Are We Living in a Black Hole???

While this question seems ridiculous, we shouldn’t dismiss the theory outright. Maybe there are lessons to be extracted out of this thought experiment. Or maybe our universe truly exists within a black hole.

The theory is called Schwarzschild cosmology which posits that our universe lies within the black hold of a larger parent universe. The theory opens the door for an infinite number of universes. The problem with testing the theory however is the limitations of the laws of physics. We know that nothing that goes beyond a black hole’s event horizon can come back, not even light. This means that all relevant data from within a black hole could never make it out to any observer outside of the black hole’s event horizon. We do know what phenomena would be experienced if our universe was in a black hole such as the slowing of time and stretching of matter which we do not seem to experience. This may mean that the black hole that we reside in is so large that these distortions are unnoticeable by humans, even with the most finely tuned instruments. It can generally be agreed upon that with our current understandings of physics and our level of technological development, we will never be able to answer this question concretely- just as we cannot answer whether or not we are living in a simulation. These considerations seem far fetched but our inability to answer them with confidence should humble us. The vastness of the universe has become much more evident to me. We learned about how the New Horizons mission took nine years to finally reach Pluto and that is just within our own solar system. It is fascinating to think about the distances beyond our solar system and even beyond our own universe.