Scientists map the bizarre, chaotic space in the black holes

The original version to this story appears in How many magazineS

At the beginning of time and the center of each black hole lies a point of endless density called singularity. To explore these mysterious, we accept what we know about space, time, gravity and quantum mechanics and apply it in a place where all these things just fall apart. There may be nothing in the universe that causes more imagination. Physicists still believe that if they manage to come up with an agreed explanation for what actually happens in and around the peculiarities, there will be something disclosure, perhaps A new understanding of what space and time are madeS

At the end of the 1960s, some physicists speculate that the peculiarities could be surrounded by a chaos region, where space and time accidentally grow and shrink. Charles Misner of the University of Maryland called it “Mikmaster Universe” then what was then a A popular line of kitchen appliancesS If the astronaut falls into a black hole, “one can imagine that he mixes the parts of the astronaut’s body the way a mixer or egg burn mixes the yolk and white of the egg.” Kip ThorneLater, he writes later physicist of the Nobel Prize.

The general theory of relativity of Einstein, which is used to describe the weight of black holes, uses a field in the field to explain how cosmic curves and matter move. But this equation uses a A mathematical transcript called a tensor To hide 16 different, intertwined equations. Several scientists, including Misner, have developed useful simplifying assumptions to allow them to explore scenarios such as Mixmaster Universe.

Without these assumptions, Einstein’s equation cannot be analytically solved and even with them it was too complicated for the numerical simulations of time. Like the appliance they were named after, these ideas fell out of style. These “dynamics are supposed to be a very common phenomenon in gravity,” said Gerben olingPhD at the University of Edinburgh. “But this is something that fell from the map.”

Over the last few years, physicists have reviewed the chaos around the features of new mathematical instruments. Their goals are double. It is a hope to show that the approaches that Missner and others have made are valid approximations of Einstein’s gravity. The other is to move closer to the peculiarities in the hope that their extremes will help to coordinate the common relativity with quantum mechanics in a quantum gravity theory, which has been the goal of physicists for more than a century. AS Sean Hartnol The University of Cambridge said, “The weather is ripe now that these ideas are fully developed.”

The birth of chaos Mixmaster

Thorne described the end of the 1960s as a “golden age” to study the black holes. The term “black hole” barely entered widespread use. In September 1969, on a visit to Moscow, Thorne received a manuscript from Evgeny Lifshitz, a prominent Ukrainian physicist. Together with Vladimir Belinski And Isaac Halanikov, Lifshitz had found a new solution to Einstein’s gravity equations near Singularity, using the assumptions that the three had developed. Lifshitz feared that the Soviet censors would delay the publication of the result, as it contradicts more proof that he was a co -author, so he asked Thorne to share it in the West.

The larger models of black holes suggested that perfect symmetries were not found in nature, putting, for example, that the star was a perfect sphere before collapsing in a black hole or that there was no net electric charge. (These assumptions have allowed Einstein’s equations to be resolved in the prime form of Karl Schwarzschild Shortly after Einstein published them.) The decision, which Belinski, Halatnikov and Lifshitz discovered, which are called BKL solution after their initials, described what could happen in a messy, more realistic situation in which the black holes are formed by improperly formed objects. The result was not a smooth stretch of space and time inside, but a seafront sea of ​​space and time, stretching and compression in multiple directions.

Thorne smuggled the paper back to the United States and sent a copy of Missner, whom he knew he was thinking on such lines. It turned out that Missner and the Soviet group gave up regardless of the same ideas, using similar assumptions and different techniques. Moreover, the BKL group “uses it to solve the largest unresolved problem of that era in mathematical relativity,” Torne said about the existence of what is known as a “common” feature. Belinski, the last surviving member of the BKL trio, recently said in an email that Missner’s living descriptions, in turn, helped him to visualize the chaotic situation near the peculiarities they both revealed.