Sunday, March 02, 2014
NatGeo, SciAm educate us about black holes and multiple universes in heavily illustrated articles: the afterlife could be real even for agnostics
The March 2014 print issue of National Geographic is
important to mention for a detailed article by Michael Finkel, impressive art
work by Mark A. Garlick, “The Truth About Black Holes: Star Eater”.
Albert Einstein had, at one time, thought that something
like a black hole would not exist. Now, we know that our galaxy and probably
most or all galaxies have large black holes in the center, areas where gravity
is so strong that light cannot escape.
At the center of the sphere there is a mathematical point of
infinite density called “the singularity”.
It is possible that sometimes singularities “explode” with a big-bang to
create a new universe. Could this happen
at the center of the Milky Way and obliterate our existence? Conceivably it has happened in the Universe a
few times. It seems to be rare, and an
act of intentional creation.
The article imagines what happens as one goes into a black
hole. Nothing, because time stops. But one microinstant later you are “spaghettified”. But the stoppage of time raises an intriguing
idea: at death, maybe our sense of time stops, and we remain conscious of our
last moments (which could be horrible for some people) or of our entire lives,
with every day easily retrievable.
Back in February 2012, Michael Mayer had authored a piece in
Scientific American, “The Quantum Universe: Is Space Digital?” He had proposed that information associated
with consciousness (and free will, capable of moral accountability) gets
transferred on “light sheets” to black hole surfaces. There could be an issue of how long it takes
that sheet to reach the center of a galaxy (at “c” as the limit). But there’s also a problem in that the larger
the black hole sphere, the less adequate the surface would he in holding all
possible information, relative to the volume.
(That’s pretty easy to prove with calculus.) Also, because of Hawking radiation, black
holes can “evaporate” or sublime (like snow in the sun when the air temperature
is below freezing) so stored consciousness could be lost. Maybe this supports the need for
reincarnation. Or maybe absolutely
eternal life is still relative. Maybe
the Mormon idea that we advance toward becoming “gods” through eternal marriage
could even make some sense, cosmologically.
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