Let’s see where this one leads:
Then, two years ago, Remmen and collaborators Clifford Cheung and Junyu Liu of the California Institute of Technology discovered that whether extremal black holes can decay depends directly on another key property of black holes: their entropy — a measure of how many different ways an object’s constituent parts can be rearranged. Entropy is one of the most studied features of black holes, but it wasn’t thought to have anything to do with their extremal limit. “It’s like, wow, OK, two very cool things are connected,” Cheung said.
In the latest surprise, that link turns out to exemplify a general fact about nature. In a paper published in March in Physical Review Letters, Goon and Riccardo Penco broadened the lessons of the earlier work by proving a simple, universal formula relating energy and entropy. The newfound formula applies to a system such as a gas as well as a black hole.
Natalie Wolchover, “Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Fundamental Link Between Energy and Order” at Quanta
Black Holes matter.
Of related interest, there are a couple of thought experiments that Einstein utilized to work out the basics of special relativity and then general relativity.
In the first thought experiment for special relativity, Einstein imagined that he was riding on a bus near the speed of light,
Whereas in his second thought experiment, which he termed ‘the happiest thought of my life’, Einstein imagined a man freely falling in an elevator:
And similar to when time, as we understand it, comes to complete stop in Special Relativity when we reach the speed of light, in General Relativity time, as we understand it, also comes to a complete stop when we reach what is termed to be the ‘event horizon’ of a black hole, As wikipedia states, “Travel to regions of space where extreme gravitational time dilation is taking place, such as near a black hole, could yield time-shifting results analogous to those of near-lightspeed space travel.”
It is important to point out that these ‘eternities’ found at both Special Relativity and General Relativity have fairly direct theological implications. As Dr. Richard Swenson states,
Einstein himself seemed to concede this theological implication of his theory when he, upon his good friend Michele Besso’s death, stated that, “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
And in what was, basically, an extension of Einstein’s thought experiment for General Relativity, Kip Thorne worked out what would happen to a hypothetical astronaut who was unfortunate enough to fall into a black hole,
In short, what makes the eternity of General Relativity profoundly different than the eternity found at Special Relativity, is that the entropy associated with Special Relativity is extremely ordered whereas the entropy associated with General Relativity is extremely chaotic
In fact, gain in entropy, which is the primary reason why our material bodies grow old and eventually die in this universe,,,
,,, gain in entropy is found to be greatest at black holes. As the following article stated,, ‘supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to the observable universe’s entropy.’
Thus the ‘eternity’ that is found at a black hole can rightly be called an ‘eternity of decay, death, and destruction’.
Needless to say, to those of us who are of, shall we say, a spiritually minded persuasion, this finding of an eternity of destruction and decay should be fairly sobering.
To continue on, the evidence from Special Relativity, (which is currently one of our most powerful theories in science), strongly supports the physical reality of a timeless eternity and of a heavenly dimension that exists above this temporal dimension. The timeless eternity aspect of both Special and General Relativity was already covered in this post. ,,, so to continue on, the only way it is possible for time not to pass for light, and yet for light to move from point A to point B in our universe, is if light is of a higher dimensional nature of time than the temporal time that we are currently living in. If this were not the case, then light would simply be ‘frozen within time’ to our temporal frame of reference.
And indeed that is exactly what we find. “Hermann Minkowski- one of the math professors of a young Einstein in Zurich—presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space.” In fact, Hermann Minkowski’s work in higher dimensional mathematics proved to be vital for Einstein in his eventual formulation of General Relativity.
One way for us to more easily understand this higher dimensional framework for time that light exist in is for us to visualize what would happen if a hypothetical observer approached the speed of light.
In the following video clip, at around the 2:40 minute mark, (a video which was made by two Australian University Physics Professors), we find that the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer approaches the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light.
Interestingly, as was visualized at the 3:00 minute mark of the preceding video, (i.e. all of the light concentrating into the direction of travel, i.e. the light visualized at the ‘end of the tunnel’ in the video), is termed to be the ‘headlight effect’
Now that we have outlined the basics of what we know to be physically true from special relativity, It is very interesting to note that many of the characteristics found in heavenly Near Death Experience testimonies are exactly what we would expect to see from what we now know to be physically true about Special Relativity.
For instance, many times people who have had a Near Death Experience mention that their perception of time was radically altered. In the following video clip, Mickey Robinson gives his Near Death testimony of what it felt like for him to experience a ‘timeless eternity’.
And here are a few more quotes from people who have experienced Near Death, that speak of how their perception of time was radically altered as they were outside of their material body during their NDEs.
As well, Near Death Experiencers also frequently mention going through a tunnel, towards an extremely brilliant light, to a higher heavenly dimension:
In the following video, Barbara Springer gives her testimony as to what it felt like for her to go through the tunnel towards ‘the light’:
And in the following audio clip, Vicki Noratuk, who has been blind from birth, (besides being able to ‘miraculously” see for the first time in her life during her Near Death Experience), Vicki also gives testimony of going through a tunnel at a ‘horrifically’ rapid rate of speed:
And in the following quotes, the two Near Death Experiencers both testify that they firmly believed that they were in a higher heavenly dimension that is above this three-dimensional world, and that the reason that they have a very difficult time explaining what their Near Death Experiences actually felt like is because we simply don’t currently have the words to properly describe that higher dimension:
That what we now know to be true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, dimension that exists above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had a deep heavenly NDEs is, needless to say, powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true and that they are accurately describing the ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension, that they experienced first hand, and that they say exists above this temporal dimension.
I would even go so far as to say that such corroboration from ‘non-physicists’, who, in all likelihood, know nothing about the intricacies of special relativity, is a complete scientific verification of the overall validity of their personal NDE testimonies.
It is also interesting to point out that, although Special Relativity can be unified with Quantum Mechanics, that General Relativity simply refuses to ever be mathematically unified with quantum mechanics in any realistic way,
In fact, mathematically speaking, there is found to be an ‘infinite divide’ between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics that forever prevents them from being unified mathematically.
Professor Jeremy Bernstein states the situation as such, “there remains an irremediable difficulty. Every order reveals new types of infinities, and no finite number of renormalizations renders all the terms in the series finite.”
Considering the extremely chaotic entropy associted with General Realtivity, this mathematically ‘infinite divide’ between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics reminds me very much of this quote from scripture concerning the rich man finding himself in hell and pleading with Abraham to get him out.
But anyways, to continue on, the ‘zero/infinity’ conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics has some fairly disturbing theoretical implications. Specifically, when theorists try to combine the two theories, then the resulting theory predicts that spacetime, atoms, and even the universe itself should all be literally blown apart.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-quanta-how-gravity-differs-from-the-other-three-fundamental-forces/#comment-704725
And yet, despite both theories contradicting each other to the point of literally blowing the universe apart, quantum mechanics and general relativity are both tested to extreme levels of precision, (in fact, both general relativity and quantum mechanics are consider to be our most successful theories ever in the history of science),
And since quantum mechanics and general relativity are both tested to such an extreme level of precision, (and we can thus have a very high level of confidence that both theories are, in fact, true mathematical descriptions of reality), and since Godel’s incompleteness theorem itself requires something to be ‘outside the circle’ of mathematics,,,,
,,, then it is fairly safe to assume that there must be something very powerful that must be holding the universe together in order to keep it from blowing itself apart. ,,,
For the Christian this theoretical finding from our very best theories in science, (i.e. that something very powerful must be ‘outside the universe’ that is holding this universe together), should not be all that surprising to find out. Christianity, a couple of millennium before the zero/infinity conflict between the two theories was even known about, predicted that Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together,,,
Dr. William Dembski in this following comment, although he was not directly addressing the Zero/Infinity conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, offers this insight into what the ‘unification’ of infinite God and finite man might look like mathematically:
Moreover, if we rightly let the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into the picture of modern physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders of modern science),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion (trillion) Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verse: