What Happens If You Destroy A Black Hole?

Black

hole

s can

destroy

everything, but can they be

destroy

ed? What

happens

when we push physics to its limits and maybe break it (and the universe) in the process? Let's create a small

black

hole

with lunar mass in our laboratory and destroy it. Experiment 1: Atomic Bomb Big explosions destroy things, so let's detonate the world's nuclear arsenal in a

black

hole for fun. Boom Black holes swallow everything that crosses their event horizon: matter and energy. And since E = mc^2, any energy that enters a black hole increases its mass. The mass of a black hole is proportional to its size, so when we blow up our little black hole, it simply gets bigger and materializes. 2nd experiment - Antimatter Matter and antimatter annihilate each other.

What

happens

if we send antimatter with the mass of the Moon into a black hole? Unfortunately, if an object enters a black hole, it erases its previous identity, regardless of whether it is matter or antimatter. Black holes are only interested in gravity. It depends on the total material energy (mass) of the object. Since the mass of a particle is the same as the mass of its antiparticle, throwing an antimoon into the hole would have the same effect as throwing the moon there. The black hole would become more and more massive! This ability to erase information is quite interesting: it means that, despite their size and power, black holes are in some ways similar to elementary particles.

An elementary particle, like an electron, is a very simple object, totally determined by just three numbers: its mass, its spin, and its charge. And, surprisingly, the same goes for black holes: they have mass, they can spin, and they have an electric charge. When a black hole forms, it doesn't matter if it comes from a collapsed star, an antistar, or a banana; It will always be completely described by those three numbers, nothing more. So if a black hole is essentially a strange particle, could we destroy it with an anti-black hole? Experiment 3: Anti-black hole How exciting! A particle has the same mass as its antiparticle, but opposite charge.

Since a black hole has mass and electric charge, its anti-black hole should have the same mass and opposite charge. What if we knock them down? Unfortunately, the charges simply add up and cancel each other out, after the collision a black hole with twice the uncharged mass is created. OK. We need to think big and play with physics. Experiment 4: Destruction of the event horizon It's true that a black hole has spin and charge, but even these crazy objects have limits. When the spin or charge of a black hole is too large, something strange happens: the event horizon dissolves.

In a simplified way, we imagine that black holes hide a singularity inside: infinitely compressed matter with a gravity so strong that absolutely nothing, not even light, can escape from its environment. That's why black holes look like black balls out of nowhere. The event horizon is the outer edge of this prison, cross it and you can never return. When a black hole spins, it acts a bit like a spinning washing machine. as if the rotation wanted to repel nearby objects and move them away from the black hole, which will not happen because its gravity is very strong.

BUT, if you start spinning too fast, this effect will win and the event horizon will dissolve - surrounding objects will no longer be trapped forever! The same goes for an electrical charge, if it is too large, our inescapable prison breaks. If we managed to destroy the event horizon, a singularity would remain towards which surrounding objects would still fall. If you fell into it, you would die horribly and quickly. But the vicinity of the singularity will no longer be an inescapable prison, you can get as close as you want and come back. This should count as breaking a black hole!

We can do it? Experiment 5: Supercharging All we have to do is supercharge or re-spin the black hole. We can achieve this by throwing objects with a small mass and a large charge or angular momentum, so that the charge or spin builds up faster than the mass. We have to supercharge the black hole until it reaches the point where it breaks apart. However, whether this can really happen is the subject of heated debate among physicists. Let's imagine a charged black hole. Like charges repel each other, and the closer they are together, the more they repel each other.

So let's say we have a negatively charged black hole and we want to feed it, for example, with electrons whose charge is much greater than its mass. The electrons will feel electrostatic repulsion and the more electrons we send, the greater the negative charge of the black hole and the greater the repulsion. But once we reach the limit, the electrostatic repulsion will be so strong that it will not let in any more electrons. At this point, the black hole refuses to supercharge itself. The same goes for rotation. Once a black hole reaches its upper limit, it gains no more spin.

But some scientists have discovered

what

appears to be a loophole. If we dump enough matter into the black hole in the right way just before the limit is reached, it looks like it could become supercharged. Most scientists are skeptical, but let's try it anyway! The End: Breaking Physics But there is a problem. The event horizon hides a singularity in the black hole, so destroying the horizon would create a "naked singularity" that is not hidden by the event horizon. Here's the problem: it could mean the end of physics as we know it. Black holes hide a big secret.

Contrary to popular belief, the singularity of a black hole is not actually located "at its center." No. It's in the future of anything that crosses the event horizon. Black holes warp the universe so drastically that space and time reverse their roles at the event horizon. Once you cross it, falling towards the center means going towards the future. Therefore, there is no escape: Stopping the fall and going back would be as impossible as stopping time and going back in time. So the singularity is actually in your future, not "in front of you." And just as you can't see your own future, you won't see the singularity until you stumble upon it.

But you also can't find something that's in your future by just... experiencing it like you would experience your next birthday when it happens. This way you will feel the uniqueness when it happens to you. Singularities that are in the future are not a problem because we do not see them or interact with them. But the naked singularity would be in front of us, for all to see. What would we see? Well, the point is, it's impossible to know. The singularity is a region of infinite gravity and gravity is the curvature of spacetime. At the singularity, the curvature is so radical that the surface of spacetime literally shatters.

Space and time no longer exist. This means that nothing can be predicted, because predicting is predicting where and when something will happen. But "where" and "when" have lost their meaning! So we have something unpredictable with infinite gravity and therefore infinite energy. This means that anything from a bunch of bananas to lost socks to the solar system can fall for no reason. Predictability, causality, and physics as we know it would collapse. We think that singularities should exist in nature because we can show that, under very general conditions, gravitational collapse leads to the formation of singularities. However, scientists believe that nature prohibits the formation of naked singularities.

Something around him is forcing an event horizon to be created to prevent his madness from infecting the rest of the universe. Without event horizons, physics might not make any sense. So while black holes are portrayed as the biggest monsters in the universe, perhaps they are actually the heroes protecting us from the madness of singularities. So if we destroy the horizon, we may be destroying the fundamental rules of the universe. Did you know? Let's not do that. Conclusion: the safe option As far as we know, there is only one safe method to destroy a black hole: wait.

All black holes emit tiny particles, a phenomenon called Hawking radiation. This process causes them to slowly lose mass until they finally "evaporate", leaving no horizon or naked singularity. The time it takes for a black hole to completely evaporate depends on its mass. For our mini black hole the size of a grain of dust, that would be about 10^44 years: 10 billion billion billion times the current age of the universe. So is it possible to destroy a black hole? Yeah! Just wait. But you don't have to wait that long. There are many fascinating things to explore on this planet right now, if you have the knowledge to understand them.

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