a singularity. So the singularity of a black
hole is not at its center or in any direction at all. It's in the future
of whatever falls inside. We made a whole video about this if you want to learn more.
So the singularity is not a place where you can go – it's an event in time that happens.
Once it happens, you and everything else that fell inside the black hole will be mercilessly
crushed into an infinitely small region with infinite gravity and infinite energy. Time,
space, none of it matters anymore, both kind of stop existing in ways that we would recognize.
And then? Is this the end? Well, maybe not.
This collapse of the black hole universe into a singularity looks like one of the
scenarios for the end of our universe: The Big Crunch, where long after the Big Bang the whole
universe collapses into a singularity again.
But if there is a Big Crunch, there might be a Big Bounce –
like a rubber ball that you’ve squeezed too much and that suddenly
rebounds, space might expand again. So a new universe could be born inside a black hole.
The funny thing about this scenario is that nothing has
changed in the slightest outside the black hole. Watching from the outside,
it's still a black sphere of nothingness. And yet, on the inside a new universe has been born.
So maybe our universe was born like this and we are all actually inside
a black hole. But if our universe can also create black holes, they might give birth
to new universes. Is our black hole universe also just part of a universe “further up”,
that's also a black hole inside another universe? Is there an end to it? Is there
one original universe? Is the cosmos black holes inside black holes inside black holes?
Infinite Black Hole Universes
If the universe creates black holes that create universes,
that then create new black holes that create new universes, this cosmic self-reproduction
would be subject to natural selection. A Big Bang is a chaotic and messy event,
so it’s possible that the new daughter universes would not always be fully identical to their mums.
Sometimes physics may be slightly different, with some fundamental values higher or lower.
And so some universes might be able to create loads of stars, planets and black holes. Others
might not, maybe creating a uniform cosmic soup where no stars, planets and black holes form.
But if all universes are born inside black holes, in the long run all universe lines
that don’t create loads of black holes would die out. The universes with the
conditions for loads of black holes would become the most common and spawn the most
daughter universes. Survival of the fittest, but with universes instead of organisms.
Our observable universe alone has created at least 1017 black holes so far. So maybe our
universe has the physics and laws it has, because it was born after a long process
of cosmological selection that favored the production of tons of black holes.
And that would have a lovely side effect.
If universes are optimized to create as many new black hole universes as possible,
they're optimized to create loads of galaxies and stars. And thereby also, by accident,
the conditions for life to emerge. So universes that are the best at creating new universes are
also the best at creating life. If this scenario is true, who knows how many bazillions of black
hole universes might be out there. All with stars and planets, potentially home to others like us.
So. Is our universe like this? The truth is we don’t know. While these
ideas are based on real science and work on paper,
they're speculative and not testable. Also cyclic universes don’t actually explain why
the universe exists in the first place or why it is the way it is. Instead of providing answers,
these are really just new questions in disguise, so keep that in mind before getting too excited.
But isn’t it just wonderful and heartwarming that we're living
in a universe where ideas as big as this one are even thinkable? There might be so
much life. And if new universes are created constantly, maybe life will go on forever.
We’ve heard rumors of a chosen one. A special birb who has the power to
illuminate the vast darkness of the universe, uncovering the great mysteries of the world.
We are all born with this power. But only few are able to master it.
We use the same power here at kurzgesagt to find
the latest science and come up with the most exciting videos.
This special power is called: curiosity. And the special birb… could be you!
Our Guide to Curiosity is now available on our shop. It’s an adventure that will help
you to think like a kurzgesagt birb and unlock your curiosity potential.
Join us across 160 thrilling, interactive pages designed to awaken your curiosity,
changing your perspective on the world forever.
But be prepared! We will send you on epic quests to find incredible creatures,
challenge you to build unprecedented structures,
ask you to cook up something surprising, and solve riddles to unveil hidden truths about the world.
But don’t worry, the birbs will be with you every step of the way. And you can also bring a friend!
The 18 curiosity quests were developed right here at the kurzgesagt headquarters.
After hundreds and hundreds of hours of research and lots of trial and error,
we created the ultimate curiosity adventure. It was the most fun we ever had making
a product – and we are so excited to finally share this experience with you.
So head over to the kurzgesagt shop and find out if you are the chosen birb.
Every kurzgesagt product you buy directly funds another moment we
get to spend working on our videos – and you get a special piece of kurzgesagt in return.
Thank you so much for being a part of our story and making this channel possible.
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