Black Hole May Have Jumpstarted Our Three-Dimensional Universe

The big bang may have jumpstarted our universe, but what exactly sparked it? That's a question that has long puzzled scientists. Now, though, they may have a new idea concerned what helped trigger the very beginnings of our universe.

Conventional understanding holds that the big bang began with a singularity--an unfathomably hot and dense phenomenon of spacetime where the standard laws of physics break down. Currently, our understanding of spacetimes is limited. The main problem with the big bang hypothesis is that our relatively comprehensible, uniform and predictable universe arose from the physics-destroying insanity of a singularity.

That's why scientists decided to see if there might be another theory to explain the origins of our universe. In this case, the researchers propose that our known universe could be the three-dimensional "wrapping" around a four-dimensional black hole's event horizon. In this particular scenario, our universe burst into being when a star in a four-dimensional universe collapsed into a black hole.

In our three-dimensional universe, black holes have two-dimensional event horizons. This means that they're surrounded by a two-dimensional boundary that marks the "point of no return." In the case of a four-dimensional universe, this would mean that black holes would have a three-dimensional event horizon.

Instead of the big bang, the researchers propose that the universe was never inside the singularity. Instead, it was created outside an event horizon, protected from the singularity. It originated as just one feature in the imploded wreck of a four-dimensional star.

That said, this is only a theory-and it's difficult to imagine that our universe came to be due to a single event. In fact, we have no idea what a four-dimensional universe would even look like. Yet the new theory does lend an alternative to explain the origins of our very existence.

The findings are published in the journal arXiv.