Baby Universes & Black Holes

There are numerous ways of theoretically generating a collection of separate and apart universes, commonly called a Multiverse. One such novel approach uses two accepted entities, a universe and a Black Hole to generate each other in turn in either a linear or a cyclic fashion. While the linear approach runs out of puff, the cyclic version doesn’t, but only if you postulate a form of time travel!

You exist somewhere on Planet Earth, which orbits a rather average star we call the Sun, which in turn orbits around the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy which is but one of billions and billions of galaxies within our observable Universe. That’s what you’d include in any description of your reality.

However, perhaps the observable Universe itself exists within a Black Hole. That’s an alternative reality, or at least an extension of your reality. Just what rationale might lead one to suggest that our observable Universe and a Black Hole could be in parallel?

Since you cannot escape from the prison we call the Universe; and since you could not escape from the inside of a Black Hole – another type prison – perhaps they are one and the same sort of prison. Perhaps not only do Black Holes exist inside our Universe but the Universe itself resides inside a Black Hole with perhaps no end of the inside-the-inside-the-inside in either direction. In a manner of speaking, that’s a Multiverse!

Actually you can in theory escape this Universe by hopping down into a Black Hole, but if, and it’s a very big ‘but if’, you survive, you’ve just traded in one maximum security prison for another.

Let’s explore this concept a little further and see where, if anywhere, it leads us.

Our Universe and Black Holes certainly share some things in common.

A Black Hole can expand and surprisingly contract (due to Hawking radiation; the technicalities need not concern us here). Our Universe is expanding, but in theory could also contract if there was enough stuff, matter, hence gravity to slow down the expansion to an eventual halt hence reverse direction and start to shrink.

A Black Hole has temperature (that Hawking radiation); our Universe has a temperature (the cosmic background microwave radiation).

A Black Hole has mass (hence gravity); our Universe has mass (hence gravity).

A Black Hole could have a net charge; our Universe could have an excess of one kind of charge over another, but to the best of our knowledge our Universe is electrically neutral, and we suspect, so might an average Black Hole be too.

A Black Hole may be spinning; our Universe maybe rotating but the only way of knowing if you are rotating is if something else in your line of sight isn’t rotating or rotating at a different rate. If everything in our Universe is rotating together at the same rate, then there’s no way of telling since there isn’t anything else to relate that rotation to. 

Now the question arises was there a prime cause; a first universe inside a Black Hole  that gave birth to millions more Black Holes each of which generated an interior universe each of which spawned million more Black Holes hence interior universes and so on and so on and so on. It’s all very circular in that Black Holes generate universes which generate more Black Holes which generate more universes, etc. But that is something circular in a very linear sort of way for what you end up with is like an ongoing (maybe infinite) series of funnels. Sooner or later all the stuff that existed in the first cause Black Hole universe will funnel down into the first generation of Black Hole universes and all the stuff there eventually finds its way down into the second generation of Black Hole universes, hence funnelled down to the third, and fourth and down unto infinity. Now the point here is that there was only a finite amount of stuff (matter/energy) in that first cause Black Hole universe. All that stuff is constantly being diluted as one passes from one generation to the next generation. The stuff of the prime cause first Black Hole universe is dispersed unto millions and eventually billions of later universes. Eventually every baby universe in some umpteenth generation of universes would be so dilute no further Black Holes could form and that’s then the end of that.

But, what if things were cyclic or really circular? All of these universes do not exist in separate and apart timeframes, just like great grandpa; grandpa; father and son do not of necessity exist in separate and apart timeframes but can co-exist at the same time. When you talk of Black Holes, you can also go the one yard further and talk wormholes, which I guess is really that passageway from a Black Hole to the baby universe it generated. But if that first Black Hole universe generates say a million Black Holes each generating a baby universe, what’s to say that a Black Hole created in that baby universe might not funnel back stuff, not to a newer next generation, but dump their contents back to the original first cause Black Hole universe. Wormholes can, in theory, under the right conditions, serve as time machines. So it’s almost akin as if the son travelled back in time and fathered what would ultimately become his great grandpa. Cyclic! If cyclic, the amount of stuff (matter/energy) is still fixed (that which existed in the original Black Hole universe), but never gets diluted enough to bring things to a halt. Now about those quasars, gamma ray bursts and related ultra-energetic astronomical enigmas – White Holes perhaps; the exit of the Black Hole entrance – impregnations by those baby universe Black Holes?  

Where actually do these new (and improved?) baby universes reside? I doubt that a Black Hole opens up a portal and creates a never-before-in-existence arena of space-time where stuff pouring into a Black Hole, hence exiting this portal, finds a ready made newly constructed house to live and evolve in. Rather, the baby universe IS the interior of a Black Hole. A Black Hole forms, a new baby universe forms inside that Black Hole, and that universe in turn produces new Black Holes that form new baby universes, etc. But everything takes place, generation after generation, inside that first Black Hole (which just might be our Universe). The baby universes spawned inside say Black Hole generation #3 in turn creates Black Hole generation #4 which also exist within the earlier Black Hole generation #3 as do the generation #4 baby universes. So instead of a series of dolls sitting all-in-a-row on a long shelf, it’s more akin to those Russian dolls, one inside the other inside the other inside the other. But, as suggested above, one of the smaller dolls can ultimately funnel stuff back up into one of the larger dolls. 

Aside #1: Now you may feel that any baby universe inside a Black Hole in our Universe is going to be a pretty small universe indeed. Well I’m not aware that the definition of a universe comes attached with a one size fits all clause. Universes might well come is small, medium, large and extra-large sizes. Maybe a baby universe inside a Black Hole is like Dr. Who’s TARDIS – bigger on the inside than on the outside. Truth is, nobody, and I do mean nobody has a clue what’s inside the event horizon of a Black Hole. Once inside the event horizon all the laws, principles and relationships of physics break down. Nobody and no measuring instrument have ever been inside to have a look at what’s what and report back. It’s akin to those maritime charts of the ancient seafarers – here be dragons! It’s the greatest of the great unknowns. If space is the final frontier, the inside of a Black Hole is the Absolutely Final Frontier. Now there’s no reason of necessity why any of these baby universes need be inhabited. Extraterrestrial intelligence isn’t part of the definition of a universe either. A universe is really a self-contained space where matter and energy interact; where things happen; where there is change from moment to moment. The interior of a Black Hole is self-contained. There’s matter and energy but whether there’s activity or not, well IMHO the answer is affirmative since the Black Hole isn’t static. It’s either expanding as matter and energy enters and passes the event horizon or contracting thanks to the abovementioned Hawking radiation. Actually both incoming and outgoing are going on simultaneously.

Aside #2: Something about this entire concept reminds me of the old sci-fi pulp magazine era. It was a staple plot of shrinking down to the atomic level only to discover a civilization on a ‘planetary’ electron orbiting a ‘stellar’ nucleus.

Aside #3: A Black Hole that might spew out another universe might have that universe stillborn in that that universe may not in turn be able to give rise to internally created Black Holes and thus another generation of baby universes. Not all universes will of necessity have the same physics, physics that allow the creation of Black Holes, and so some universes will be eternal bachelors or spinsters.

Aside #4: Yet another interesting question is what happens to the two baby universes when and if their parent Black Holes merge, as most certainly can happen. That would seem to be a rather nasty scenario for inhabitants of either of the baby universes!

Now clearly this is all speculation, but then speculation, that “what if” scenario, is the bread-and-butter staple of science fiction, and how often has science fiction evolved into science fact? It’s an oft quoted saying, attributed to J. B. S. Haldane (1924) that “The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

Multiroads to the Multiverse: Part One

If Mother Nature can create one Universe (ours), Mother Nature can create more than one universe – a Multiverse! The concept of a Multiverse, that there exists more than one universe, that is our Universe – perhaps an infinite number of them existing sequentially in time, or at one go in space, maybe both, is one of the hottest topics in current cosmology.

At the outset, there’s no law of physics (or even of God) that says that there can be (or must be) one and only one universe, our Universe.

Three questions arise – the mechanism for the origin and evolution of other universes; what types of Multiverses can be generated; and what can the concept of a Multiverse explain that the existence of our sole Universe cannot explain?

Ways, Means and Mechanisms That Generate a Multiverse:

In the infinite beginning, there existed from square one, more than one universe. No origin event(s) are required. However, those universes will evolve and ultimately morph into other universes. 

The Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum states that when anything within our Universe is forced to make an either/or decision, between two or more pathways or alternatives, each and every pathway or alternative is taken – because Mother Nature cannot make up Her mind between equal probabilities! Thus, to accommodate each and every possible choice, the Universe splits into as many other universes as is necessary to cater for all possible outcomes. Thus, where there existed initially one universe – our Universe – now there must exist an extra one, or two, or three, or whatever number of universes because our Universe had to make a decision between two, three, or whatever number of choices confronted it. Multiply that by how many crossroads our Universe comes to each and every microsecond, and you have the beginnings of a Multiverse in real quick-smart fashion.

Baby Universes via Black Holes: An advanced extraterrestrial technology might be able to create or manufacture baby universes by creating or manufacturing Black Holes. The recipe itself is simple – take a lump of matter and squeeze it down to such a density that its gravitational escape velocity exceeds that of the speed of light. Such is the text of ‘Universe Manufacturing 101’. Of course one doesn’t of necessity need ET. A universe with the sort of physics that permit Black Holes to form will ‘breed’ because those Black Holes will produce baby universes, presumably with the sort of suitable physics that will allow for further Black Holes, etc.

Bubble Universes via Inflation: To adequately explain various observational properties of our Universe, the concept of a rapid period of inflation around the time of the Big Bang event (I’ve seen inflation invoked both just before and just after the ‘bang’ itself) has been proposed. For the briefest of times, the Universe’s expansion accelerated at a fantastic pace before running out of puff. The fly in the ointment is that if inflation didn’t stop at the exact same nanosecond everywhere, then you’d get smaller pockets or bubbles of inflation continuing, and that each separate inflating bubble wouldn’t stop at the exact same nanosecond, creating more bubbles, etc. Each separate pocket or bubble would inflate so fast and break off from the parent inflationary event to form another universe. An analogy is to shake up a say, 1/3^rd empty bottle of fizzy soft drink and open the top cap. What do you get – rapid inflation, that’s what! Bubbles form and expand and give rise to other bubbles which create new bubbles. Each bubble is its own separate universe.

Quantum Fluctuations: The vacuum energy can give rise to virtual particles, which can turn into actual particles under suitable conditions. It’s possible for the energy to come together intensely enough to perhaps create not just a pair of virtual particles, but an entire universe of particles. That could happen again and again, a multitude of times.

Video Games Analogy: There are a Multiverse of videogames within our Universe (i.e. – Planet Earth) – in two ways. One is the collective set of the thousands to maybe hundreds of thousands of individual video games within the marketplace. Each videogame equals one possible universe. The other is that each individual videogame has hundreds to hundreds of thousands of identical copies.  So the videogame Multiverse has both individuality, and sameness. Perhaps our Universe is one copy of one individual ‘video game’ or ‘computer simulation’, within a sea of thousands of identical copies of that game, within a sea of thousands of other individual games/simulations! 

Types of Multiverse:

Parallel / Shadow / Alternative / Mirror / Many Worlds / Higher Dimensional (String Theory’s Branes perhaps) universes – collectively, these universes would have the same laws and principles of physics that we know and love (unless you’re a physics student at exam time), although the ultimate nature and evolution of each and every one might differ. In other words, all these universes will be bio-friendly, though that doesn’t mean of necessity that all will contain life. Basically, these universes are all variations on a theme of our own Universe.

Simulated / Video Games Universes – Okay, within these universes, anything goes. A computer program does not have to follow or obey or simulate the existing laws and principles of physics. You want faster-than-light-travel? You got it! You want antigravity? You can have that too! Do you want your heroine to survive travel through wormholes and Black Holes? Fine! All the terrestrial superheroes and superhero powers – a Superman, a Spiderman, a Green Lantern, the list is near endless – all is possible. You can botch an operation – the patient survives. You can crash a plane – no causalities. You can make the Sun stand still; perform miracles like the resurrection; create new life forms and new civilizations, and boldly go where in our Universe, no one can every go! You can have a Heaven and/or a Hell, or live unprotected upon the surface of Venus (which is the same as Hell only worse).

Bubble / Baby / Quantum Fluctuation Universes / Cyclic or Oscillating Universes (standard Big Bang expansions followed by Big Crunch contractions followed by Big Bang expansions, etc.) – collectively, these universes could be as different as chalk and cheese in that the laws and principles of physics could vary to a greater or lesser extent – but vary, well these universes just might. Think of all the laws, relationships and principles in physics and vary them to your heart’s content. While each universe might be unique, the rules and regulations for each and everyone one is fixed.

To be continued…

Cosmology and the Darwinian (Reproducing) Universe

The concept of a Multiverse, that there are lots of universes out there, not just ours, is now taken very seriously by many (though not all) cosmologists. If Mother Nature can create one universe, Mother Nature can create more than one. If universes are constantly being formed, can the concepts central to Darwinian evolution be applied to them? The surprising answer is, 'yes'.

The standard model of cosmology, the origin of our Universe, the Big Bang event, suggests that the Big Bang created space, time, matter and energy, and was a quantum sized event. Thus theorized, our Universe must have created itself; such is the weirdness of quantum physics. First there was nothing; then there was something. No cause and effect. Of course if you are your own parent as it were, there's no requirement for any actual act of before-the-fact sexual or asexual reproduction. Now I can hear you muttering now that it's silly, even downright ridiculous to even contemplate a universe reproducing itself. I mean Johnny Universe doesn't have a one night stand with Mary Universe and produce nine million years later little Joey Universe! Yet, where did our Universe come from if it didn't create itself? Perhaps our Universe is the cosmic offspring of some other universe. How?

Well, my variation on the standard cosmological model has the Big Bang event originating in existing space and time, the event spewing forth already existing matter and energy. Further, that event wasn't a quantum sized (micro) event, but a macro happening. In my scenario, a previous universe had sufficient mass to cause the universe to undergo contraction due to its universal gravity, ultimately coming closer and closer together to form the mother of all Black Holes. That ultimate Big Crunch so warped space-time that the contents were spewed back out again (a White Hole) due to sheer momentum as a quasi-explosion - our Big Bang. That's sort of like asexual reproduction - one parent giving rise to one offspring. But that's not as interesting as trying to reproduce universes by more exotic (erotic?) means.

The standard model of cosmology postulates that our very early Universe underwent an extremely brief period of very, very rapid inflation (in addition to the normal expansion caused by the Big bang itself). The concept of inflation helps explain various observations about our Universe and the technical details needn't concern us. One variation on the inflation theme has been called 'eternal inflation'. Basically, it means that the inflation didn't stop everywhere at the exact same instant. So, one tiny region continues to inflate (a budding off creating a baby universe), and when that shuts down, one tiny region of that (a second baby universe) continues to inflate and bud off, and so on.

Eternal inflation is one way of producing lots of baby universes (a Multiverse), but that's a sort of asexual budding process with no real scope for Darwinian evolution. It's sort of like shaking a bottle of soft drink - you get lots of bubbly foam where bubbles give rise to other bubbles, etc. where each new bubble is a new universe. But if you start with ginger ale bubbles, you end up with ginger ale bubbles. Not much in the way of Darwinian evolution!

However, there might be two mechanisms by which a universe can in fact reproduce itself, reproduction that will exhibit Darwinian fitness by the creation of other universes that would maximize their reproductive capabilities.
The two means are:
1) natural selection via Black Holes, and
2) artificial selection via extraterrestrials (E.T.).

Firstly, it should be noted that it does not follow automatically that all universes are going to have the same laws, relationships, and principles of physics - the physical laws, relationships and principles that we know could well be different. This is akin to the fact that a child is not an identical copy of either parent. So, relative to our Universe, another universe could have a stronger gravitational constant; the speed of light might be different; the mass and electric charge of an electron might have differing values than the ones we know.

Back to the creation of universes, we note that while the precise physics of the internal doings of normal Black Holes aren't clear, there is reason to theorize/speculate, based on what we suspect that physics might be, to further suspect that Black Holes give rise to other universes, albeit ones forever beyond our reach. All the stuff, information, etc. which forever goes down the Black Hole gurgler, while lost to us, has to go somewhere. That somewhere is a new universe, a new universe that owes its existence to a Black Hole in our universe.

The fitness element is this. Any universe which has the right set of physics that give rise to Black Holes, will form new universes via those Black Holes. If a universe doesn't have the right sort of physics that produces Black Holes, then it's like a human that doesn't leave behind any offspring. Black Hole universes that produce other universes, well those offspring universes will probably also have the right stuff - the right kind of physics that will produce Black Holes (though that's not guaranteed any more than the offspring of two parents will in turn produce offspring), and so on.

Then what about a highly intelligent and technological extraterrestrial civilization that could be ideally placed to create an entirely new universe if it wanted to? I mean, our Universe started out, according to the accepted standard model, at a size where quantum physics rule. That is, a very tiny size. So I don't mean that extraterrestrials could be creating in the laboratory fully matured universes billions of light years across at one go. Rather, perhaps they could create a tiny quantum universe, akin to what ours was - if you accept the standard model - 'in the beginning'. Such a quantum sized universe would perhaps expand and inflate and grow up to become the sort of universe that we'd accept as a bona fide universe. Or maybe not - perhaps a baby universe could be confined to something smaller and more manageable. That might not be beyond the ways and means of a super-technological civilization. Such a civilization would probably be classed as a Type III civilization. That's a civilization that has the ability to harness and manipulate the energy output of an entire galaxy - they would be few and far between

The fitness element is this. Any universe which has the right set of physics that gives rise to suitable chemistry and ultimately biochemistry and hence ultimately those Type III ultra-super-advanced-technologically-capable beings, well those beings could create new universes via that advanced technology. If a universe doesn't have the right sort of physics that produces the right sort of chemistry, hence biochemistry, hence advanced intelligences, then again it's like a human that doesn't leave behind any offspring. E.T. rich universes that produce other universes, well those offspring universes will probably also have the right stuff - the right kind of physics that will produce suitable chemistry, biochemistry, and Type III intelligent life forms and so on.

So, any universe that has had a natural selection by which its physics are the sort of physics that's conducive to producing either a lot of black holes, and/or advanced technological civilizations, will be the sort of universe that will produce offspring, a universe in turn which might produce even more universes which will produce even more, and so on. Sounds sort of like terrestrial sexual biology to me!

In short, this is a nice variation on the creation of a Multiverse, which would probably contain a lot of copies of you!