this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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I took a physics course at a community college over 20 years ago and one of the things that stood out to me was the professor telling us not to overthink or assign too much romanticism to the idea of black holes.
His message was basically “it just means the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light… if you plug the size and mass of the universe into the escape velocity formula, the result you get back is greater than the speed of light, so our entire universe is a black hole.”
If this was being discussed at a community college decades ago then I think the new discoveries aren’t as revelatory as they would at first appear to the general public.
Nah really it was probably some small thing the media got a hold of and just ran with. I think you're spot on
Relevant xkcd
And a relevant smbc for good measure.
Your SMBC link doesn't work for me, it just opens the index.
Try now.
Works now! Thanks, and very relevant.
Smbc is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, but what does xkcd stand for?
Xaturday Korning Creakfast Dereal
Xerry kible cellow dip
It's a random unique string, chosen to make the comic easily searchable.
Where's PBF?
On the contrary; while I have heard the explanation that the commenter you replied to has said I have also heard a slightly different theory:
Our universe is the 3 dimensional event horizon of a 4th dimensional black hole. By extension we may find that black holes in our universe have similar funky 2 dimensional areas at their even horizons.
I am sure clickbait articles are part of it but there also seems to be several actual theories surrounding the idea of the nature of our universe relating to black holes.
Our universe is 4 d not 3 d
3+1, not 4D (we cannot move freely in time). They're referencing the holographic universe theory, or holographic principle. PBS Spacetime has a good episode on the holographic universe theory.
YOU can't move freely in time. Don't speak for me.
Ok, I can't either. But still...
I think I can move freely in time, just not voluntarily...
Sometimes I go through a whole day in like a minute, sometimes I blink and it's Monday already.
Or maybe it's working nights has that effect?
So, I can freely move through time if I consider alcohol as my time machine.
That’s more skipping forward in time, but then slowing down time when you come to the next day.
Freely means both directions, not just different speeds in one direction.
lol everything is relative.
Nah, this universe is 3d.
I'm assuming you are thinking that time is the 4th dimension and we have time here so we are 4d?
Time may be the 4th dimension, but in our universe, time doesn't actually behave like a proper dimension. For one thing, dimensions should be spatially perpendicular to each other and time is not. We also seem to only be able to move one way through time whereas we can move back and forth through the other 3 dimensions.
Dimensions get weird and complicated. For the intents and purposes of this conversation it's correct to say that the universe were experiencing now is 3 dimensional.
Three spacial dimensions, which is normally what people mean when they say that, unless they specify otherwise. For example, we call them 3D game engines, not 4D. Yes, there's also a time dimension that is special. It cannot be moved through freely.
Yes, but if you're beyond the event horizon of a black hole time becomes basically* irrelevant. You could literally turn around, look back out towards the rest of he universe, and watch all of time play out in the blink of an eye.
You know that scene in Interstellar where they land on the planet for 5 minutes, but 20 years passes for everyone else due to the planet's mass? It's the same thing, but a billion-billion-billion times more severe.
No, time does not become irrelevant. It's perfectly normal for things inside the black hole. Here's the space time diagram for our universe on the right, and a black hole at the top-left. Time is the vertical axis, space is the horizontal. The speed of light is a 45° angle, and the solid lines are event horizons. The hourglass shapes are the cones of all your possible futures and pasts (aka, anywhere that isn't faster than the speed of light from a position). Notice the space-time diagram looks exactly the same on the other side of the horizon. To get back through though you'd have to travel faster than that 45° angle, which is impossible.
Edit: I remembered there's a PBS Space Time video that will help you understand this if you don't. It goes a lot further than just this version of the diagram.
I'm aware of the Penrose diagram and also watch PBS SpaceTime :)
But I was referring more to the frame of reference of our universe vs that of being inside a blackhole (assuming you could magically avoid being ripped apart by gravity). To an observer inside a blackhole, "time" on the outside would blink by almost instantly. I wasn't talking about moving through an infinite universe or near/into a black hole. Just stationary, floating just beyond the event horizon, looking out. Hence the asterisk on basically*.
I was leading them to what MotoAsh posted. But they beat me to it while I was typing.
Edit: He even references what I'm talking about at 0:44 in the SpaceTime video. But from the frame of reference of an outside observer.
Scientist: Scientific discoveries are meaningless when taken out of context.
Journalist: Scientific discoveries are meaningless.
Journalist: What is context?
Context is text that served time in prison.
It balances out protext, figure it out rookie
Protext is what the really good journalists are writing.
another thing I learned at some point: Just because a physics formula returns a result, doesn't mean that it's reality
TBF black holes themselves were originally just the result of a Physics formula, but they eventually turned out to be a "reality". Sometimes that shit happens, yo.
Iff the rules of physics are accurate then it does, but we don't know that they are. In fact, we're pretty sure we're missing some things. See: The Crisis in Cosmology.
Orr, you’re missing the obvious alternative here - the guy was a legendary level scientist, but the government stole his research and threatened his family and sidelined him into being a community college professor so that no one pays attention to his “drivel” so that they continue to control us into being workers for the capitalist pigs
I mean, the model was first developed in the 70s so maybe not that specific guy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_cosmology
Theory is one thing.
Observation is the next step.
Absolutely. I don’t want to minimize the importance of the new discoveries in any way; I’m just saying this isn’t the great surprise the original post seems to think it is.
Interestingly, galaxies at the edge of our ability to perceive are in fact receding away from us at velocities greater than the speed of light.
Maybe it’s because they are outside the black hole and aren’t time dilated.
Wouldn't that mean if we can see them that light can enter/escape a black hole?
Entering and escaping are two wildly different things.
It can enter, but not escape.
So that's what Hotel California was about all along?
Why is there a warm smell of colitis in the air?
Light can enter a black hole perfectly fine - we would be able to see things outside of it, because the light is still following us. No light leaves the black hole (if it's past the event horizon), so you can't see into it.
When I first saw pictures of galaxies as a kid I noticed they all looked like black holes.
In a way we're all just bits of organic matter mid-flush, waiting for the Drainpipe of Destiny
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