Possible Answers To What Happens Inside A Black Hole

[rustybridges]

I just had a random thought of what might happen if you sent quantum entangled particles into a black hole. Viewing the one particle that has not gone in as the other moves through the event horizon. Might be a way of understanding or measuring black holes???

[maddog]

I just had a random thought of what might happen if you sent quantum entangled particles into a black hole. Viewing the one particle that has not gone in as the other moves through the event horizon. Might be a way of understanding or measuring black holes???

I don't know if this has been considered or worked out. I think it is a good thought problem though. I like it. :D

 

maddog

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, rusty bridges! :) Please feel free to start a topic in the introductions forum to tell us something about yourself – like why you call yourself “rusty bridges”. :confused:

 

I just had a random thought of what might happen if you sent quantum entangled particles into a black hole. Viewing the one particle that has not gone in as the other moves through the event horizon. Might be a way of understanding or measuring black holes???

Though beyond our technological means at present – the closest known star-massed black hole is 1600 light-years away, and even if we could reach one of these small ones, we’d likely want to play with a bigger one first, as their spaghettification forces are smaller, making them more approachable – actually looking inside a black hole would be a wonderful source of scientific data, data that would revolutionize theoretical physics.

 

What you’re describing – communicating via quantum entangled particles, via what, thanks to its appearance in many science fiction stories, is conventionally called an ansible – is pretty uncontroversial believed to be impossible, even in theory. The basic problem is, though It’s true that, when you measure one of a pair of entangled particles, you know, regardless of how far the other particle is, that the result of that measurement of its partner will be, there’s no way to force the measurement you make to the “sending” particle to have the result you want. In essence, you have a “instantaneous radio”, but its capable only of sending meaningless noise.

 

There might be other ways to sending information from inside a BH, however. While theoretically no electromagnetic signal can escape from one, gravitational ones can. If you could somehow change the rotation of the mass within a BH, or its distribution, you should be able to detect those changes, perhaps with instruments that measure the trajectories of light that pass through its ergosphere, or perhaps with a gravitational wave detector.

 

The engineering involved is daunting – first, you’ve got to get at least some thousands of light years to a black hole – but in theory, I think it’s possible to look inside a black hole.

[Lancewen]

I just had a random thought of what might happen if you sent quantum entangled particles into a black hole. Viewing the one particle that has not gone in as the other moves through the event horizon. Might be a way of understanding or measuring black holes???

 

A random thought and also your first post in this forum. I would guess you are not a forum novice, but as far as a possible way to probe a BH, you have a good thought. Entangled particles can communicate instantaneously across the universe, seeming to violate the law that says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. That being the case, it would seem the other side of an event horizon would also not be a problem. At least until that particle merges with the core. How long would it take to merge with the core after crossing the event horizon? I think if that particle is in orbit at close to light speed it could take a very long time to merge with the core and a great deal of information might be passed back to the other particle of the entangled pair.

 

It might be awhile before we can deliver one half of an entangled pair to any BH in our galaxy.

[CraigD]

Entangled particles can communicate instantaneously across the universe, seeming to violate the law that says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

You’re missing a very critical point about entanglement, arKane: it’s been proven, rigorously, that entangled particles can’t communicate instantaneously across the universe, or across a room.

 

Though it’s common for science fiction stories to use large collections of widely separated entangled particles to communicate instantly (or nearly so) across great distances, this is entirely fictional. Although they’re easy to generate, and have been used in experiments for decades, in non-fictional reality, not one bit of information has ever been communicated using a pair of entangled particles.

 

What you’re describing – communicating via quantum entangled particles, via what, thanks to its appearance in many science fiction stories, is conventionally called an ansible – is pretty controversially believed to be impossible, even in theory.

I’m guilty, I think, of some weasely oversimplification in saying a real ansible is “pretty controversially believed to be impossible”, because, as articles such as wikipedia’s no-communication theorem note, there is at least some credible opposition to the otherwise solidly accepted proof of this.

 

There is, to the best of my knowledge, no credible application of accepted theory that contradicts it, but, as always in science, the possibility that key assumptions of accepted theory are wrong, and, as when we’re fortunate, experiments that can test them. Even better, such an experiment was designed and has been ongoing for 6 years by the U of WA’s John G Cramer. Cramer has reports on its progress, along with a good collection of popular press articles and videos about it, at his An Experimental Test of Signaling using Quantum Nonlocality links page.

 

Bottom line on the experiment, as of last report in April 2011: the original experiment design, and several revised ones, haven’t worked, so the experiment hasn’t yet produced a result.

 

My, and as best I can tell, nearly everybody else, including Cramer’s, guesses, are that if and when his or some other team get this experiment to work, it’ll support the theoretical assumptions leading to the proof that ansibles are impossible. If it doesn’t, however, it’ll show not only that you could use an ansible to communicate between the inside and outside of a black hole, but with less engineering effort, from the present to the past (see Richard Baker’s excellent old Sharp Blue: Relativity, FTL and causality for the clearest explanation of this I’ve ever read).

 

The implications of this boggle my mind, and are in my experience underappreciated by most SF writers: the faster-than-light communication that’s the staple of the past half-century of pop/soft SF leads demands, nearly inescapably, time-traveling communication, raising both the old specter of “causality violations”, and more upbeat possibilities such as sending spaceship on trips of many thousands of lightyears that arrive as soon as we want by building and them hundreds of thousands of years in the past.

 

Cramer’s next report should be online soon. I expect that a success since last April would have generated lots of buzz in the press, so this year will be yet another report of setbacks, tuning, and redesigning, but am hopeful this little known, but IMHO important experiment will, one of these years, yield results, and decide the “are ansibles possible” question beyond all but the faintest doubts.

[Lancewen]

Even if there was something to FTL communication via entangled particles. How in the world would we be able to use it? I can't think of any BH's close enough to us, to make any kind of testing possible. Where BH's are concerned, I believe most people believe the compressed mass core to be very small, hence then reference "singularity". My personal opinion is that singularities do not exist in reality. I believe the core of a BH is just super highly compressed matter and that it does have volume that increases with the amount of mass. In other words a super massive BH core will be larger than a stellar size BH core. The trouble with any kind of belief about the inside of a BH is nobody knows for sure and it doesn't look like that will be changing anytime soon.

[CraigD]

Even if there was something to FTL communication via entangled particles. How in the world would we be able to use it?

I’d think sending messages into the past would be, to put it mildly, useful. For example, imagine how dramatically we could improve the performance of computation-intense computer programs if a main program could start a sub-program to do time-consuming calculations at a clock time before the main program knew the arguments to pass to them. Along with those arguments, the main program need only pass the address where the sub-program should store the result, then immediately retrieve it from that address, even if the calculation required, say, a year of runtime to complete!

 

It’s important to understand that the signaling scheme described in the Deep Blue article I linked to in my previous post isn’t the only possible one where FTL communication can be used to communicate with the past. Another one, described by Thorne in Black Holes and Time Warps using instantly traversable worm holes (which I get the impression most physicists think are somewhat less likely to be impossible than communicating using entangled particles), involves storing one “end” (a collection of particles entangled with partners at the other end) of the communicator in the deepest convenient gravity well, allowing it to age slower than the other due to gravitational time dilation, then return it to near the other end, producing a device where signals sent from the unaffected end would arrive nearby at the affected end a precise amount of time before they were sent.

 

These sorts of theory consistent yet profoundly weird conclusions convey a sense, I think, of why most physicists suspect FTL signaling of any kind to be impossible.

 

I can't think of any BH's close enough to us, to make any kind of testing possible. Where BH's are concerned, I believe most people believe the compressed mass core to be very small, hence then reference "singularity". My personal opinion is that singularities do not exist in reality. I believe the core of a BH is just super highly compressed matter and that it does have volume that increases with the amount of mass.

I think this is the consensus guess of most particle physicists, though speculation as to the nature of such matter can be pretty weird. For example, some speculate that very dense matter may be a form of “quarkium” a sort of gigantic single proton/neutron-like particle similar to the state of the universe a few microseconds after the Big Bang.

 

In other words a super massive BH core will be larger than a stellar size BH core.

Because very large BHs have low average densities, it’s also possible that conditions inside them are not much different than outside, consisting of stars, planets, and even other, smaller BHs. See this post in Can Black Holes Collide for more on this idea, and some references.

 

The trouble with any kind of belief about the inside of a BH is nobody knows for sure and it doesn't look like that will be changing anytime soon.

If by anytime soon, you mean the next few decades, I strongly agree. To my continuing dismay, our society seems to me increasingly disinterested in developing the science and technology necessary to send robot probes of humans even a few AUs to the planets and other bodies in our solar system, let alone the lightyears to others.

 

So taking as granted the unlikelihood of an experiment like Rusty describes happening anytime soon, I expect whatever we learn about the insides of BHs will be from modeled it using physics and computers. The big problem here is that, so far, quantum mechanics has no formal theory for gravitational interactions. I think it’s accurate to say that this problem is the or close to the top priority for present day theoretical particle physicists, though whether any of them are making any real progress, or all spending their careers on paths to theoretical dead ends, is a subject worthy of, and having, whole books written about it.

 

I’m optimistic, though, that if we ever could get near the right sort of BH, (IMHO, the “right sort” is the supermassive one at our galactic core), we could devise some means of getting information about its insides out of it. I think the way this can be done is using gravity as a signaling mechanism, rather than entangled particles.

[Lancewen]

I’m optimistic, though, that if we ever could get near the right sort of BH, (IMHO, the “right sort” is the supermassive one at our galactic core), we could devise some means of getting information about its insides out of it. I think the way this can be done is using gravity as a signaling mechanism, rather than entangled particles.

 

Yes you mentioned gravity before. Do we have any gravity threads that might be better to explore that issue? I remember reading something about an experiment to detect gravity waves, but I don't currently know the status of that experiment. From what I understand only very violent events such as two orbiting neutron stars merging would be able to produce gravity waves we might be able to detect.

 

Suppose we did prove gravity waves do in fact exist? How would that help us achieve some form of gravity communication? Next, if there are gravity waves they still don't travel FTL, so in order to make use of them, you would still have to be fairly close to the object of your investigation, and that is still a major problem.

 

However I very much like the idea of understanding gravity much better than we do now.

[rustybridges]

Great thread! really good read. And some great information! thanks everyone!

 

When I was thinking of this experiment I was also thinking of the idea of sending the entangled particles into micro black holes. I guess they are still just hypothetical but this may be some way of conducting this experiment in the near future. This would also solve the problem of entanglement not working over a large distance. And might be conducted in something like a particle collider. Not quite sure what we might learn from the experiment but science / particle physics are always full of surprises.

[Lancewen]

Great thread! really good read. And some great information! thanks everyone!

 

When I was thinking of this experiment I was also thinking of the idea of sending the entangled particles into micro black holes. I guess they are still just hypothetical but this may be some way of conducting this experiment in the near future. This would also solve the problem of entanglement not working over a large distance. And might be conducted in something like a particle collider. Not quite sure what we might learn from the experiment but science / particle physics are always full of surprises.

 

Glad your still with us rusty, if entangled particles are a long shot, I just can't believe in micro BH's even a little bit. But if they were possible it would make working with a BH much simpler and easier as long as you can keep the doom predictors at bay. Most people have been taught to fear BH's. But I have to say that on this side of the event horizon a BH is pretty much like any other stellar body in the way it interacts with other stellar bodies.

 

Let's think about the possible micro BH. Do you think the event horizon would be large enough to allow an atom to be sucked in? If so how fast do you think it would be able to grow into something that could hurt the earth? I've herd some estimates that it would be so far into the future it wouldn't be worth worrying about at all. But I'm never very amazed at what people will fear irrationally for no good reason.

[rustybridges]

From what I understand. Its very possible micro black holes do form some times. But they instantly suck in anti particles and dissipate. But I wonder if you could form one that starts growing. Which would be sucking in particles. And would suck a entangled particle. Then some how if you have enough anti particles lol i guess very dangerously, hope that shooting them in would destroy the tiny black hole.

[Cyberia]

I just had a random thought of what might happen if you sent quantum entangled particles into a black hole. Viewing the one particle that has not gone in as the other moves through the event horizon. Might be a way of understanding or measuring black holes???

 

If a black hole can crush atomic particles, nothing happens to the entangled particles outside. However we have no evidence that fundamental particles like electrons can be crushed.

 

As to entanglement, you spin one particle up and one down so let's say the total spin value is 1. You measure one and that will dictate the other to give a total of say 1. If you measure them immediately or at opposite ends of the universe you will get the same measurement. What's the big deal? There's no connection between them. Just values given when they are spun up and down. Just quantum hand waving.

[Cyberia]

A random thought and also your first post in this forum. I would guess you are not a forum novice, but as far as a possible way to probe a BH, you have a good thought. Entangled particles can communicate instantaneously across the universe, seeming to violate the law that says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. That being the case, it would seem the other side of an event horizon would also not be a problem. At least until that particle merges with the core. How long would it take to merge with the core after crossing the event horizon? I think if that particle is in orbit at close to light speed it could take a very long time to merge with the core and a great deal of information might be passed back to the other particle of the entangled pair.

 

It might be awhile before we can deliver one half of an entangled pair to any BH in our galaxy.

 

 

We have had protons with an energy of 3x10^20 eV which travel at virtually light speed. With the central mass of a black hole dragging at them, they might increase speed a mite but as far as it matters we might as well say that event horizon to central core is done at light speed so a very small fraction of a second before it "merges with the core".

[Cyberia]

From what I understand. Its very possible micro black holes do form some times. But they instantly suck in anti particles and dissipate. But I wonder if you could form one that starts growing. Which would be sucking in particles. And would suck a entangled particle. Then some how if you have enough anti particles lol i guess very dangerously, hope that shooting them in would destroy the tiny black hole.

 

It is possible that with sufficient forces acting on them several thousands tons of matter could form a sphere of particles with black hole density but the instant those forces are released, the particles would spring apart at getting on light speed.

 

If mini black holes existed, stars would eventually pull them in and they would promptly start consuming the star. How long could it take with all that material "pressed against the black hole" so ready to fall in? I don't think we'd have many stars left in the Universe.

[Cyberia]

Welcome to hypography, rusty bridges! :) Please feel free to start a topic in the introductions forum to tell us something about yourself – like why you call yourself “rusty bridges”. :confused:

 

 

Though beyond our technological means at present – the closest known star-massed black hole is 1600 light-years away, and even if we could reach one of these small ones, we’d likely want to play with a bigger one first, as their spaghettification forces are smaller, making them more approachable – actually looking inside a black hole would be a wonderful source of scientific data, data that would revolutionize theoretical physics.

 

A perfect sphere of elementary particles spinning at almost light speed? A radiation free zone, apart from what has just entered the EH. It's just higher figures than outside the event horizon. No big deal.