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Can we escape a black hole with a warp drive or wormhole? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, hoor hey, I thought of a new genre of movies.
0:12
Speaker 1: Oh nice, Does it involve banana punts? Sadly, no, I'm
0:17
Speaker 1: thinking of a mashup of science fiction in your classic
0:21
Speaker 1: bank heist genre. Oh you mean you want to steal
0:25
Speaker 1: some science fiction books? Or is it mostly about portraying
0:30
Speaker 1: physicists as cool thieves. I'm thinking about thieves that use
0:34
Speaker 1: science fiction to steal stuff, like opening a wormhole into
0:37
Speaker 1: a bank vault. Don't doesn't Marvel do that already? Marvel
0:41
Speaker 1: does everything. The wizards count as scientists more. Instead of
0:44
Speaker 1: being a science thieve, you could maybe use science fiction
0:47
Speaker 1: to protect your valuable stuff. Oh I like that. Maybe
0:51
Speaker 1: I could hide all my gold inside a black hole. Yeah.
0:54
Speaker 1: You might never see it, but it'll be safe. At
0:56
Speaker 1: least I'll know that it's growing in there. Yeah. I
0:59
Speaker 1: guess it's a crewing, isn't it. It's a creating interest.
1:02
Speaker 1: It's compounding for sure. Hi. I'm or handmade cartoonists and
1:20
Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
1:22
Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, And sadly,
1:26
Speaker 1: I have no skills that can contribute to a bank
1:29
Speaker 1: heist and not even driving. You can't drive. You could
1:31
Speaker 1: be the getaway driver on a spaceship. Maybe I'm a
1:35
Speaker 1: very very safe driver, so I'd be like stopping at
1:38
Speaker 1: all the crosswalks, you know, observing all the traffic rules. Yeah, yeah,
1:42
Speaker 1: you're fired, Daniel. From my high stand, I can't say
1:46
Speaker 1: I'm sorry about that. But wouldn't physicists be good at
1:48
Speaker 1: planning to heist? You know? Aren't you good at like,
1:50
Speaker 1: you know, thinking things through and being analytical and you know,
1:54
Speaker 1: being detailed oriented. Yeah, I can make a university budget
1:57
Speaker 1: for our bank heist that includes like head rate and
2:01
Speaker 1: stretches out over five years. That sounds great. Yeah, Or
2:04
Speaker 1: you could write the grand proposal for startup ones, you know,
2:08
Speaker 1: to the mafia. What experts are they going to get
2:10
Speaker 1: to review that? They're all in jail, you know, so
2:14
Speaker 1: they're easy to get to. You could apply to the
2:16
Speaker 1: National Stealing Foundation. But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel
2:21
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart
2:23
Speaker 1: Radio in which we attempt to steal all of the
2:26
Speaker 1: jewels of knowledge that the universe has hidden away here
2:30
Speaker 1: and there we take your mind to the inside of
2:32
Speaker 1: black holes. We dropped them through wormholes and do crazy
2:35
Speaker 1: new locations in the universe. We try to snatch all
2:39
Speaker 1: the juicy tidbits that explain how the universe actually works,
2:43
Speaker 1: have it got to be the way that it is,
2:45
Speaker 1: and what it's crazy future holds, and we explain all
2:48
Speaker 1: of them to you. Yeah, because it is a pretty
2:50
Speaker 1: amazing universe full of incredible and valuable discoveries out there
2:55
Speaker 1: just sitting there, just waiting for a crafty physicist to
2:58
Speaker 1: crack the safe and get to all the shiny knowledge.
3:01
Speaker 1: I like thinking of the secrets of the universe as valuable,
3:04
Speaker 1: like I could auction them off as n f T
3:06
Speaker 1: s or something. You would profit from the East, Daniel,
3:10
Speaker 1: You wouldn't just be like a robbin hood physicist where
3:13
Speaker 1: you steal from the universe and then you you distributed
3:15
Speaker 1: to people in need. Well, that's the really cool thing
3:17
Speaker 1: about knowledge is that if you share it with people,
3:20
Speaker 1: it doesn't get diluted. Right, have a pile of gold
3:23
Speaker 1: and you give half of it to somebody, you have
3:24
Speaker 1: as much gold. But if you know the secrets of
3:27
Speaker 1: the universe and you share it with somebody, then you
3:29
Speaker 1: have somebody to talk to about it. So it's like
3:31
Speaker 1: even more valuable, right, But then if you make it
3:33
Speaker 1: into n f T that's the opposite of that. That's
3:38
Speaker 1: why I wouldn't turn the secret to the universe into
3:39
Speaker 1: n f T s. That's why we share them freely
3:42
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Yeah, and that's why we don't make
3:44
Speaker 1: a lot of money, I guess, because this podcast is
3:47
Speaker 1: for free, because making money is not the goal here.
3:50
Speaker 1: The goal is to celebrate knowledge. That's right. This podcast
3:53
Speaker 1: is a steal in itself. You are stealing knowledge from
3:58
Speaker 1: our brains. You stole my punch line then. But it
4:02
Speaker 1: is a pretty incredible universe full of interesting places, and
4:05
Speaker 1: some places are sort of harder to get to than others.
4:08
Speaker 1: In fact, there are places in the universe that might
4:10
Speaker 1: be impossible to get to or at least to get
4:13
Speaker 1: knowledge out of. Yes, the jewels of knowledge and not
4:16
Speaker 1: just littered on the streets. They are sometimes hard to find,
4:20
Speaker 1: and you actually do need a physicist or two on
4:22
Speaker 1: your team Oceans thirteen or Oceans nineteen or whatever the
4:25
Speaker 1: sequel will be in order to extract those jewels from
4:29
Speaker 1: the universe. Sometimes you just have to perform a clever experiment.
4:32
Speaker 1: Sometimes it seems like the universe is doing its best
4:36
Speaker 1: to keep its jewels hidden from us. Yeah, and Daniel,
4:39
Speaker 1: how many people work in your collaboration at the Large
4:41
Speaker 1: Chundren Collider? Like a few thousand? You know, I'm not
4:44
Speaker 1: even sure what the number is to within a hundred.
4:47
Speaker 1: It's somewhere between five thousand and six thousand authors on
4:51
Speaker 1: every single paper I see. So your sequel would be
4:54
Speaker 1: Oceans five thousand, five hundred plus or minus five hundred.
4:58
Speaker 1: Your movie title needs an error? Are that's right? What's
5:01
Speaker 1: another hundred authors on a paper anyway? Really? Between friends? Yeah?
5:06
Speaker 1: Though sometimes it seems like, no matter how many henchmen
5:08
Speaker 1: you have in your gang m it seems that the
5:10
Speaker 1: nature sort of like you're saying, it has places in
5:13
Speaker 1: the universe that it just doesn't seem to want to
5:16
Speaker 1: let you get to. And it's especially tantalizing and frustrating
5:20
Speaker 1: when we know the secret is in there, when we
5:22
Speaker 1: have found this physics vault and we just don't know
5:26
Speaker 1: how to crack it. We know that the answers are
5:29
Speaker 1: waiting behind a wall, and if we could only get
5:31
Speaker 1: in there, we could learn something deep and true about
5:35
Speaker 1: the universe, like the Ultimate Heist. I am warming up
5:39
Speaker 1: to this movie idea. It's starting to seem interesting sci
5:43
Speaker 1: fi heist doctor Strange's ocean. Well, I think one of
5:49
Speaker 1: these places that are really hard to get to the universe,
5:51
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, are black holes. Black Holes are extremely
5:56
Speaker 1: difficult to get to or at least survive getting into,
5:59
Speaker 1: and maybe even impossible to get anything out of. And
6:02
Speaker 1: yet we know that hidden inside a black hole are
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Speaker 1: critical details that will reveal to us the true nature
6:09
Speaker 1: of space and time. How does space come together? Is
6:13
Speaker 1: gravity a quantum force or the curvature of space time?
6:16
Speaker 1: What is the smallest unit of space? What is actually
6:19
Speaker 1: going on inside a black hole? All of those answers
6:23
Speaker 1: are available to anyone who falls into a black hole. Yeah,
6:27
Speaker 1: but just to be clear, Daniel, it's not like you
6:29
Speaker 1: go into a black hole and it's all there on
6:31
Speaker 1: a textbook or you know, a sign. It's like you
6:34
Speaker 1: want to get into a black hole just so you
6:35
Speaker 1: can do experiments there and then see what you know
6:38
Speaker 1: these how these rules of the universe change inside of
6:41
Speaker 1: one experiments. I'm expecting a ted talk when I get
6:44
Speaker 1: there by by the physicists that I threw in before me.
6:50
Speaker 1: That's what I have students and post docs for right. Right,
6:54
Speaker 1: I thought you were going in first, Daniel, I'm never
6:56
Speaker 1: going in first. You know that when the aliens arrive,
6:58
Speaker 1: we're sending other people first. I'm gonna be in like
7:00
Speaker 1: the fifth wave. Another reason why I'm not in a
7:04
Speaker 1: bank heist. That's right, you just want to sit at
7:06
Speaker 1: home and count the knowledge later. But you're right that
7:09
Speaker 1: the secrets of the universe are not just laid out
7:12
Speaker 1: for us in an already written paper or a ted talk.
7:14
Speaker 1: We would have to do some observations, but I don't
7:17
Speaker 1: think it would be that tricky. There are some really
7:19
Speaker 1: big questions that different ideas about what might be going
7:22
Speaker 1: on inside a black hole are extremely diverse from there's
7:25
Speaker 1: a tiny singularity of infinite density too. There is nothing
7:29
Speaker 1: inside a black hole because everything's smeared along its surface,
7:32
Speaker 1: and so a lot of things could be very quickly
7:35
Speaker 1: ruled out once you get inside. I wonder if it's
7:37
Speaker 1: possible for you to get into a black hole, get
7:39
Speaker 1: ready to do your experiments, and to figure out that
7:41
Speaker 1: you didn't bring the right equipment. Are you You just
7:45
Speaker 1: have no idea how to test for these things? Yeah, well,
7:47
Speaker 1: people can always throw stuff in after you go right.
7:50
Speaker 1: So if I ever go to a black hole, I
7:52
Speaker 1: would just want my students to just keep throwing equipment
7:54
Speaker 1: in after me in case I need more stuff, just
7:57
Speaker 1: in case, because he wouldn't be able to like tell
8:00
Speaker 1: them possibly what you need, right, you know, as computers
8:04
Speaker 1: get better, I want them to just keep throwing in
8:05
Speaker 1: more computers so I keep doing more analysis. Also, maybe
8:08
Speaker 1: some lunch, you know, a little s q to table
8:11
Speaker 1: would be nice. Maybe a bed might be good too.
8:16
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's interesting to think about what's inside of
8:18
Speaker 1: a black hole, and it's sort of frustrating to think
8:21
Speaker 1: that even if you do get in, and even if
8:23
Speaker 1: you bring the right equipment and do the right experiments
8:26
Speaker 1: and figure out how the universe actually works, you might
8:29
Speaker 1: not be able to come out and tell other people.
8:31
Speaker 1: It's incredibly frustrating. You know, there are some kinds of
8:34
Speaker 1: knowledge that we know are out there. We also know
8:37
Speaker 1: that eventually we'll get them, Like, for example, what's going
8:40
Speaker 1: on on the surface of exoplanets fairly nearby. We don't
8:43
Speaker 1: have the technology today, but eventually we'll have powerful telescopes
8:47
Speaker 1: to image those services, will send robotic probes. We'll figure
8:51
Speaker 1: it out. We might even get some samples returned in
8:53
Speaker 1: the far far future. But black holes are so much
8:57
Speaker 1: more frustrating because it seems like it might actually be
9:00
Speaker 1: impossible to get the information out of there, or maybe
9:04
Speaker 1: not according to the theory. Black holes are space time
9:08
Speaker 1: I don't wish you can't get out of but there
9:10
Speaker 1: are sort of loopholes in the theory that might let
9:12
Speaker 1: you come out. I love loopholes in physics theory. Instead
9:16
Speaker 1: of being like a physics bank heist, sometimes I want
9:18
Speaker 1: to be a physics lawyer, want to argue in front
9:20
Speaker 1: of the court of the universe, like actually your honor
9:24
Speaker 1: it says here. I think you mean actually your honor
9:28
Speaker 1: according to uh this paper from thirty years ago. And hey,
9:31
Speaker 1: we do discover these loopholes, and sometimes these loopholes are
9:35
Speaker 1: really important. Like we all know that you can't travel
9:37
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light. On the other hand,
9:40
Speaker 1: it seems like it might be theoretically possible for things
9:43
Speaker 1: to move away from each other faster than the speed
9:45
Speaker 1: of light if the space between them expands. It's an
9:49
Speaker 1: awesome kind of loophole because it solves the problem. You
9:52
Speaker 1: don't actually want to travel through space faster than light.
9:54
Speaker 1: You just want to get somewhere faster than light could have.
9:57
Speaker 1: So that's a really wonderful kind of loophole in the
9:59
Speaker 1: kind that we might be able to use to crack
10:01
Speaker 1: open a black hole. Yeah, because space is but a
10:04
Speaker 1: pretty a pretty interesting thing. It's not just like an
10:06
Speaker 1: emptiness out there. It's it's sort of this thing that
10:09
Speaker 1: can squish and may bend and sometimes maybe even have
10:12
Speaker 1: shortcuts in it. It's a really difficult concept for people
10:14
Speaker 1: to grasp. I think a lot of people are still
10:17
Speaker 1: stuck with sort of Isaac Newton's idea of space is
10:20
Speaker 1: like the emptiness to backdrop the stage on which the
10:22
Speaker 1: universe happens, not actually a part of the universe, but now,
10:26
Speaker 1: as you say, we know it's a dynamical thing that
10:28
Speaker 1: responds to the stuff that's in it. Yeah, and in
10:31
Speaker 1: particular it sort of allows for two things that may
10:35
Speaker 1: let you come out of a black hole. And those
10:38
Speaker 1: two things are warp drives and wormholes, which I'm still
10:41
Speaker 1: waiting Daniel for you guys to make it a reality. Well,
10:44
Speaker 1: I sent that grant application to the Daniel Science Foundation
10:47
Speaker 1: into the National Thieves Foundation, and I'll let you know
10:50
Speaker 1: when I hear no it's a national stealing foundation. That's
10:53
Speaker 1: why wrong email address. But you're right that these are
11:01
Speaker 1: theoretically allowed in the universe. General relativity in our knowledge
11:06
Speaker 1: of physics says that it might be possible to shortcut
11:09
Speaker 1: to places in space to get from one to the
11:11
Speaker 1: other without going through all the space in between. That's
11:15
Speaker 1: a wormhole, or to squeeze space in front of you
11:18
Speaker 1: and expand it behind you to create a warp bubble
11:21
Speaker 1: and get places faster than light could have. That's a
11:25
Speaker 1: warp drive. They might be theoretically be allowed. Yeah, And
11:28
Speaker 1: we've talked about both of those things in our podcast.
11:31
Speaker 1: If you're interested in going deeper, you can search for
11:34
Speaker 1: those episodes, but we didn't sort of talk about maybe
11:37
Speaker 1: using them to get out of a black hole. And
11:40
Speaker 1: a lot of folks out there have been writing in
11:41
Speaker 1: asking me if it's possible to use warp drives and
11:45
Speaker 1: wormholes as a loophole into black holes. And so today
11:49
Speaker 1: on the podcast we'll be tackling can you escape a
11:56
Speaker 1: black hole with a warp drive or warmhole? Now, Daniel,
12:00
Speaker 1: are people asking you this because they're thinking of going
12:02
Speaker 1: to a black hole or are they stuck in a
12:04
Speaker 1: black hole? And if they're stuck in a black hole,
12:06
Speaker 1: how did they get the message to you? I got
12:08
Speaker 1: this weird email with no return address you. It's just
12:11
Speaker 1: like emptiness from like three trillion years ago. No, I
12:17
Speaker 1: think people are planning their vacations, and you know, they
12:19
Speaker 1: want to think about what happens with my family and
12:22
Speaker 1: I fall into that black hole, and you've got to
12:24
Speaker 1: be prepared. You know, some people are really safety conscious,
12:27
Speaker 1: like how many people can I bring back? And can
12:29
Speaker 1: I you know, maybe leave some of them behind and
12:34
Speaker 1: hopefully No, that's kinda that's kind of dark. I think
12:36
Speaker 1: listeners are really curious about this seeming impenetrability. Anytime you
12:40
Speaker 1: hear about something being totally impossible in physics, it makes
12:44
Speaker 1: you wonder if there's not just like another clever angle
12:47
Speaker 1: or some loophole to exploit. And of course we're all
12:50
Speaker 1: curious about what's inside black holes, and so if you
12:53
Speaker 1: found a way to siphon off that information, it would
12:56
Speaker 1: be pretty fascinating. Yeah, and so this is pretty mind
12:59
Speaker 1: bending and space bending stuff. You know, black holes bend
13:02
Speaker 1: space a lot, and warp drives and warmholes also bend space.
13:05
Speaker 1: So you know, I can I can see how people
13:07
Speaker 1: might think like, hey, what if I use one to
13:09
Speaker 1: solve the other? And so we were wondering how many
13:11
Speaker 1: people had thought about this possible combination of things black holes,
13:15
Speaker 1: warp drives, and wormholes, and how they can be used
13:18
Speaker 1: together or used against each other. So Daniel went out
13:22
Speaker 1: there into the wilds to the internet to ask people
13:24
Speaker 1: this question. And thanks very much to all of you
13:27
Speaker 1: who volunteered to answer crazy, unexpected questions about loopholes in
13:31
Speaker 1: general relativity without any chance to prepare or take a
13:35
Speaker 1: graduate level class in advance. And if that sounds fun
13:38
Speaker 1: to you, please don't be shy. Right to me two
13:40
Speaker 1: questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com and I'll set
13:44
Speaker 1: you up with some crazy questions. So think about it
13:46
Speaker 1: for a second. Do you think you can escape a
13:48
Speaker 1: black hole with a warp drive or warmhole? Here, it's
13:52
Speaker 1: what people had to say. I'm not really sure how
13:54
Speaker 1: a warp drive works, but if you are changing the
13:59
Speaker 1: shape of space or of space time, then it seems
14:03
Speaker 1: like you could get yourself into position where the gravity
14:06
Speaker 1: of the black hole doesn't hold you as tightly as
14:13
Speaker 1: it does in normal space. Well, for sure, Jean Lopeicar
14:17
Speaker 1: would try to use the warp drive, depending will how
14:23
Speaker 1: close we would be to the black hole. But if
14:27
Speaker 1: we are in the no escape area where the light
14:31
Speaker 1: doesn't go out, I don't see how we can get
14:34
Speaker 1: out of there. I think even if your maths and
14:37
Speaker 1: simulations tell you in some way to escape a black hole,
14:42
Speaker 1: the fact that you've been spaghettified is going to slow
14:47
Speaker 1: you down to some extent. I don't think you could
14:50
Speaker 1: use a wormhole, but I'm pretty sure you could use
14:54
Speaker 1: a warp drive. I think a warp drive would do it.
14:57
Speaker 1: But unfortunately I can't tell you why. I think at
15:00
Speaker 1: because of the prime directive. Well, since warp drives are
15:05
Speaker 1: fantasy at this point and wormholes are theoretical at best,
15:12
Speaker 1: I would say no, you cannot because we do not
15:16
Speaker 1: know much about these modes of travel. I am gonna
15:21
Speaker 1: say no because I don't think anything can escape a
15:25
Speaker 1: black hole. All right. Not a lot of optimism here.
15:28
Speaker 1: Some people are like, Nope, Nope, I don't think so.
15:31
Speaker 1: I like the person who said John looked the card
15:33
Speaker 1: when he us a warp drive. I think that could
15:36
Speaker 1: be a good life philosophy. You know what, would John
15:38
Speaker 1: looked the card? Do? Yeah? And it made me wonder.
15:40
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of episodes of star Chek the
15:43
Speaker 1: Next Generation, but I don't remember one where they fall
15:45
Speaker 1: into a black hole and use a warp drive to escape.
15:49
Speaker 1: Even on that show where the science is like, how
15:51
Speaker 1: can we say very flexible, I don't remember them using
15:54
Speaker 1: this particular trick. Oh. Interesting, they didn't make it so,
15:59
Speaker 1: But of course there's probably a listener out there who's
16:01
Speaker 1: seen every episode ten times and can correct me. So
16:04
Speaker 1: if the Enterprise he uses a warp drive to escape
16:06
Speaker 1: a black hole, please send us a note. I think
16:09
Speaker 1: they used to in one of the movies. Didn't they
16:12
Speaker 1: use something to sling shot, like around some of the
16:15
Speaker 1: sun or something, and then to go faster than light
16:17
Speaker 1: and travel back in time. It wasn't that a plot
16:20
Speaker 1: of one of the movies. Yeah, they did go back
16:22
Speaker 1: to present day San Francisco to save the humpback whales
16:25
Speaker 1: and one of them, and they did that by going
16:27
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light to go back in time.
16:30
Speaker 1: But I don't think a wormhole or warp drive was used. Yeah.
16:33
Speaker 1: I guess a warp drive is pretty normal for them,
16:35
Speaker 1: Like they just have one in their ship. Everybody has one. Yeah,
16:38
Speaker 1: which makes you wonder why do they need to sling
16:40
Speaker 1: shot around the Sun in order to go fast in
16:42
Speaker 1: the speed of light when they got the warp drive
16:43
Speaker 1: right there. But as we say, the science is flexible.
16:47
Speaker 1: I see, it's a black hole of real science. No,
16:50
Speaker 1: I love that show. You don't have to be all
16:52
Speaker 1: hard science fiction. Have a good time, but it does
16:54
Speaker 1: help right, that more fun. It's a different kind of universe,
16:57
Speaker 1: and I like all the universes, from the true physics
16:59
Speaker 1: universe as we actually live in to the crazy goofy
17:02
Speaker 1: universe of Star Trek. Yeah. Alright, well, let's get into
17:06
Speaker 1: this question, Daniel. Can we use a warm hole or
17:09
Speaker 1: warp drive to get out of a black hole? Maybe
17:11
Speaker 1: step us through this first? Why is it hard to
17:14
Speaker 1: get out of a black hole in the first place?
17:16
Speaker 1: Black Holes are hard to escape because they do more
17:19
Speaker 1: than just pull on you. Everything that has gravity is
17:22
Speaker 1: pulling on you, like the Sun is pulling on you,
17:24
Speaker 1: the Earth is pulling on you. Black Holes are a
17:26
Speaker 1: great example of how gravity is more than just a force.
17:30
Speaker 1: It's actually the changing of the shape and the organization
17:33
Speaker 1: of space itself. So the reason that we feel gravity
17:37
Speaker 1: is not because there's a Newtonian force between stuff. But
17:40
Speaker 1: because having mass in space changes the shape of space,
17:44
Speaker 1: and when the shape of space changes, you get this
17:47
Speaker 1: fictitious forces, a feeling that there's a force there changing
17:51
Speaker 1: the paths of particles. And that's what gravity is. It's
17:54
Speaker 1: a fictitious force which appears when space is curved, and
17:58
Speaker 1: black holes are the most incredibly intense curvature. They change
18:02
Speaker 1: the shape of space so much that space becomes one
18:05
Speaker 1: directional inside the black hole. Every future you have inside
18:09
Speaker 1: a black hole only moves you closer to the center. Yeah,
18:12
Speaker 1: it's like being sort of trapped in a bubble of space.
18:15
Speaker 1: Although Daniel, just to be clear, Um, I know that
18:17
Speaker 1: the gravity as as a space time bending thing is
18:21
Speaker 1: sort of the prevailing view, But like you were saying
18:23
Speaker 1: at the there are some questions about gravity that we
18:26
Speaker 1: still don't know, right, Like, there's still the possibility that
18:28
Speaker 1: gravity is a force and it has a forced particle.
18:33
Speaker 1: That's the description we get from general relativity, which so
18:36
Speaker 1: far has survived every experimental test we've thrown at it,
18:39
Speaker 1: even really really precise ones about the warping of space
18:42
Speaker 1: and frame dragging. Check out our episode on gravity Probe B.
18:47
Speaker 1: It's predicted the existence of black holes, which appeared. However,
18:51
Speaker 1: the place where we expect general relativity to break down
18:54
Speaker 1: is when it gets really really intense over really really
18:57
Speaker 1: short distances, when quantum gravity becomes relevant, when we need
19:01
Speaker 1: to understand how quantum particles interact gravitationally, for example, inside
19:06
Speaker 1: a black hole. So the best place to figure out
19:08
Speaker 1: why general relativity is probably wrong is inside a black hole.
19:12
Speaker 1: So you're right, this description of gravity as a bending
19:15
Speaker 1: of space time is very effective, but it is a
19:17
Speaker 1: classical theory and is likely incorrect. It's the new classical theory,
19:22
Speaker 1: I guess, because there's a previous classic. There's like a
19:24
Speaker 1: classic classic theory, which is a Newtonian view. Right, that's right.
19:27
Speaker 1: But by classical we don't mean the old delicious formula
19:30
Speaker 1: that you loved when you were a kid. We mean
19:33
Speaker 1: that it's not quantum mechanical. General relativity as we use
19:36
Speaker 1: it assumes that space is smooth and continuous, there's an
19:39
Speaker 1: infinite number of locations between every two points, that objects
19:43
Speaker 1: have perfect paths, that if they are here and then
19:46
Speaker 1: they are there, they must have followed a path in between.
19:49
Speaker 1: But we know the universe is different from that. We
19:51
Speaker 1: have strong evidence that quantum mechanics is the nature of
19:55
Speaker 1: space time. We just don't know how to unify those pictures. Yeah,
19:59
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of like the neoclassical view now, because
20:02
Speaker 1: we know that there might be big changes coming soon. Yeah,
20:04
Speaker 1: and specifically, general relativity predicts at the heart of a
20:07
Speaker 1: black hole is a singularity. But it's not really fair
20:10
Speaker 1: to call it a prediction. It's more like a failure.
20:12
Speaker 1: General relativity predicts something which is essentially impossible and infinitely
20:16
Speaker 1: dense point, so most theorists see this as the breakdown
20:20
Speaker 1: of general relativity. This is the point where general relativity
20:23
Speaker 1: no longer works and has to be replaced by a
20:26
Speaker 1: quantum theory. So it's not like we really expect there
20:29
Speaker 1: to be a singularity at the heart of these black
20:31
Speaker 1: holes because that's what Einstein predicted. We expect to find
20:34
Speaker 1: something else which helps us change general relativity, which shows
20:38
Speaker 1: us how to refine it and extend it so that
20:41
Speaker 1: it does apply to those crazy circumstances. But I guess
20:43
Speaker 1: even before you get to that singularity, a black hole
20:46
Speaker 1: is such that even if you get near it, you're
20:48
Speaker 1: sort of trapped inside of it. If you get beyond
20:51
Speaker 1: the event horizon of the black hole. You're saying that
20:54
Speaker 1: there's like nowhere for you to go because all of
20:57
Speaker 1: space time sort of curves around you, and anywhere you
21:00
Speaker 1: try to go, it just pulls you closer to the center. Yeah,
21:03
Speaker 1: and people think about the inside of a black hole
21:06
Speaker 1: as this barrier past the event horizon. Remember, the event
21:09
Speaker 1: horizon is not like a physical place. It's not like
21:12
Speaker 1: there's a gate there with some guard locks you in
21:15
Speaker 1: and says you can't leave. It's just an effective location.
21:18
Speaker 1: It's just if you venture past this point, then your
21:21
Speaker 1: light cone, your future, everything that you can affect in
21:24
Speaker 1: the universe is now trapped inside this radius around the
21:28
Speaker 1: black hole. So it's sort of like a point of
21:30
Speaker 1: no return. It's like if you're trying to drive fast
21:33
Speaker 1: around an icy turn. You know, when you've lost traction
21:36
Speaker 1: and you're just not going to make it and you're
21:37
Speaker 1: gonna slide out. That's the point of no return. The
21:40
Speaker 1: event horizon is sort of like that you got a
21:42
Speaker 1: little too close and now all of space is leading
21:45
Speaker 1: you eventually towards the center. Yeah. I think it also
21:49
Speaker 1: it's kind of like if you're trapped in a pit
21:50
Speaker 1: on the ground, and it's it's sort of like the
21:52
Speaker 1: point where the walls of the pit get go beyond vertical,
21:57
Speaker 1: Like once they're vertical or more than vertical or leaning
22:00
Speaker 1: towards you, there's almost no way you can climb out.
22:02
Speaker 1: And so, according to classical general relativity, everything that happens
22:05
Speaker 1: inside the event horizon eventually hits the singularity, and there's
22:10
Speaker 1: no way for information to pass out of the event horizon,
22:13
Speaker 1: including you or any signals you want to send, or
22:16
Speaker 1: any notes or ted talks you compose while you're inside
22:19
Speaker 1: the black hole, yeah, or any science fiction novels or
22:22
Speaker 1: TV shows that you come up within there. All right,
22:25
Speaker 1: So that's a black hole, and so theoretically it's all
22:28
Speaker 1: sort of impossible to get out of it, or so
22:30
Speaker 1: we thought. There are sort of loopholes to this theory
22:33
Speaker 1: that might let you get out, maybe a warm hole
22:35
Speaker 1: or a warp drive, and so let's get into whether
22:38
Speaker 1: or not we can use them to get out of
22:39
Speaker 1: a black hole. But first let's take a quick break.
22:55
Speaker 1: All right, Daniel, help, I'm stuck inside of a black hole?
22:57
Speaker 1: What can I do? And if you can hear me,
22:59
Speaker 1: you're probably in here with me, in which case. Uh,
23:03
Speaker 1: we're both doing exactly. That's never the phone call I
23:05
Speaker 1: want to get. The call is coming from inside the
23:10
Speaker 1: black hole. You're inside the black hole too. That's the
23:14
Speaker 1: combination sci fi horror movie genre. Yeah, well, there you go.
23:17
Speaker 1: That's the first scene in your movie. Somebody has to
23:20
Speaker 1: steal us out of the black hole. It's a rescue
23:23
Speaker 1: movie exactly, which is what John goes, Well, WHOA, now
23:27
Speaker 1: we can cast the Rock. I would rather put my
23:30
Speaker 1: faith in the Rock's hand and John Cena, I don't know.
23:32
Speaker 1: How about uh boy, who would win in an armed
23:36
Speaker 1: wrestling contest or a physics test? The Rock for sure?
23:44
Speaker 1: How about both? We could get them both in the movie.
23:46
Speaker 1: But one of them could play you, the other one
23:48
Speaker 1: could play me. I think you have an over density
23:51
Speaker 1: of muscle and you might create your own black hole,
23:53
Speaker 1: and then it would be counterproductive. They'll have to diet.
23:56
Speaker 1: Maybe you're stopped working out. But I'm curious about your
24:00
Speaker 1: suggest in there. If you had to choose, who would
24:02
Speaker 1: you prefer plays you in the movie, The Rock or
24:05
Speaker 1: John Cina or the Rock for sure? Yeah, you're gonna
24:08
Speaker 1: shave your head, So if you can play I think
24:11
Speaker 1: it'd be easier to get him a wig. But either way,
24:13
Speaker 1: I guess we would need one of their help to
24:15
Speaker 1: get out of the black hole, because black holes are
24:17
Speaker 1: almost maybe impossible to get out of, except that maybe
24:20
Speaker 1: there's the idea that we could use a loophole in
24:23
Speaker 1: the theory, one or two loopholes, either a warmhole or
24:26
Speaker 1: a warp drive. So maybe let's go through him one
24:29
Speaker 1: at a time. Daniel, Um, how does the warp drive
24:32
Speaker 1: even work? So warp drive is a really cool idea,
24:35
Speaker 1: and let me stress that it's theoretical. We have these
24:38
Speaker 1: equations that suggest it might be possible, but there's a
24:41
Speaker 1: whole lot of question marks and engineering hurdles to overcome
24:45
Speaker 1: before we actually build a warp drive and use it
24:47
Speaker 1: to shoot off and explore the universe. The basic idea
24:51
Speaker 1: is that if you can manipulate the curvature of space,
24:55
Speaker 1: you might be able to accomplish what you want, which
24:57
Speaker 1: is to get from here to somewhere really really far
25:00
Speaker 1: away without having to travel through all of that space.
25:03
Speaker 1: And the idea is that space is flexible, and so
25:06
Speaker 1: for example, if you can squeeze the space between here
25:10
Speaker 1: and your destination and at the same time expand the
25:14
Speaker 1: space behind you. You can effectively move a little bubble
25:17
Speaker 1: of space faster than the speed of light, because while
25:20
Speaker 1: there are rules about how fast you can go through space,
25:23
Speaker 1: there are no rules about how fast the curvature of
25:25
Speaker 1: space can change. Yeah, so this is kind of one
25:29
Speaker 1: flavor of war drives. You know, it's it's all sort
25:32
Speaker 1: of fantastical at this point in theoretical and there are
25:34
Speaker 1: many different ways to kind of pull off a war drive, right,
25:37
Speaker 1: I mean, we talked about this in one of the
25:39
Speaker 1: chapters in our book. Freaquently asked questions about the universe. Yeah,
25:41
Speaker 1: there are lots of crazy ideas out there. I think
25:43
Speaker 1: the one that's closest too plausible is called the al
25:47
Speaker 1: Qbair drive, named after a Mexican physicist who came up
25:51
Speaker 1: with this idea. He discovered that there's a solution to
25:54
Speaker 1: Einstein's equations for general relativity which can accomplish this. So
25:59
Speaker 1: if you could bend space in this way, then theoretically
26:03
Speaker 1: you could take a little bubble and warp it across
26:05
Speaker 1: the universe. The question at the end of his paper, though,
26:08
Speaker 1: is can you bend space in this way? You know,
26:11
Speaker 1: Einstein's equations are very tough to solve, and it's not
26:14
Speaker 1: always clear that you can accomplish this kind of curvature
26:18
Speaker 1: just because you want to WHOA Okay. First of all,
26:21
Speaker 1: if you're interested in learning about all the other crazy
26:23
Speaker 1: ideas for warp drives, please check out our book Frequently
26:26
Speaker 1: Asked Questions about the Universe and b there's an actual
26:29
Speaker 1: paper where someone proposes a warp drive. Is this like
26:32
Speaker 1: a sub genre of physics papers? This is a sub
26:36
Speaker 1: genre of physics papers, and it's one that's growing recently.
26:39
Speaker 1: People are working on all sorts of crazy stuff exploring
26:41
Speaker 1: the potential consequences for faster than light travel or closed
26:45
Speaker 1: timelike curves. In general relativity, a lot of people are
26:48
Speaker 1: exploring sort of the edges of the fabric of gr
26:52
Speaker 1: what it can predict and how it can be manipulated.
26:54
Speaker 1: This is a paper that came out more than ten
26:56
Speaker 1: years ago, so it's been around for a while. Oh man,
26:58
Speaker 1: that means that somebody has had ten is to be
27:00
Speaker 1: working on this. This is not the fringe, right, This
27:02
Speaker 1: is sort of like between the mainstream and the fringe.
27:06
Speaker 1: But these ideas are being taken seriously, and I mean
27:08
Speaker 1: this paper is correct. If you could bend space in
27:11
Speaker 1: this way. It would accomplish that, but you know, of course,
27:14
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee that you can bend space in this way.
27:17
Speaker 1: Einstein's equations say if you have an arrangement of matter
27:20
Speaker 1: and energy in a certain way, they tell you how
27:23
Speaker 1: space bends. This is sort of going the opposite direction.
27:25
Speaker 1: It says, Oh, I want space to bend this way,
27:28
Speaker 1: what arrangement of mass and energy do I need? And unfortunately,
27:31
Speaker 1: the answer and the paper is you need some weird
27:33
Speaker 1: stuff like negative energy matter like matter with negative mass,
27:38
Speaker 1: which we don't know if it exists in the universe. Well, okay,
27:42
Speaker 1: let's take a step back though first and maybe step
27:44
Speaker 1: through this idea so that you're saying that one way
27:46
Speaker 1: to do a warp drive is to somehow, like if
27:49
Speaker 1: I want to get from here to another star, one
27:52
Speaker 1: way to do that is to squish, like move forward,
27:56
Speaker 1: but squish the space in front of me so that
27:58
Speaker 1: it's smaller, shorter, so that if I take like one step,
28:02
Speaker 1: I'm actually going ten thousand steps or something like that.
28:05
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, to like make up for it,
28:07
Speaker 1: I have to expand the space behind me, because I'll
28:10
Speaker 1: step through this crunch space, and then I have to
28:13
Speaker 1: let it go back to normal behind me. Well, you
28:15
Speaker 1: don't want to actually step through the scrunch space because
28:18
Speaker 1: then you get torn apart by these tidal forces. But
28:21
Speaker 1: what you can do is have a little bubble, and
28:23
Speaker 1: that bubble can get closer to your destination. So imagine,
28:28
Speaker 1: for example, you step into our work bubble and then
28:30
Speaker 1: you squeeze the space between you and Alpha centauri and
28:34
Speaker 1: then you step out of the work bubble. It's sort
28:36
Speaker 1: of like stepping onto a moving walkway. So you step
28:39
Speaker 1: sideways into the bubble, you can press the space in
28:41
Speaker 1: front of you, and then you step sideways out of
28:43
Speaker 1: the bubble again. So you're saying the bubble moves. It's
28:46
Speaker 1: the bubble moves. Yes, So you don't actually go through
28:49
Speaker 1: crunch space. You don't go through crunch space. You don't
28:51
Speaker 1: want to. Like that space is extraordinarily curved and you
28:54
Speaker 1: would feel very strong forces. So in this version the
28:57
Speaker 1: warp bubble, you don't actually go through crunch. The bubble
29:01
Speaker 1: itself moves right. And space can do this kind of thing.
29:04
Speaker 1: Space can distort, it can bend, you can twist, you
29:07
Speaker 1: can get reconnected, all sorts of crazy stuff. I see
29:11
Speaker 1: like you sort of. I guess I'm controlled visualizing this bubble.
29:15
Speaker 1: So like, inside the bubble is regular space that is
29:18
Speaker 1: comfortable for me. But just outside of the bubble, you're
29:21
Speaker 1: saying space is crunch and then somehow the bubble moves,
29:24
Speaker 1: but I do to move, or the bubble moves, but
29:27
Speaker 1: I stay in place. That's right. You have an inertial
29:30
Speaker 1: frame inside the bubble, so you're not moving relative to
29:33
Speaker 1: the bubble, but the bubble is moving relative to the
29:35
Speaker 1: rest of space. And that's accomplished also because there's a
29:39
Speaker 1: part of space behind you that's expanding. So that's what
29:42
Speaker 1: this bubble does, is it compresses the space in front
29:44
Speaker 1: of you and expands the space behind you. I don't
29:47
Speaker 1: need to move, like, wouldn't the bubble move away from
29:49
Speaker 1: me or past me? You're inside the bubble and so
29:53
Speaker 1: you have no velocities, no forces on you relative to
29:55
Speaker 1: the bubble. The whole bubble moves, including you. WHOA, it's
29:59
Speaker 1: almost um. I guess you're trying to go on a
30:01
Speaker 1: train track and you're what you're like, you're scrunching all
30:04
Speaker 1: the tracks in front of you. Yes, it's a lot
30:07
Speaker 1: like sitting on a train. Right on a train, you
30:08
Speaker 1: don't move relative to the train. The train moves relative
30:11
Speaker 1: to the track. So that's what you're trying to accomplish here.
30:15
Speaker 1: I see, the bubble is a train, and space is
30:18
Speaker 1: a track, and I'm scrunching the track in front of
30:20
Speaker 1: the train, and then the train moves through the scrunch space.
30:24
Speaker 1: And one complication is, of course, how do you get
30:27
Speaker 1: space to scrunch in front of you and to expand
30:29
Speaker 1: behind you, because it has to scrunch ahead of you
30:33
Speaker 1: before you get there. And here's a key problem is
30:35
Speaker 1: that you inside the bubble can't do anything to the
30:38
Speaker 1: universe outside the bubble while you're inside. So if you
30:41
Speaker 1: need space to be scrunched in front of you, you
30:44
Speaker 1: need some sort of space scrunching device in front of
30:47
Speaker 1: you which either has to travel faster than the speed
30:49
Speaker 1: of light. If you know how to do that already,
30:51
Speaker 1: you don't need a war bubble, or you need to
30:53
Speaker 1: like lay a track and advance somebody's like go before
30:56
Speaker 1: you and build the space crunching track between you and
30:59
Speaker 1: alpha centaur, you know, or to accomplish this scrunching right, Oh,
31:03
Speaker 1: I get it, yeah, Because you're in the train moving
31:05
Speaker 1: like you can't reach out, like you can't have an
31:07
Speaker 1: arm sticking out of the train ahead at like seventy
31:11
Speaker 1: miles ahead of you and scrunch the tracks in front
31:13
Speaker 1: of you. Because if you get an arm out that far,
31:15
Speaker 1: you might as well just hop on the arm and
31:17
Speaker 1: go forward. Maybe the rock can do that, right, Yeah,
31:22
Speaker 1: with the help of John Cena, one of them could
31:24
Speaker 1: toss the other. There you go. Now it's a train
31:27
Speaker 1: highest Rescue movie. Throw John Cena from the train. Yeah. Okay,
31:34
Speaker 1: So you're saying, in this version of a warp drive,
31:36
Speaker 1: which is kind of like the front runner in terms
31:39
Speaker 1: of the theory in the community, you kind of have
31:41
Speaker 1: to like build a track ahead of time, sort of
31:45
Speaker 1: like a like a tunnel almost in space before you
31:48
Speaker 1: can war drive. It's not like you can just warp
31:50
Speaker 1: drive anywhere. You have to lay down this magical track. Yeah,
31:53
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a hyperloop. And let's clarify, Like
31:56
Speaker 1: the idea that's out there is if you can bend
31:59
Speaker 1: space in this way, you can move a warp bubble
32:01
Speaker 1: through space. The question is, then how do you bend
32:04
Speaker 1: space in this way? And one idea people have is
32:06
Speaker 1: make this basically like hyperloop train track that bends space
32:10
Speaker 1: and find matter with negative energy density to bend the
32:13
Speaker 1: space behind you. There might be other ways to accomplish
32:16
Speaker 1: this curvature. That's just one idea how to accomplish this
32:19
Speaker 1: particular curvature of space that would effectively give you a
32:23
Speaker 1: warp bubble. But I guess I would this work. So
32:25
Speaker 1: let's say we lay out this hyperloop or warp drive
32:28
Speaker 1: loop from period of office and TORI, and along the
32:31
Speaker 1: this tunnel there's some sort of like device or material
32:35
Speaker 1: that somehow like puts out negative mass energy. Is that
32:38
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Yeah, the whole warp bubble needs to
32:40
Speaker 1: be surrounded by weird negative energy density to separate the
32:45
Speaker 1: bubble from the rest of the universe so we can
32:47
Speaker 1: move faster than light. There's a strange connection between negative
32:52
Speaker 1: energy density and faster than light travel. But the theorists
32:56
Speaker 1: tell me that this is not something that's actually well
32:58
Speaker 1: understood even theoretically, and we have no idea how to
33:03
Speaker 1: make something with negative energy density anyway. Right, But but
33:07
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is that it would need
33:09
Speaker 1: to be somehow selectively activated, right like this tunnel would
33:12
Speaker 1: need to be lined with this negative energy matter or generators,
33:16
Speaker 1: and then you need to sort of like activate them
33:18
Speaker 1: as your bubble goes along. I think that's true, because
33:21
Speaker 1: what you want is space to be curved right in
33:24
Speaker 1: front of your bubble and space to be expanded right
33:26
Speaker 1: behind your bubble. And so it sounds like a pretty
33:29
Speaker 1: complicated engineering problem. A little bit, A little bit. There's
33:34
Speaker 1: definitely some details to work out here, although you know,
33:37
Speaker 1: they have made some progress. And the first generation of
33:39
Speaker 1: the idea they thought it would take as much matter
33:42
Speaker 1: as is contained in the observable universe to accomplish this
33:45
Speaker 1: squeezing of space. Now they've got it down to like
33:48
Speaker 1: some fraction of the mass in Jupiter, So you know,
33:51
Speaker 1: that's progress. Yeah, that's a huge amount. That's a huge difference,
33:54
Speaker 1: huge savings. That's right. We've broadened down from seventy two
33:57
Speaker 1: good jillion dollars to only sixteen jillion dollars. That's right. Yeah,
34:02
Speaker 1: we've gone from the rock salary to um the actor's salary.
34:06
Speaker 1: But I think you're what you're saying is that the
34:08
Speaker 1: main problem is that it depends on this weird thing,
34:11
Speaker 1: which is something with negative energy, which we don't even
34:14
Speaker 1: know if it's possible, or we have no idea how
34:17
Speaker 1: to do. There's only one scenario in general relativity, as
34:20
Speaker 1: far as we understand it, where space can expand, and
34:22
Speaker 1: that's if you have a lot of potential energy inside
34:25
Speaker 1: some quantum field in space. And we talked about this
34:27
Speaker 1: as a potential source for inflation in the very early universe.
34:31
Speaker 1: When the universe did exactly that, it expanded and the
34:34
Speaker 1: in phloton field with a lot of potential energy might
34:36
Speaker 1: have accomplished that. And currently today the universe is expanding
34:39
Speaker 1: fairly gently thanks maybe to the cosmological constant, which might
34:43
Speaker 1: be a source of potential energy in space driving dark energy.
34:47
Speaker 1: So we do see that the universe is expanding, space
34:50
Speaker 1: can expand, although controlling dark energy is not even an
34:53
Speaker 1: engineering problem, it's just fantasy. WHOA all right, I have
34:57
Speaker 1: a question about that. And also let's getting too whether
35:00
Speaker 1: you can use maybe warm holes instead to get out
35:02
Speaker 1: of a black hole. But first let's take another quick break.
35:17
Speaker 1: All right, we're trying to get out of a black hole, Daniel,
35:20
Speaker 1: and we can't afford the Rock or John Cena to
35:24
Speaker 1: help us here, being on a train low budget black
35:27
Speaker 1: hole escape Heist movie. That's right, we only have enough
35:31
Speaker 1: money to fill up Jupiter. It makes me kind of wonder, like,
35:34
Speaker 1: you know, you're talking about dark energy and how it's
35:36
Speaker 1: expanding space and whether or not we can maybe harness
35:39
Speaker 1: them of this negative energy that might exist to maybe
35:42
Speaker 1: create a warp drive. Could could just use dark energy
35:45
Speaker 1: or this negative energy to just basically like punch a
35:49
Speaker 1: hole in a black hole? You know what I mean? Like,
35:51
Speaker 1: could we just you know, use somehow theoretically, is it
35:54
Speaker 1: possible to manipulate this and just kind of create an
35:57
Speaker 1: escape hatch potentially, And that's sort of what a warp
36:00
Speaker 1: drive might be doing. Now. In our universe, there is
36:03
Speaker 1: dark energy. Space is expanding, and so, for example, black
36:07
Speaker 1: holes that exist out there in our universe right now,
36:09
Speaker 1: they're existing in the context of space that is expanding
36:12
Speaker 1: underneath them. And people write to me sometimes they ask,
36:15
Speaker 1: like can dark energy pull apart a black hole? As
36:19
Speaker 1: far as we know, black holes do survive dark energy
36:22
Speaker 1: because they're out there in the universe and they've lasted
36:24
Speaker 1: for billions of years. And the effect of dark energy, remember,
36:27
Speaker 1: is to expand space. And so fundamentally, if you have
36:30
Speaker 1: a homogeneous if you're like expanding all of space. At
36:33
Speaker 1: the same time you're just stretching the black hole. You're
36:36
Speaker 1: just moving the event horizon further out. It's like expanding
36:40
Speaker 1: the black hole. Nothing that was inside the event horizon
36:43
Speaker 1: ever gets out of the event horizon. If you're smoothly
36:46
Speaker 1: expanding all of space. What we're talking about what the
36:49
Speaker 1: warp drive though, is like, could you expand just part
36:52
Speaker 1: of space? Could you like distort it, make like this
36:54
Speaker 1: weird bubble or divot, so the event horizon actually like changes,
36:58
Speaker 1: it's no longer a sphere, and you can like slip
37:00
Speaker 1: it behind you. You can get out from inside the
37:03
Speaker 1: black hole. Yeah, it's theoretically possible, right, like because the
37:07
Speaker 1: black hole is bending space itself, but then you're sort
37:09
Speaker 1: of bending it back in certain places. It's not even
37:13
Speaker 1: theoretically possible. I would say it's like maybe potentially theoretically possible.
37:18
Speaker 1: There's a lot of issues there, right, but maybe theoretically possible.
37:21
Speaker 1: It's still theoretical possible. It may be theoretically possible. Expanding
37:25
Speaker 1: the space behind you can sort of like move you
37:28
Speaker 1: further from the center of the black hole. Right if
37:30
Speaker 1: you specifically expand that space that's between you and the
37:34
Speaker 1: singularity and not the spaces between you and the event horizon.
37:38
Speaker 1: Then you're sort of moving closer to the event horizon.
37:40
Speaker 1: If you do that enough, you might be able to
37:42
Speaker 1: pop out of the event horizon. But according to some
37:45
Speaker 1: particle theories that I talked to, if you do that,
37:48
Speaker 1: then you don't really have a black hole. To them,
37:51
Speaker 1: a black hole is something with an event horizon that
37:53
Speaker 1: nothing can escape from. And so if you like construct
37:56
Speaker 1: a warped tunnel out of a black hole, they say, well,
38:00
Speaker 1: it wasn't really a black hole. They're purists. I see,
38:05
Speaker 1: they're black hole purists. They're like, well, if you can
38:07
Speaker 1: escape one, then it's not a black hole. Yeah, exactly.
38:12
Speaker 1: But the bigger problem is an engineering one, which is
38:14
Speaker 1: how do you build the track. If you're inside a
38:17
Speaker 1: black hole and you want to warp bubble out of
38:20
Speaker 1: the black hole, then you need this warp drive track,
38:23
Speaker 1: this hyperloop we talked about, this construction of this crazy
38:26
Speaker 1: matter to get you out, And if you're inside, then
38:29
Speaker 1: you can't go out to build this track, so you
38:31
Speaker 1: sort of can't build your way out of it. I see,
38:34
Speaker 1: if it's possible, then it's not impossible, So you could
38:37
Speaker 1: sort of do it if you built the warp drive
38:39
Speaker 1: track in advance, Like you see a black hole, you
38:41
Speaker 1: build this warp drive track into the black hole, then
38:44
Speaker 1: you can jump in and ride it back out. But
38:47
Speaker 1: the particle theory purist would say, well, when you built
38:50
Speaker 1: that warp drive track, you sort of like created a
38:52
Speaker 1: divot in the black hole already and you didn't really
38:55
Speaker 1: go into the event horizon. Yeah, it's like you punched
38:58
Speaker 1: a hole in it. Uh, and you went into the
39:00
Speaker 1: whole of the black hole, but you didn't actually touch
39:02
Speaker 1: the black hole exactly. So either you bend in advance
39:05
Speaker 1: and you're sort of sitting in the dip in the
39:07
Speaker 1: event horizon, or you go inside, but then you can
39:09
Speaker 1: no longer build your way out, and like, that's a
39:11
Speaker 1: loophole in the loophole of the loophole. There are a
39:14
Speaker 1: lot of holes in this theory, Daniel, And there are
39:17
Speaker 1: a lot of holes, And we haven't even talked about
39:18
Speaker 1: wormholes yet. Yeah, let's get into our last kind of
39:22
Speaker 1: hole for a black hole, because that would make it
39:25
Speaker 1: all whole, and that is a wormhole, which is maybe
39:28
Speaker 1: another possible way to get out of a black hole.
39:31
Speaker 1: And so Daniel, we've talked about warmholes before and how
39:33
Speaker 1: there may be at the center of black holes. I'm
39:36
Speaker 1: actually more optimistic about the wormhole approach than the warp
39:39
Speaker 1: driver approach. You're more optimistic, more optimistic, less optimistic. But
39:43
Speaker 1: let's let's let's find out. Well, there's lots of different
39:45
Speaker 1: varieties of wormholes. So the variety of wormholes that are
39:49
Speaker 1: inside a black hole, sometimes called an Einstein Rosen bridge,
39:54
Speaker 1: is a tricky concept. Some theorists say it's just a
39:57
Speaker 1: mathematical artifact of choosing a weird core in it system.
40:00
Speaker 1: It can't actually exist in nature. But the idea is
40:04
Speaker 1: to connect black hole interiors. So you have like two
40:08
Speaker 1: black holes and they have the same singularity and the
40:11
Speaker 1: same interior, the same event horizon, even though one is
40:15
Speaker 1: in one place in the universe and the other is
40:17
Speaker 1: in another place in the universe. That's not very useful.
40:20
Speaker 1: It just means that if you fell into a black hole,
40:22
Speaker 1: turns out you're inside two black holes. But you could
40:26
Speaker 1: change black holes in case you get bored of one,
40:28
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like during the pandemic, you just
40:30
Speaker 1: change rooms you work in for some variety. But you're
40:34
Speaker 1: just still home, man, You didn't go anywhere. That's the problem,
40:39
Speaker 1: al right. So that kind of warmhole wouldn't help you.
40:41
Speaker 1: There's another kind of wormhole. You have a black hole
40:43
Speaker 1: where the singularity is connected to a different kind of
40:46
Speaker 1: object called a white hole, which is like the opposite
40:49
Speaker 1: of a black hole. Black Holes something you fall into
40:52
Speaker 1: and can't escape. A white hole is something you can
40:55
Speaker 1: shoot out of, but you can't ever go into. So
40:57
Speaker 1: these are like one way tunnels in space. Theoretically, nobody's
41:01
Speaker 1: ever seen a white hole or a wormhole, but in principle,
41:05
Speaker 1: you could fall into that black hole and then get
41:07
Speaker 1: shot out the other side of the white hole, right
41:10
Speaker 1: like one of them. The black hole is this hole
41:12
Speaker 1: that's sucking stuff in, and the white holes is presumably
41:15
Speaker 1: other point in space that's just viewing out stuff constantly. Yeah,
41:18
Speaker 1: And so you could go into the black hole and
41:20
Speaker 1: you couldn't leave the black hole itself. You couldn't pass
41:23
Speaker 1: through the event horizon the other direction, but you are
41:26
Speaker 1: no longer inside the black hole, so that sort of counts, yeah,
41:30
Speaker 1: I guess, And and you would be you would shoot
41:33
Speaker 1: out of the white hole, I guess on the other
41:35
Speaker 1: side wherever that is. But that's not so useful again
41:38
Speaker 1: because you don't know where that is. That doesn't solve
41:40
Speaker 1: the problem of I've fallen into a black hole and
41:43
Speaker 1: I can't get up right. Well, it does solve it.
41:45
Speaker 1: You just end up somewhere else, have no idea where
41:48
Speaker 1: you are. Yeah, that's true. Oh I'm in the other
41:50
Speaker 1: side of the universe. Yeah, it looks like I'm still
41:52
Speaker 1: going to miss much. And I said, still can't tell
41:54
Speaker 1: anybody exactly. But a more exciting possibilities to you sort
41:59
Speaker 1: of a generic wormhole, a wormhole that doesn't require a
42:03
Speaker 1: black hole. A wormhole most generically, it's just a connection
42:06
Speaker 1: between two points in space. Let's say these two points
42:09
Speaker 1: are effectively next to each other. If you're in one spot,
42:12
Speaker 1: you can just sort of step to the next one.
42:14
Speaker 1: And these two points in space don't have to be
42:16
Speaker 1: like normally near each other. You can have this point
42:19
Speaker 1: in our solar system just be connected to that point
42:22
Speaker 1: in another solar system. We don't know how to build
42:24
Speaker 1: a wormhole like that, but theoretically they are possible. We
42:28
Speaker 1: think they can exist. So the idea is, maybe you're
42:31
Speaker 1: inside a black hole, you somehow make this kind of
42:34
Speaker 1: wormhole appear, so you can just sort of like step
42:37
Speaker 1: through it and appear on the other side of the wormhole.
42:39
Speaker 1: I see. So you're saying that not all wormholes happen
42:43
Speaker 1: at the at the center of black holes. Like, theoretically
42:46
Speaker 1: I could have a wormhole right next to me, right
42:47
Speaker 1: here and not die, but it would just be this
42:51
Speaker 1: weird arrangement where like I stick my hand in to
42:53
Speaker 1: the wormhole and it's connected to you know, another point
42:57
Speaker 1: in space where you'd see my hands sticking out. Its
42:59
Speaker 1: sound is like totally bonker science fiction. But it's a
43:02
Speaker 1: solution to Einstein's equations, and again we don't know how
43:05
Speaker 1: to make it happen. Keeping one open also requires negative
43:09
Speaker 1: energy density matter, which again may not exist. But if
43:12
Speaker 1: it did, then the wormhole itself is not inconsistent with
43:16
Speaker 1: the rules of general relativity. And recently there's been some
43:19
Speaker 1: progress in understanding black holes that suggests that this might
43:23
Speaker 1: really be possible. Interesting, So, okay, so maybe step me
43:26
Speaker 1: through the solution here. You're saying that I would maybe
43:28
Speaker 1: if I'm able to create a wormholes, I would create
43:31
Speaker 1: one that starts here next to me, and and the
43:34
Speaker 1: other side of the wormhole is like maybe just inside
43:37
Speaker 1: the event horizon of a black hole. Is that what
43:39
Speaker 1: you're saying, Like, so I stick my hand in, and
43:42
Speaker 1: my hand would be inside of a black hole, but
43:44
Speaker 1: I'm able to pull it out. Yeah. So you stick
43:45
Speaker 1: your hand in and you have your phone inside the
43:48
Speaker 1: black hole, you take a bunch of pictures, you pull
43:49
Speaker 1: it back out. You have pictures from the inside of
43:51
Speaker 1: a black hole. Right that, they're all black. Obviously, I
43:57
Speaker 1: think my phone has any kind of special you know,
44:00
Speaker 1: graviton detecting sensors that's coming out in the next Apple iPhone.
44:04
Speaker 1: I think, Oh, I see, Yeah, I think that Samsung
44:07
Speaker 1: one is already there's an app for that. Yeah, they
44:10
Speaker 1: keep sticking more and more cameras and the back of
44:12
Speaker 1: your phone. Now that sounds like crazy science fiction, and
44:16
Speaker 1: it probably is because we don't know how to build
44:18
Speaker 1: a wormhole. We don't know how to make that happen.
44:20
Speaker 1: To say, I want a wormhole from here to the
44:22
Speaker 1: center of that black hole. But in principle, there's nothing
44:25
Speaker 1: preventing us except that we don't know how to do it. However,
44:28
Speaker 1: recently we talked about whether maybe information can leak out
44:31
Speaker 1: of a black hole, whether maybe like there's a quantum
44:34
Speaker 1: entanglement between the Hawking radiation generated the event horizon and
44:39
Speaker 1: the stuff that fell into the black hole a long
44:41
Speaker 1: time ago. And theorists now think that that quantum entanglement
44:44
Speaker 1: might be accomplished by wormholes, that there might effectively be
44:48
Speaker 1: information wormholes that connect the inside and the outside of
44:52
Speaker 1: black holes, and so potentially, if you're inside a black hole,
44:56
Speaker 1: there are already these wormholes you need to get information out.
45:00
Speaker 1: Other theorists think that this is complete and utter nonsense. Wait,
45:04
Speaker 1: what you're saying that maybe wormholes are like, maybe black
45:08
Speaker 1: holes already have wormholes in them. That Hawking radiation, this faint,
45:12
Speaker 1: these faint emission of particles, that the edge of black
45:15
Speaker 1: holes might be leaking out information that fell into the
45:18
Speaker 1: black hole. Remember the black hole information paradox is, Information
45:22
Speaker 1: can't be deleted from the universe, but stuff falls into
45:25
Speaker 1: a black hole and then it evaporates where that information go. Recently,
45:30
Speaker 1: people think, oh, probably that information is encoded in the
45:33
Speaker 1: Hawking radiation that was admitted, which means they must be
45:36
Speaker 1: somehow quantum entangled, and they suspect that's done with wormholes.
45:40
Speaker 1: So we think that nature maybe already has wormholes from
45:43
Speaker 1: the inside to the outside of black holes, so that
45:47
Speaker 1: information can leak out before the black hole disappears. Other
45:50
Speaker 1: theorists think that this is complete and utter nonsense. So
45:54
Speaker 1: you might not be able to stick your hand inside
45:56
Speaker 1: a black hole, but you might be able to like
45:58
Speaker 1: transform it and into information, send it inside the black hole,
46:02
Speaker 1: and then send it back somehow, like some sort of
46:05
Speaker 1: weird wormhole based information teleportation. Right, But I guess what
46:09
Speaker 1: aren't these Hawking radiation? You know, isn't it sort of
46:13
Speaker 1: like random on the surface of a black hole. It's
46:15
Speaker 1: not like there's a hole in the black hole where
46:18
Speaker 1: stuff is radiating. It's like it sort of happens randomly
46:20
Speaker 1: all over the black hole. Well that's what Hawking thought.
46:23
Speaker 1: Hawking thought that the radiation was random, that it didn't
46:25
Speaker 1: reveal anything about what happened inside the black hole. It
46:28
Speaker 1: was only dependent on the black hole's mass and temperature.
46:31
Speaker 1: But these recent developments suggests that it might not be random,
46:33
Speaker 1: that it might actually be indicating information about what's inside
46:38
Speaker 1: the black hole. But it's all very exploratory and none
46:41
Speaker 1: of that is final. It's like maybe theoretically possible. I'd
46:45
Speaker 1: say two maybees maybe but even if it is possible,
46:48
Speaker 1: it's not something you could use to get out of
46:49
Speaker 1: the black hole, right, Like it maybe allows information to
46:52
Speaker 1: come out, but like sticking a whole Daniel through, it
46:55
Speaker 1: might not be possible. But what am I other than information? Right?
46:59
Speaker 1: If you could tear you apart, read all my quantum information,
47:02
Speaker 1: send that information outside the black hole, reassemble me, that
47:05
Speaker 1: would be me getting out of a black hole. Well,
47:08
Speaker 1: but you would still be in the black hole like that,
47:10
Speaker 1: that version of you is still stuck in there. We
47:13
Speaker 1: just get a fresh copy of you, know, because when
47:15
Speaker 1: you read the quantum information of something, it destroys it.
47:19
Speaker 1: That's the no cloning theorem that says that you can
47:22
Speaker 1: read and transmit quantum information, but doing so destroys the original.
47:27
Speaker 1: So it would be sort of like beaming out of
47:29
Speaker 1: a black hole. And so then there's a philosophical question
47:32
Speaker 1: about whether the originally was killed and the new you
47:34
Speaker 1: is actually you or not. But your information will have
47:38
Speaker 1: been teleported out of the black hole. Well that's wild.
47:41
Speaker 1: But that again, that's assuming you can somehow control this
47:44
Speaker 1: hawking radiation, and we don't even know if it happens.
47:47
Speaker 1: Like you can establish like a channel for it, right,
47:49
Speaker 1: Like it could just be happening all over the black hole. Yeah,
47:52
Speaker 1: and nobody even seeing Hawking radiation. So this is like
47:55
Speaker 1: beyond theoretical. This is speculation on speculation to the speculation squared.
48:00
Speaker 1: I see. But I guess even if you warm hole
48:02
Speaker 1: into a black hole, wouldn't you get destroyed at some point?
48:06
Speaker 1: Or would you say, you sort of warm hole to
48:08
Speaker 1: a point inside the black hole where you can still survive. Yeah,
48:11
Speaker 1: really big black holes, you can survive near the event
48:14
Speaker 1: horizon without getting pulled apart by the title forces. So
48:17
Speaker 1: that is potentially possible. Although whether you can assemble the
48:20
Speaker 1: delicate machinery you need to read your entire quantum state
48:24
Speaker 1: and teleported back out of the black hole. Yeah, that
48:26
Speaker 1: seems like a stretch. It just booked a hole in
48:29
Speaker 1: the whole of the whole of the loophole. Holy, holy moly,
48:36
Speaker 1: Holy Dwayne Johnson all right, well, um, it sounds like, um,
48:42
Speaker 1: maybe there is a way to get out of a
48:43
Speaker 1: black hole. You know, maybe it won't be through a
48:46
Speaker 1: war drive, although if we figure out negative energy and
48:49
Speaker 1: how to make it, maybe it might be possible, And
48:52
Speaker 1: it might be possible through a warm hole although it's
48:55
Speaker 1: um it's gonna be pretty hard and we have no
48:57
Speaker 1: idea how to do it. It's gonna be tricky, but
49:00
Speaker 1: might be that getting information or people or phones out
49:03
Speaker 1: of black holes moves from the category of totally impossible
49:06
Speaker 1: to really impractical. We don't see how this is going
49:09
Speaker 1: to happen, but maybe in a thousand years, which is
49:11
Speaker 1: a big step forward, very special thanks to bar Action Scheney,
49:15
Speaker 1: who consulted on this episode. Any inaccuracies in the physics
49:18
Speaker 1: are our responsibility, not his. Yeah, and then we'll take
49:21
Speaker 1: a big step back when all the physicists say, wow,
49:24
Speaker 1: but that's not a black hole. Then you can get
49:26
Speaker 1: something out of it. It stops being a black hole
49:29
Speaker 1: if you can get if you can get anything out
49:32
Speaker 1: of it, that's right. That's the most annoying answer possible. Actually,
49:36
Speaker 1: there's a loophole. Will actually your loophole means it's not
49:39
Speaker 1: a black hole. But then if there's a loophole, then
49:40
Speaker 1: it's not a loophole anymore. I'm going to escape that loophole.
49:45
Speaker 1: I don't even know what I just said. All right, Well,
49:48
Speaker 1: something to think about, and maybe there's hope for those
49:50
Speaker 1: of us who plan to go into a black hole
49:52
Speaker 1: in the future, or for those of us who just
49:54
Speaker 1: desperately want to know what is the fundamental nature of
49:57
Speaker 1: space and time? Very special thanks to Baracra Scheney, who
50:01
Speaker 1: consulted on this episode. Any inaccuracies in the physics are
50:04
Speaker 1: our responsibility, not his. How does this universe actually work
50:08
Speaker 1: at the lowest level? What really is the fabric unreality?
50:12
Speaker 1: The answer is waiting for us inside a black hole. Yeah,
50:16
Speaker 1: just make sure you have a good getaway car and
50:18
Speaker 1: the latest phone. Well, thanks for joining us. I hope
50:21
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that. See you next time. Thanks for listening,
50:32
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe is
50:34
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcast from
50:38
Speaker 1: my heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
50:42
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Ye