Quote (njaguar @ Wed, 10 Dec 2008, 14:32)
All sensible logic tells me it's just a LOT of condensed mass.
It's contended that black holes are the most massive objects in the universe, outside of superclusters, which are more dispersed. Black holes allow no "information" to be released, but Hawking radiation does show up along an event horizon. The Big Bang Theory lacks symmetry in the sense that it's explanatorily empty regarding it's own origin. Perhaps that's alright, because we're geared to think something must come before x, and then something muyst come before y. In terms of dealing with the idea of the expansion/contraction of the universe, the calcualtions on mass aren't really finished. So if there's a certain amount of mass, we're not going to retract, and perhaps there never were contractions, but if there's a different amount of mass, we're going to see contraction replayed, potentially endlessly. So far it looks like we won't see a Big Crunch (retraction)
but there are some unsettled hypotheses afloat:
* we haven't observed that mass
* we don't know how to observe that mass OR we've miscalculated
In the late 90s I played with the idea of seeing forces equally in a multiverse. In THIS universe, or for what we can observe and so far know about, it appears that gravity is especially weak, and really only shows up to impress us when we think of large masses. Whereas a magnet outdoes gravity pretty easily on Earth. If we explain gravity as only partial it's fathomable that if we live in a multiverse, we're experienceing a gravity "leak". This would also explain black holes to some extent, but it's difficult to say if there's a "sucking" effect that forces mass out into some other dimension/universe. In fact, it's more likely that there's a "pocketing effcect" wherethrough black holes appear on their own volition (that's current science's explanation, anyway), and then they just "leak out", or, better yet, their tear in a one in space-time
So then lost gravity would be expalined either in pockets, bubbles, or additional dimensions/universes. That would be really cool, but the physics there is VERY iffy, because, for one thing, physics doesn't pentrate black holes so long as physics assumes an "inside" for black holes--or so goes conventional reason. But that deosn't mean we'd need an alternative physics to expalin "what's on the other side", so long as it tells us something about gravity. And perhaps gravity is the only leaking force because of its particularities.
So for now the Big Bang semes to beat out the Big Crunch (expansion/contraction), but the Big Crunch is a more elegant proposal. A lot of physicists are retelling the story of the Big Bang as the Big Rip now.
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