A tactical guide to the infinite realm of science. Although the world of science would take eternity to explore, Professor Quibb attempts to scrape the edge of this Universe. This blog helps you to understand particular topics under the more general categories: cosmology, mathematics, quantum physics, meteorology and others. Join me on my trek across the untraversed lands of the unknown.
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Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Black Holes and Universe Budding?
Some people believe that the Universe itself is a giant Black hole, expanding and eventually contracting in a Big Crunch. Then a chain of universes follow from successive Big Crunches and Big Bangs. But if a Black hole can form a Universe, what about Black holes formed by collapsed giant stars? This opens an idea called Universal Budding. It states that a Black hole in our Universe can begin a baby universe. It would then expand into another dimension and set separate laws of physics. Thousands of universes could bud from ours.
Physicist Lee Smolin proposed a theory like this. Each "baby" universe would have physical laws slightly variable from the "parent" universe. This is kind of like a when a human (or animal) baby is born and has characteristics like its parents but with some genetic variation. So he called the theory "cosmological natural selection" because of the similarity to natural selection in biological evolution.
ReplyDeleteOne of the interesting ideas which comes out of this is as follows: universes which had the right balance of physical laws to foster star formation would have the most black holes and therefore the most "baby" universes; if these baby universes also have alot of black holes then the "multiverse" would end up being dominated by universes with stars and black holes. These are also the kind of universes which can foster the development of life like we have on earth. Therefore we should not be surprised to find ourselves living in such a universe, since it would be the most common type.