Are We Living Inside a Black Hole?

 James Webb’s Survey of 263 Galaxies Hints at Yes

Interesting Engineering - Over a century ago, a German physicist named Karl Schwarzschild mathematically described what we now recognize as a black hole using equations. He laid the foundation for black hole cosmology, which is also called the Schwarzschild cosmology.

Many years later, in the early 1970s, two scientists, Raj Kumar Pathria and I.J. Good, built upon Schwarzschild’s work and proposed that the Schwarzschild radius—which we now call the event horizon (the boundary of a black hole beyond which nothing can escape) might also act as the boundary of our universe.

Basically, what they meant is that our universe exists inside a black hole that itself resides within a larger universe — sounds insane, right?

Well, here’s something even more insane: A new study based on the findings of the James Webb Telescope suggests that Pathria and Good were right.

The universe has a favorite direction

Cosmologists generally assume that the universe, on large scales, is homogeneous and isotropic. Homogeneity means that the universe has uniform properties throughout, while isotropy indicates that it appears the same in all directions from any given point.

However, the study authors found something that challenges this commonly believed assumption. They examined 263 galaxies captured by the James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), a research project that uses the ultra-powerful telescope to study the oldest and most distant galaxies in our universe.

If our universe is truly isotropic, there should be no inherent bias in the rotational directions, which means that almost equal numbers of galaxies should rotate clockwise (50 percent) and anticlockwise (50 percent) — but this isn’t the case.

The researchers discovered that nearly one-third of the galaxies in the survey rotated anticlockwise, and over two-thirds showed clockwise movement. 

“The analysis of the galaxies was done by quantitative analysis of their shapes, but the difference is so obvious that any person looking at the image can see it. There is no need for special skills or knowledge to see that the numbers are different. With the power of the James Webb Space Telescope, anyone can see it,” Lior Shamir, study author and professor at Kansas State University, said.

This finding suggests that our universe has a favored galactic spin direction — but why?

Interesting stuff as well as a definite possibility.

Continue reading Below the Fold.