Black holes here, white holes "on the other side"....

[Noisy Rhysling]

Beat this one up for me, please. I'm told it's an "against the mainstream" idea, so why that's true would be interesting to examine here. (Bear in mind I'm not an astrophysicist. That doesn't mean you can't post information that will leave me with a blank expression and a desire to find the closest exit, however.)

What if every black hole in this universe was a "white hole" in another universe created by the black hole? While it would take billions of years for all the matter to pass into a super massive black hole (SMBH) it would appear in the new universe in less than a Planck time. This would be a "Big Bang Event" (BBE) for that universe.

It might be that only SMBHs have the amount of mass to create such universes, while the smaller ones have "fizzles", universes that never become like ours.

Now, if the above is true then each SMBH creates a new universe and those universes have their own SMBHs which create more universes. The result would be huge numbers of separate universes. The older ones would decay and "die" but the newest ones would be waiting for that first star to ignite and start the whole process again.

I think it's a fun idea, and would be totally awesome if true, but having been told there are fatal flaws also has me intrigued.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Apologies to the forum for misplacing this thread.

In this one Our Hero is pursuing a criminal who reportedly has escaped justice in "other places" by diving through a SMBH. He survives by using the same "black sphere" technology John Varley describes in Dark Lightning.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

No real objections to the idea then. Thanks.

 

[Drakkith]

Sorry, but I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this thread is. Are you planning on writing a story using this idea? Your first post doesn't really mention anything about writing.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Sorry, but I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this thread is. Are you planning on writing a story using this idea? Your first post doesn't really mention anything about writing.

Yeah, I was musing about a pursuit through consecutive universes. Booted the format a bit in the process. My second post expanded on it a bit.

 

[Drakkith]

Does the criminal emerge into the new universe at the moment of that universe's big bang?

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Does the criminal emerge into the new universe at the moment of that universe's big bang?

He's part of it, as is Our Hero. The thing that makes them who they are is indestructible. For a time they exist at pure thought, waiting to renew their battle. Eventually, after more than few cycles of this, they will reach Earth. There Miss Dewey Ayes will have a role to play.

 

[UsableThought]

It sounds like you want to see if this particular idea qualifies as "hard" science fiction? I guess this is an interesting question from a storytelling POV; however it might not matter much to your eventual readers, given that even the best hard science fiction stories inevitably violate scientific accuracy at one point or another; the use of accurate detail is only to lend a veneer of seeming credibility here & there. So even if a particular conceit (e.g. traveling via a black hole to another universe) is bogus, if the rest of your science is accurate, it wouldn't be a problem; as Wikipedia puts in their article on hard sci-fi, it could be considered an "enabling device":

There is a degree of flexibility in how far from "real science" a story can stray before it leaves the realm of hard SF. Some authors scrupulously avoid such technology as faster-than-light travel, while others accept such notions (sometimes referred to as "enabling devices", since they allow the story to take place) but focus on realistically depicting the worlds that such a technology might make possible. In this view, a story's scientific "hardness" is less a matter of the absolute accuracy of the science content than of the rigor and consistency with which the various ideas and possibilities are worked out.​

Still another way to examine a gimmick is to ask whether it's a new or old conceit in sci-fi. To me your description sounds fairly standard: black hole > white hole = wormhole or something like it, whether or not the name "wormhole" is used; i.e. it's the old notion that black holes somehow represent a transport mechanism. Arriving in a new-born universe etc. etc. might be a wrinkle on top of that; but again the idea of traveling by one means or another between multiple universes is also commonplace (e.g. see the episode "Parallels" in Next Generation). I think from an audience point of view, it's how well done the story is, not whether this or that conceit is completely new or completely scientifically accurate. So for example, "Parallels" is one of my own favorite STNG episodes - not for having "new" ideas, per se, but for how much fun we have as an audience, as we begin to sense, along with Warf, that "something is wrong" as he starts slipping from one ever-so-slightly different quantum reality to another . . .

A useful site for looking up who's used this or that gimmick before is "TV Tropes," which I think I may have mentioned before in one of your threads. In this case the following articles all seem relevant; after explaining the trope in question, they provide links to examples of stories in different media:

Our wormholes are different
Unrealistic black hole
Swirly energy thingie

In particular, here's the intro to "Our wormholes are different"; I've bolded the phrase that seems to capture your idea pretty closely:

In reality, wormholes are purely a scientific conjecture, a consequence of the same equations that describe black holes. There's no way that we can conceive of to get to one or use it for anything. In fiction, however, wormholes are a Swirly Energy Thingy that can be used as a convenient means of travel from one place to another.

The most common use is for FTL Travel. By extension, if they show up often enough and consistently enough, they can become nodes in an interstellar Portal Network. They can also enable Time Travel, provide a mechanism for FTL Radio, act as doorways to Alternate Universes, or any/all of the above. No matter what Technobabble is thrown around, rarely will any two authors treat them in precisely the same manner, which is why Our Wormholes Are Different.​

Once again, just because it's been done before doesn't mean you can't use it. One reason we have tropes and conventions etc. in fiction (including science fiction) is that they provide "rules" that the audience will be familiar with. It's what you do inside the rules that matters, not the rules themselves. Along these lines, TV Tropes also has some interesting articles on world-building do's and don'ts that you might find amusing, e.g. The law of conservation of detail.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Actually, I was just looking for thoughts on the black hole/white hole idea. If there's some good science that says it's absolutely not possible I'll ditch the idea and go back to the tardis races.

 

[Drakkith]

Actually, I was just looking for thoughts on the black hole/white hole idea. If there's some good science that says it's absolutely not possible I'll ditch the idea and go back to the tardis races.

Personally the biggest issue I see is with this idea that a white hole is at the center of a big bang in another universe (I assume that's what's meant at least). That's quite impossible since the big bang occurs everywhere at the same time and has no center.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Personally the biggest issue I see is with this idea that a white hole is at the center of a big bang in another universe (I assume that's what's meant at least). That's quite impossible since the big bang occurs everywhere at the same time and has no center.

I admit to not being fully versed on how a white hole would work.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

I did mention that they would exist as pure thought at some stage. (That's important to the denouement.)

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

I was asking about the black hole/white hole physics, not the pure thought concept.

 

[UsableThought]

Since my comments were unwanted, I've deleted them. Good luck with the story.

 

[Drakkith]

I admit to not being fully versed on how a white hole would work.

I did mention that they would exist as pure thought at some stage. (That's important to the denouement.)

I don't think I can offer much then. You can do pretty much whatever you'd like if they're going to exist as "pure thought". Just be consistent and creative.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

I don't think I can offer much then. You can do pretty much whatever you'd like if they're going to exist as "pure thought". Just be consistent and creative.

Oh, I always try for both.

 

[Khashishi]

From your basic description, it sounds like each child universe would contain less matter/energy than the parent universe, if the black holes conserve mass/energy. So you would have a hierarchy of universes. Why should Our Hero be concerned if the criminal decides to maroon themselves in a smaller universe?

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

From your basic description, it sounds like each child universe would contain less matter/energy than the parent universe, if the black holes conserve mass/energy. So you would have a hierarchy of universes. Why should Our Hero be concerned if the criminal decides to maroon themselves in a smaller universe?

If you think about it, our universe could be an infinite number of events "down" from the first black hole in our sequence. And ours seems plenty roomy to me.

 

[Khashishi]

Still, it's a one-way trip right? Why follow?

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Still, it's a one-way trip right? Why follow?

If you knew where a being was that had already killed unimaginable numbers of sentient beings, sterilized whole galaxies, no life found anywhere, would you go after that being? Our Hero chooses to do so.

 

[Drakkith]

If you knew where a being was that had already killed unimaginable numbers of sentient beings, sterilized whole galaxies, no life found anywhere, would you go after that being?

Man's got a point.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Man's got a point.

That's why he's Our Hero and not Our Disengaged Observer.

There's a point where almost anybody will say "ENOUGH!" Like the time our Chaplain was manning a M-60.

 

[JMAM]

I had an idea that if hypothetical white holes could be proven, matter taken from black holes are extremely condensed then expelled from subatomic white holes creating virtual particles such as gluons. I also wondered if there was a correlation between black holes and hypothetical white holes, and quantum vacuums.
(I'm not very experienced in quantum mechanics)