Topic: Dailies

The Black Hole, My Dog Skipper, and Now

by

Leo Crocker Rogers

Let's go black hole gazing with my dog Skipper, Alice, Pooh, Christopher Robin, Mr. Sanders, Eeyore, Tiger, the Cheesier Cat, and Karl Schwarzschild.

A trick I learned in South Africa is not to look for animals, lions, giraffes, elephants (the targets) just anywhere. If you look for them in general terra-firma space, they are not there. Over the centuries, they have learned to camouflage themselves very well. I was taught by a Zulu mentor, to look for certain terrain signatures associated with particular animals. The procedure is: Find the terrain signature associated with a particular animal and then within that limited view, look for the animal. It is frequently there.

When we look for black holes in outer space, one uses the same procedure for finding animals in Africa. We do not look for the target. For once again, the target is not there. In the case of black hole gazing, we start by looking for certain space signatures.

But first, come to my house for a pre-outer-space orientation. When we walk Skipper, it becomes apparent that Skipper is an organic black hole. His coat is a layer of black fur covered by a layer of black hair. His nose is black. His ears are black. His toenails are black. Skipper absorbs all light. He is not there. Skipper, a Schipperke dog, is found by observing aberrations in his surroundings. You look in his general direction and observe what is behind him as it disappears and reappears as he walks. We do not see Skipper by the front lighting of Skipper but by the front lighting of those objects behind him. Thinking of Skipper as an organic black hole gives us insight to our galactic exploration of black holes. Skipper is known by things other than himself. The same is true for black holes. You cannot see a black hole, but if you look in the target area, things around the target behave anomalously. There in, lies the black hole.

Recently, physicists discovered a group of black holes, "energy pits". Funny isn't it. A bunch of physicists googling outer space looking for things that cannot be seen. Because black holes are energy pits, they suck energy from everything near them. Black holes are so dense in mass that nothing can escape their clutches, not matter, not light.

So, how does one find a black hole? Perhaps, we simply call out "Skipper, come!", and the hole stands with ears up in front of us. Or, there is the other way. We watch a target area, and see if a part of the area behaves anomalously – things around it disappear forever. As it turns out, that exploration tactic works. In sectors of the universe, there are behaviors that indicate a black hole is near. When such aberrations occur, physicists start mapping the possible presence of a black hole, thus the recent announcement, "Millions of back holes have been found billions of light years away."

So what is a black hole? Well, in my neighborhood, about ten o'clock at night, a black hole is my dog Skipper. Don't' try to see him directly. Find me and then look in the target area below me and see things disappear and reappear. "From where they reappear, that is where Skipper was." says Ph.D. Christopher Robin while sitting on my neighbor’s fence . What is a black hole? "It is a mind bender.", says Tigger bending his neck to spy on my Skipper.

To advance our understanding of black holes, let us move to the Wonderland of Alice. Picture the Cheshire Cat and imagine that the Cheshire Cat is a black hole -- you can't see him, but you can see his smile. In such an event, there is a sphere about the cat's smile where very strange things occur.

Let us call the halfing of the diameter of the sphere around the Cheshire, the Cheshire Cat radius. Not really, that would be too simple. We are going to call it, the Schwarzschild Radius. Contrary to the taradiddle set forth by the Wonderland Joker, Pooh did not name the Schwarzschild Radius nor did the Cheshire Cat, nor Karl Schwarzschild. Truthfully, Karl's cohorts named it in honor of him. Can you imagine being so famous as to have a radius named after you? Such is really Wonderland weird.

Now, because the Schwarzschild Radius is an undescriptive title, the Mad Hatter (not really) coined the Radius, the "Event Horizon", a queer name to say the least. (That really is its name.) It is so-called because, when standing inside the black hole (as if you could and you cannot), events occur, but when trying to look outside beyond the Event Horizon, no events occur, because physics says one is not permitted to see beyond the Schwarzschild Radius, the Event Horizon. "I’ll tell Pooh that in a few years that that physics will change." says Eeyore. "You know that physics is good only for a decade or so. Any way, go on." says Eeyore.

From inside a black hole, the White Rabbit runs full tilt toward the Event Horizon but never leaves. "White Rabbit, White Rabbit so fast you hop with the speed of light you go, but unfortunately for you, you are forever radiused within.", says the smirking Wonderland Joker.

From without the Event Horizon, but near the black hole, things are mind bending as they should be in Wonderland. Remember the black hole is an energy pit, a very deep black energy pit. ("Don't ever, ever, ever go there.", says Alice as she covers her eyes.)

Before I go on, I need to mention a caveat. Most black hole observations are made of non-spinning black holes (A necessary technical point to be accurate in this story.), but in the Alice in Wonderland of black holes, the holes are spinning. There really are such things. Think of my Skipper chasing his tail (he has none but if he did) in the pitch dark of night.

Now, and this is when things get very interesting. Because of its density, the black hole, when it spins, pulls the space next to it around with it. This is to say that when Skipper chases his tail, he takes the entire neighborhood with him, round and round. An image that works is being on a merry-go-round, and while one knows one is spinning if the horizon stands still, one would never know one is spinning if the merry-go-round has an infinitely large platform so that the Event Horizon moves with rider. "This is to say that whatever platform the rider were on in a black hole, the Event Horizon would always be the same and the rider would never know he were spinning.", said Ph.D. Christopher Robin as all his cohorts listened in rapt wonder. This landscape moving-with-a-person, certainly an anomalous effect, is called "Frame Dragging". And so you say, what a dull life, all things observed would always be the same. "Personally, I am not sure this is accurate.", says Eeyore, now becoming a deep thinker. "Then again, what is so unusual about frame dragging?", questions Owl. "We experience such right here on earth. Our frame goes with us or, as it were, our Event Horizon being the outer edge of a cloudy sky, our atmosphere moves with us, and we have no knowledge of the stars, planets, or the sun. Our atomosphere is a Frame Drag with the outer edge the top of the clouds.

Ah, you say, but if space drags along with the spin of a black hole, does not time also get dragged? So it seems to other physicists. Time is dragged along with space. "Now that is not an office experience if you are on the outside of the Office Horizon, but it may be so inside the Office Horizon as time drags on when you are stuck inside your office cubical.", says Eeyore.

"Now getting one's head around a Dragging Space Frame is really not too difficult, you just always see the same thing all the time. But what does it mean to have ones time drug with one?", asks Alice who says that Pooh and his friends are not a part of her story and should shoo.

Tigger, impudently, interrupts Alice and says, "Time dragging means, quite simply", quoting Ecclesiastics from a book Mr. Sanders gave him, "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past." Eccl 3: 15

Alice, regaining her correct size and her composure, pauses and reflectively says, "The lesson of the black hole is: All Is Now."