Austin Jacob Baker

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104
09/26/2017

Topic Proposal: Black Holes

Introduction / Overview

Black holes are such an interesting thing in our universe that we dont honestly
know much about. Sure scientists can prove what theoretically would happen if you
were to inside one, but after that, where do you go? What is the relation of space and
time in black holes? Why are they created? Is Earth near a black hole? Will our sun turn
into one? There are so many questions that surround black holes and many questions
have answers but theres a lot that cant be answered because of our inability to study
them. It wasnt until 2002 that scientists were able to prove that at the center of our
galaxy, was a supermassive black hole. They named this black hole Sagittarius A*.
Scientists can prove that the closer you get to a black hole gravity increases greatly
and time slows, while away from one, time moves faster at its normal rate. Imagine
two people were to go to a black hole, assuming that they had immortality. Picture
one of them being right outside the black hole, while the other goes toward it. As the
person moving toward it moves closer and closer, the other person would see them
get slower and slower until they come to a dead stop. The other person would be
seeing everything normally. They wouldnt see themselves stop moving. The person
watching would see them slowly fade and disappear on the edge of the black hole,
they would never actually see them go inside the black hole. The person going inside
of a black hole, would still see everything normally. It would look like you fell out of
the universe. You could see where you went in, and the further inside you move, the
smaller the opening that you came in from, would be. This is what scientists could say
would happen if anything were able to withstand the extreme temperatures, gravity,
or radiation. What would actually happen, is the two of them would go through a
process called spaghettification. This means that their atoms are being ripped apart
and squeezed down so small into what is called a singularity. A singularity is a one-
dimensional point that has an incredible amount of mass in an infinitely small space. It
would look like all your atoms, one by one, were being ripped from you and made into
a tiny line that lead into the black hole. It is also proven that black holes warp space
and time. They are so dense that not even light can escape from inside. This is what
the graph of space and time looks like:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3HorKfm18OM/Vr6537M-
ijI/AAAAAAAAI9M/lDhXnVJXlpE/s640/st_diagram.gif

As you can see, black holes are very powerful. If you were to look at a black hole that
had nothing around it but a ton of stars off in the distance behind it, you would see
the distortion of light all around the black hole. While looking directly at the black
hole, you would see nothingness. There are some arguments about how our universe
was created, aside from religious beliefs. Some scientists think that our universe is
inside a black hole. Everything we know and love is all crammed inside a single black
hole. They believe this because looking at a projected map of the universe, it looks
like there are polar ends of the universe, because black holes do in fact have polar
ends.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/735683main_pia16873-full_full.jpg

As you can see, this is a heat map of the universe projected by NASA. You can clearly
see the north and south poles of this map. If you look closely, you can see that some
parts at the poles look stretched. They look like they are technically entering our
universe. This is why some scientists believe we live inside a black hole. There is one
big question concerning this map. In the middle of the map, slightly to the right, there
is a less concentrated area. This looks like empty space. It, in fact, is. NASA found this
using a Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope. This spot stood out in the Cosmic
Microwave Background (CMB). They use the CMB to map the imprint of radiation left
over from the Big Bang. They believe this spot plays a big role in the creation of our
universe. Scientists were so surprised to see that there is this large of an empty gap in
space.

Initial Inquiry Questions

A lot of my initial inquiry questions were stated at the beginning. Theres a ton
of questions that can be asked about black holes, because of all the answers that
dont exist. However, I do believe that my best bet with making a good topic, is to use
the dilemma between scientists that think the universe was created by black holes, to
those who do not. This has debate and theres not enough facts for anyone to prove
the other wrong, so it will all be up to the reader to decide about what they think
actually is happening. All I can do is give facts, and opinions of scientists, theories and
propose them in a way that helps the reader understand what is happening with black
holes.

My Interest In this Topic

I have an incredible interest in this topic. Ive always found space to be so

fascinating. Everything from Dark Matter, to Antimatter, to black holes. I think black
holes have to be the most interesting, only because of their immense power and pure
distortion of all our laws of physics. Ive always wanted to know about black holes and
now that this assignment is happening, I get a chance to finally explore and learn
about them.

Next Steps

As far as next steps are concerned, Im going to start focusing my research

around the opinions around how our universe was created, only related to black holes.
I will look for theories that involve the Big Bang and black holes. I quickly listened to
and skimmed through one video that I was watching, where they talked about some
of these theories and I will go back and really pay attention to. I have only struck the
surface with the information that I have gathered this far. I haven't looked very far yet
and have already generated plenty of information. I think I can easily find some
theories and opinions about black holes and the world we live in.

Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HB3oW-p-qo&t=2410s

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-a-
black-hole-k4.html

https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/black-holes

https://www.insidescience.org/news/every-black-hole-contains-new-universe