Footnote Physicist

 by Steven Gussman THE CONCEPT 1           It is sometimes supposed that what is inside of black holes is another universe (and therefore that our universe may be inside of a black hole within a parent universe). Both our universe and black holes change sizes: the former during the inflationary epoch (sometimes blamed on a scalar “inflaton” field), and less rapidly during the current accelerated expansion epoch (labeled “dark energy” and associated with Albert Einstein's cosmological constant); the latter because it grows when it is impinged upon with the cosmic microwave background (or, less often but more dramatically, when other stellar objects collide with the black hole), 2 and because it shrinks when Hawking radiation dominates, sending energy outward. The Schwarzschild radius of a black hole is defined as: 3 r s = 2Gm / c 2 One can see that the radius and the mass are directly proportional. Yet the CMB impinges on the black hole always...

        “My parents died years ago.  I was very close to them.  I still miss them terribly.  I know I         always will.  I long to believe that their essence, their personalities, what I loved so much about           them, are – really and truly – still in existence somewhere... I know how much I want to believe           that my parents have just abandoned the husks of their bodies, like insects or snakes molting,           and gone somewhere else.  I understand that those very feelings might make me easy prey even           for an unclever con, or for normal people unfamiliar with their unconscious minds, or for those           suffering from dissociative psychiatric disorder.  Reluctantly, I rouse some reserves of      ...