Professor Kirchhof here to explain spacial physics in a nut shell.
Take four very, very strong rods. Place said rods in four different places to make a square, but place them trillions of miles apart. Attach very strong trampoline fabric to these four points, pull it tight. Take a bowling ball and set it anywhere on this fabric. The large indention around it represents the indention in the space - time continuum. Roll a marble to the side of this indention. One of two things will happen. It’ll curve and keep going in a different direction without slowing down much (assume there’s no friction) or it will curve and go in to orbit around the ball for a while. You’ve just demonstrated an asteroid veering off course or an asteroid turning int0 a moon.
Now, this was a planet on a two dimensional plain. Imagine these planets on a three dimensional plain — aka, trampoline fabric all around. It creates a gravitational field in all directions.
Let’s go back to our two dimensional plain. What happens if the fabric rips? What’s on the other side? No one knows. You’ve got yourself a miniature black hole. In a three dimensional environment, since it’s rip in all directions, it will suck things through to God knows where.
Ta - da, quantum spacial physics.
Ryan
P.S: Yes, I know the image is a bit awry.
October 18th, 2009 at 9:12 PM
Actually, the fact that the space time continuum rips is one that I’ve heard very little.
In most theories, black holes are like if you took a bus inside a bus with 20 elephants inside those buses, and compressed it’s mass into a sphere the size of a tip of a pin. That sphere would put a HUGE amount of force onto a TINY space of fabric, bending it down a massive distance, therefore creating a giant gravitational pull.
That’s the way I understand it, but I’ve heard others say that black holes are actually wormholes in the space-time continuum.
February 9th, 2010 at 4:49 PM
I could see that. It makes sense and everything, but there’s no real way to prove either case without examining one up close. That, of course, is impossible for two reasons at the moment.
1.) We don’t have the technology to get out of the Solar System, so you can forget about traveling thousands upon thousands of light years away.
2.) Last I checked, I don’t think we can survive being ripped in to two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, then thirty two, then sixty four, then one hundred and twenty eight pieces and so on.