Comment by afarah1
4 days ago
Interesting read, but even if we assume the author is correct, and the cosmos formed as a black hole in a larger universe, the question remains, how did this larger universe formed, then? Might just be impossible to know.
Questions like what was before the big bang or what is outside of our universe seem to be quite natural. However, we still don't know if these questions are well defined and have a proper meaning. For instance, a few hundred years ago, one might have asked, what happens if I go to the edge of the (flat) earth? Or one might ask: What is north of the north pole?
Thanks, GPT 4.1. It told me the same thing twelve hours ago when I asked it what was at the top. “what’s north of the North Pole”?
It is well possible that GPT-4.1 references Sean Carroll, either directly or by regurgitation.
> One sometimes hears the claim that the Big Bang was the beginning of both time and space; that to ask about spacetime “before the Big Bang” is like asking about land “north of the North Pole.”
Source: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/dtung/
I'm a regular listener of his Mindscape podcast, and that's where I got this phrase. I can highly recommend his podcast: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/
> What is north of the north pole?
I really like this analogy for "what is outside of our universe", thank you
Not really. It’s not what’s outside of our universe. It’s why is there something instead of nothing.
It’d be like asking why is there a North Pole? Why is there an Earth to give meaning to a North Pole? Why is there a universe for the Earth to exist? And so on until you inevitably reach why is there something instead of nothing?
Maybe the larger universe is identical to the contained universe, like a fractal. That would solve the question. ;)
Might I suggest Brouwer's theorem while we figure it out
Could you elaborate? It's been a while since I've done any real analysis/etc.
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Would be fun if we find a function f(state, time) such that for f(singularity, 14 billion years) we get our current universe. i.e.: every singularity turns into our exact universe.
Implying there’s no such thing as randomness, at any level?
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Then we gotta find the black hole in our universe that contains that universe, and nuke it before they come to take our fluids!
Might not be the best idea, unless we just so happen to be all the way at the top of the sequence[1]...
1 - https://qntm.org/responsibility
Why selfish ???
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It’s turtles all the way down
Black holes all the way up.
This theory is in the same space:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_natural_selection
I don’t think it has a hypothesis for the origin, though
See also the recent HN discussion about Blowtorch Theory, which has roots in (but doesn’t necessitate) CNS
This is awesome, thank you! I’m interested in the general space
I loved this overview on our current approaches to measure the expansion: https://youtu.be/WNyY1ZYSzoU
It may just be that the physical conditions of our universe just prior to the big bang are indistinguishable from that of the interior of black holes.
In that sense black holes are areas where our universe has reverted from it's low entropy state all the way back to the initial nearly infinite entropy state.
If we wait until we understand everything perfectly before publishing, we’d never publish anything. That question may remain, but so do many others, this paper can’t address them all.
I feel like quantum physics is gently pointing us towards the idea "everything you can imagine is real at once". As in, all possible universes and physics systems and whatnot do exist in some sense of this word, and we happen to inhabit one. Just like Earth is a totally unremarkable planet in a totally unremarkable solar system in a totally unremarkable galaxy, except we popped up here so for a long time we thought there's something deeply special about Earth.
Quantum mechanics doesn't imply at all that everything possible is actual. That is a misconception.
I do agree that it makes sense, but not because of what quantum mechanics says.
Yes, it doesn't imply, but parallel universes is one of possible interpretations.
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I find it more useful to anchor the concept of "real" in what one has direct access to. Beyond that there are many ways to describe our shared reality and the space of possible realities, including the past and future, some of which are more real than others, and go far beyond what we can imagine. Quantum physics gives us a language to expand what we can describe and imagine.
Not only does the sun not rotate around us, the rest of the galaxy doesn't even care to think that we exist. An interesting evolution in thought nonetheless.
That's a very 3D way to think of a universe.
It's just recursion in the simulator.
My theory: There's no such thing as before and after “it”. It is it.
Block Universe. The more you think about it, the more probable it seems. Why should a universe pass time like a movie, if all moments could exist simultaneously? If there is no time, and it’s just a simulation formed in our brain, there doesn’t have to be a beginning nor end.
However, a complete lack of time doesn't fit with our observations and we can measure relativistic effects where time gets distorted (e.g. fast moving particles that last much longer than you'd expect due to relativity)
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What about "bit"? Doesn't that come before "it", Mr Wheeler? :)
Just casually adding the biggest question its possible to ask
A larger black hole
if we assume the author is correct, it would cease to be a scientific endeavor.
I'd put it a bit differently, that it remains a scientific endeavor, but leaves us in the same predicament as we're in now, which is the difficult work of forming a scientific theory that can only be tested indirectly.
But who would be as cruel to put us here without giving us those answers? Who? And where did that entity come from?
Oh that was me - I figured if I let you guys work it out for yourselves, it’d be more meaningful or whatever.
As for where I came from, I gotta admit I feel curious about that too, but mostly I’m just happy to be here. Real excited to see what you do next.
I believe you, could you please give me 1000 upvotes? If you do I promise to spread the good news everywhere.
There is no other entity. We're nothing. An algebra of nothing. Combine nothing with nothing in various ways (like S-terms) and it gives you physics, among many other things. From the inside we see a universe, from the outside you would see nothing.
As an agnostic I agree, but none the less it is a whole, absurd joke to be here without any answers and I demand someone to answer me.
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This is why the "but the universe couldn't spawn out of nothing!" style arguments are so annoying. They completely accept that an all powerful all knowing entity could exist for all of time and not need a creator without any supporting evidence. But the origin of the universe specifically needs to be explained in detail or science is a sham.
Maybe there was no cruelty, and we were just plain matter that fell into our encapsulating black hole. Like what happenswith our own universes black holes.