Black holes are places in the universe where gravity is so strong that it distorts time and the surrounding space. Nothing, not even light, can escape from within. However, nothing forbids the earth itself being in a black hole. Image illustration Pixabay
Gaurav Khanna, a black hole physicist at the University of Rhode Island, explains the hypothesis that the Earth may have formed inside a black hole. “A black hole is very similar to the big bang upside down. The calculation is similar,” says Gaurav Khanna. One theory, therefore, suggests that the Big Bang may originally have been a black hole singularity in a larger parent universe. The singularity would have compressed until a phenomenon reversed the trend and caused an “explosion” of space and time: the Big Bang. This would then have created our universe while remaining in the black hole.
Known as Schwarzschild cosmology, this theory suggests that our universe is currently evolving in a black hole that is part of a mother universe. This would imply the existence of universes within universes like Russian dolls, and that travel beyond the horizon of a black hole could open up another universe.
Scott Field, associate professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, believes that if Earth is in a black hole, it must be extremely large. If the earth existed in a “small” black hole, one would notice effects such as tidal forces and the slowing down of time.
According to Gaurav Khanna, it would be impossible for us to see that there is another mother universe from inside a large enough black hole. We would not be aware of its existence.