Nature, throughout the history of the universe has shown both of its aesthetic and mundane aspects quite vividly. Like any living organism, nature has had phases of myriads and wonders at different times in the geological time scale. But what often fails to fall under our perspective is the nature we know little of. Breaking apart from the well known convention or the more popular definition of nature, I extend my visualization to a higher horizon. For examples, places deep under the ocean, generally undiscovered by humans; or any tiny island somewhere on the face of the earth which has not yet been introduced to so-called civilization; and of course my personal favourite... the world beyond our beloved planet.
Coming to the point, as the title suggests, what will follow here is a discussion on a well known fact, accepted by almost everyone - holes; and a topic highly debated on for years and years by the scientific community – multiverse.
To clear the doubts of some readers, when I am talking about holes, I am simultaneously referring to the consuming and the expulsive ends of the hole, the black and white holes respectively.While many people, including highly acclaimed scientists believe that black holes never retain what they capture, it is excreted out through the white hole, and that this journey from the black hole to the white hole via singularity is like a teleportation device between two universes, but juicy as it sounds, till date there’s no way that we can prove it.
What is interesting to note here is the question very popularly asked “What will happen if you went close to a black hole?”, and answer to this very commonly given is “You would be sucked in... ‘spaghettified’.” Now literally speaking, spaghettified means turning into pasta-like substance, and believe it or not, that will exactly be the case. A black hole’s gravity is extremely powerful but as its own mass is very concentrated, so gravity will exert different forces on the portion of one’s head and legs (if we approach the black hole head on), and it can be well asserted that gravitational force being inversely proportional to the distance between the bodies concerned, the force on the part of the body closer to the black hole will be greater in magnitude than the part away from it by a considerable extent, thus, experiencing different forces, the body will be elongated.
Interesting to note here a fact is that the physical state of matter of the centre of a black hole, or simply, the singularity, is still unknown, and thought to be the 6th state of matter. The other states of mater found/prepared are: solid, liquid, gaseous, plasma, BEC and a most recently found state of electronic matter, found in quantum scale, which is formed when electrons clump together in transit.
Deviating a bit from the discussion about black holes, I would like to elucidate to the reader a well-known paradox,the grandfather’s paradox, which was one of the first reasons why the multiverse theory was chosen. If I had a gun, went back in time (somehow) and shot my grandfather dead, before my father was born... would that put a question mark in my existence in the present world? And if I have used time travel to go back into past, I should be able to return to present, but I don’t exist now because I was never born. This confusing situation can be very beautifully explained by multiverse theory which suggests that when I go back in time to shoot my grandfather, I am actually moving between two universes. The grandfather I shot was not my grandfather but a copy of mine own in a parallel universe. Thus I do not threaten my existence in the present world of my own universe. Awkward as it may sound, this is by far the most accepted and plausible answers to this question. The multiverse theory also suggests that every little decision that we make at different situations in life creates a parallel universe immediately which is in all other respects equal to ours except for that decision’s all possible outcomes, that is, if a decision involves yes or no, one parallel universe will be set up apart from the current one, where we have chosen the opposite of the decision in the current universe.
Moving back to black holes, I would like to end this piece of writing with a science story, and one of my all time favourites, a fascinating example fabricated wonderfully by the properties of a black hole and the impeccable theory of special relativity. Let’s assume there be two friends, X and Y; Y being dragged towards a black hole and X (a fair-weather friend) seeing his mate – from a safe distance – slowly meeting his doom. It is obvious to the reader that the visualizing perspectives will of course be different for X and Y; but in what way?
Well, I would like the reader to imagine yourself as Y, so now you are being pulled towards the centre of a massive black hole and from your relative frame of reference, your rate of acceleration per unit time is increasing at a tremendous pace. Now let’s be X for a moment to experience what he visualize. Astounding as it may sound, from the inertial frame of X, you would see Y decelerating as the same rate as Y feels to be accelerating. This drastic difference in opinion and thus a possible conflict can be resolved if we explain by saying that black hole, as a matter of fact, takes in everything in its path, even light and time. So time, as it passes a black hole gets slower and slower and as it reaches singularity, it finally it comes to a stop. Now it can be well understood that from the frame of Y, who is feeling the gravitational pull, it is correct that he is accelerating but from the frame of X, who is just feeling the time being slowed down, Y will surely be decelerating. When Y reaches the centre of the black hole, his perspectives doesn’t matter because he has already been drawn into the unimaginable depths of highly condensed matter, but X will see the last of his friend slowing down and finally being stuck at the centre forever (whereas actually Y isn’t there). X will thus continue to see Y in that position for evermore. So, if you want to be nice, and never cease seeing someone you love, do not forget to throw them towards a black hole and enjoy seeing with popcorn designed specifically for space.
That’s it, thank you so much.
Soumyadeep Mukhopadhyay.
The Blog Writer
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