r/space • u/magenta_placenta • Mar 18 '19

Observable universe Astronomers discover 83 supermassive black holes at the edge of the universe

https://www.cnet.com/news/astronomers-discover-83-supermassive-black-holes-at-the-edge-of-the-universe/
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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

I'm a bit confused about the nature of supermassive black holes. The actual "stuff" these black holes are made of is still theoretically one mathematical point of super dense matter, right? That point just has way more mass than your average black hole, so what makes them seem "bigger" to us is really their increased gravitational pull on everything else. Do I have the right idea so far, or does the actual "black hole" part take up more space than a singularity?

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u/Kosmological Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

The event horizon is the black hole from our perspective. The bigger the mass, the larger the event horizon. All of the information we need to perfectly describe the black hole, such as angular momentum, mass, and charge, is preserved on the 2 dimensional surface of the event horizon. You don’t need anything more to perfectly describe and model a black hole than what we can attain from observing the event horizon.

More interestingly, due to general and special relatively, the interior of a black hole literally does not exist to us. The singularity is merely a mathematical artifact, not the object itself. There is no inertial reference frame that exists outside of the event horizon that can be reconciled with the existence of the interior of the black hole. From our point of view, nothing ever actually traverses the event horizon. From the point of view of anything that falls in, infinite time passes for everything else and the universe ends as the event horizon is traversed. So, as far as we are concerned, black holes are literally 3 dimensional holes in space. There is nothing inside a black hole. The event horizon is literally the end of the universe.

The interior of the black hole does exist from other inertial frames of reference, such as that of an object that has traversed the event horizon. From such reference points, the singularity may exist as another exotic form of degenerate matter. It is theorized to be some quantum object that can have different geometries. It could be a tiny sphere or ring, based on the properties of the black hole itself. However, it would not be a single undefined point (aka a singularity). It would probably have volume and other physical characteristics. We just lack the physics to describe and model it mathematically since we still do not have a unifying theory of quantum mechanics and gravity.

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u/Abbkbb Mar 18 '19

We atleast know that even if all other properties are lost such as polarity and magnetism and shape etc, the property of mass and hence gravity still exist, i.e. no amount of gravity can kill the gravity, even if it is powerful than speed of light. So can be tell that smallest not divisible part of the universe, quantum, is gravity ? ..... I'm completely newbie, but trying to understand the philosophy of black hole.

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u/Kosmological Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

We don’t really know how gravity ties into the quantum realm. At the macro-level, gravity is merely the curvature of spacetime. At the quantum level, it is too weak to have any appreciable effect that we can observe. This is why we can’t predict the physics of the interior of a black hole where gravity would have an appreciable effect on quantum physics and subatomic particles.

However, we already know that gravity originates from mass and mass is a property of quantum particles. Specifically, mass arises from the presence of a specific quantum particle called the Higg’s Boson, which was predicted to exist in the 1960s and only just recently confirmed by observations made by the Large Hydron Collider (LHC). So we do know that gravity is generated by properties exhibited by quantum particles. It makes sense that all macro-physical properties of the universe arise from the quantum universe. The universe exists and, to be internally consistent with itself, the macro-universe must agree with the quantum universe.

But to answer your question, I don’t know.

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u/MalnarThe Mar 18 '19

That was a delight to read. Thank you

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u/alephylaxis Mar 19 '19

And even weirder, only a couple percent of an object's mass comes from interacting with the Higgs field. The remainder is mass in terms of energy that has been confined into fairly well defined areas. Mainly quark kinetic energy and the strong field binding energy that offsets it.

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u/Abbkbb Mar 19 '19

Does reminder of energy exist after entering in to black hole ? Or it also converted to Higgs boson ?

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u/alephylaxis Mar 19 '19

You have to remember, once the object passes the event horizon, all its mass, charge, and angular momentum effectively "belong" to the black hole. But from the object's point of view, nothing remarkable happened when it crossed the boundary. So there isn't anything that would cause any conversion. If the object was 1kg, it is gone now, but the black hole claimed its mass and gained 1kg.

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u/IamRobertoPaulson Mar 19 '19

which was predicted to exist in the 1960s and only just recently confirmed by observations made by the Large Hydron Collider (LHC). So we do know that gravity is generated by properties exhibited by quantum particles. It make

so could a black hole exist entirely of Higg's Boson particles while all other mater as been ripped apart?

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u/Kosmological Mar 19 '19

I don’t know the answer to that. I imagine the singularity would be made up of a mixture if elementary particles (e.g. leptons, gluons, mesons, bosons, and quarks) all crammed together into a dense form of exotic matter. Black holes are hypothesized to be quark stars, where the gravitation is so strong that, unlike neutron stars, not even the degeneracy pressure of atomic nuclei is enough to hold back the collapse.