Friday, August 18, 2023

What’s on the other side of the Event Horizon?

 The event horizon is the region around a black hole which separates what’s in the hole from what’s outside of it. When matter or energy from the outside goes in past the horizon, it never comes out because the gravitational pull of the hole is so strong, it does not allow it.

 

This being a mystery that has tickled human beings since the discovery of Black Holes in the Universe, speculations of all kinds sprung up around what may exist inside these objects. But despite the near universal interest in the subject, no serious effort seems to have been undertaken to unravel the mystery and satisfy our curiosity.

 

Well then, for all it’s worth, here is my two-cents’ worth of contribution to the effort:

 

Build a machine that will concentrate matter to such a high density, it will create a level of gravitational pull that will rival in miniature the Black Holes of outer space. Neither the machine nor the hole it creates need be physically massive because what counts is the density of the compressed matter. But how to do that?

 

The idea is to use lead (Pb 207) — which is the heaviest non-radioactive metal that can be handled safely — and concentrate its neutrons to such a density, they will create a gravitational pull as would be expected from a mini Black Hole. The neutrons will be created in the part of the machine that’s outside the Black Hole, but will be thrust as powdered lead toward the Event Horizon beyond which they’ll begin their journey inside the Black Hole.

 

I cannot begin to speculate what the neutrons will encounter, what we’ll see in real time as they move inside the hole, or what’s recorded by instruments left behind before the Black Hole (BH) machine has been turned on. What I suggest, however, is that the scientists in charge should think up all possible means by which to broadcast in real time what’s happening inside the Black Hole, or record what’s happening for later viewing with equipment they leave behind before switching on the machine.

 

What goes into the building of such a machine?

 

The BH machine will be a cylinder that has the height of a building 10 floors up. It will have a diameter that’s about 30 or 40 feet wide. It will be fitted with a hopper at its top; one that will contain lead ground to a powdered state. As the powder is pulled down by the Earth’s gravity, it will go through a tube that will heat it to just below the melting point of lead (325 Degrees Celsius).

 

The powder will then go through a screen that’s connected to the positive terminal of a giga level electricity generator. This will excite the lead atoms enough to relinquish their negative electrons, much as happens in the vacuum tubes of an earlier technology.

 

As the dust falls further down the (BH) machine, it will encounter another screen; one that’s connected to the negative side of the electricity generator. This will cause the lead atoms to relinquish their positive protons. Stripped of both their electrons and protons and left only with neutrons, the attractive power of the weak nuclear force will come into action and bring the neutrons into an even higher state of concentration. This should be enough to turn the second screen into an Event Horizon for the Black Hole.

 

Adjacent to the cylinder that makes up the bulk of the machine will be a building the size of a large warehouse. It will contain a power generator, transformers, maintenance tools, precision instruments and all that’s needed to make certain the machine is made to work as intended, and do so at all time.

 

But above and beyond all this, the warehouse will contain a contraption designed to connect the two screens of the BH machine to their proper terminals one at a time. This will be necessary to prevent the opposite function of the two screens from interfering with each other.

 

Nothing that was said on this page assures us that the BH Machine, as here described, will work and yield the expected results. But spending the effort and going through the exercise of chasing a vision has been the hallmark of our species. Despite the odds, we have managed to achieve so much already that we can wrap our heads around the most massive of Black Holes we see in the Universe and seek to understand.

 

We may never solve the mystery of Black Holes by attempting to simulate their function here on Earth. But the exercise alone will add so much knowledge to what we have already accumulated in this and other fields, it will be worth it