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...