silver (12/27/82)
All the popular explanations I've read for black holes leave me with some nagging questions. Now I have a way to ask the experts... 1: If nothing ever gets out of a black hole, and, if at one time our incredibly massive cosmos was emitted from a point, then it is still within a hole, is it not? Albeit one with very low internal density. 2: Given Hawking's "white hole" theory, must our hole therefore be losing mass to somewhere without? 3: Do such questions even make sense? Alan Silverstein HP Fort Collins Col.
rb (01/04/83)
Yes, the whole universe can be considered a black hole. I seem to remember reading that someone calculated the schwarzschild radius of the universe based on it's estimated total mass, and got an answer at least as big as the known (?) radius of the universe. [If an object's actual radius is less than the calculated schwarzschild radius for its mass, it is a black hole] I don't know much about the "white hole" theory, but I don't think it is too popular these days. Ronen