by Milton Dawes

As grown-ups we sometimes forget how much fun we can have letting our imagination roam, taking us to far away places and distant ‘times’. So I invite you on a journey to visit rapids, hurricanes, and black holes. On our journey, we will apply the general semantics principle of relative invariance under transformation (“this is like that”). We’ll take a fractal look at holes, black holes, rapids, hurricanes, and whirlpools.

Our journey starts with this question: Could it be that black holes (not all, but at least some) are holes? I really mean like holes in the usual sense of the word – but holes at a cosmic scale. Our Universe is one where we find repeated patterns of forms and activities. Holes of different degrees of emptiness, and at different scales of bigness, exist as normal features of our very active and interactive Universe. In electronic theories, we postulate holes at sub-atomic levels representing vacant electronic energy states. We have ‘vacuums’; we have holes in mountains and under the seas that we call “tunnels”; and we call extreme narrowness of view point and breath of vision “tunnel vision”. We have holes in the ground, holes in our ceilings, holes in our containers, ‘holes’ in our theories and reasoning. We have holes in our bodies. And then there are some individuals, whom, based on a hypothesis that this will bring clear ‘thinking’ and peace of mind, have drilled holes in their heads (no joke). Then again we mustn’t forget the ‘holes’ in everyday conversation which we call “moments of silence”. And then there are black holes.

If you ‘think’ of it: For there to be different things, processes, activities, growth, movements, etc., our Universe must have, not just matter-energy, but also various kinds of holes. For instance, we wouldn’t see objects if there were no intervening emptiness around them. We couldn’t move from where we are to any other place if there were only solid matter between where we were and where we wanted to go. On the other hand, a neutrino would have no problem since it could easily find sub-atomic holes. A plant couldn’t grow-expand, if it was completely encased in steel. Following all this, and apart from any scientific theory, we could propose the existence of black holes, based mainly on the premise that holes must exist as a normal feature of a dynamic Universe. We cannot have wholes without some sort of surrounding holes.

Now let’s expand our horizons far out, and imagine big — really big, cosmically big. We see a dynamic Universe of diverse configurations of matter-energy, biological and physical structures. We see a Universe of planets and stars, galaxies and super galaxies, forces and fields … and who knows what else we might see in ‘times’ to come?

Now let’s shift our attention to activities at a smaller scale – say rapids in a river. (You could actually go visit a site and watch the rapids). In the rapids we will find whirlpools from space-time to space-time. What we have here constitute matter (rocks and water, etc.) and movement (the flowing water). Every now and again, we find certain rock placement, river bed configuration, speed of water flow, turbulence, height differences, and other factors, creating the feature we call “whirlpools”. Now imagine a whirlpool spinning fast, so fast, that due to centrifugal force, all the water is expelled to a certain distance and leaving a hole.

Now shift to visualizing activities at a bigger scale than the rapids – say a hurricane. And imagine you are in the center, the awesome quiet eye of the hurricane – a hole of stillness with turbulent clouds swirling around on the periphery.

Imagining at the speed of light we find ourselves on a distant planet far, far away. With powerful vision, we see a Universe in which every now and again, diverse matter energy activities and configurations (as in the rapids, and involving ‘repulsive’ and ‘attractive’ forces, and fields of various kinds – electric, electro-magnetic, gravitational, etc.,) result in the creation of enormous relatively empty cosmic ‘whirlpools’, gigantic holes. At the periphery of one such hole, we find star systems, galaxies and super galaxies and such, orbiting around each other and orbiting all around at various astronomical distances from the center of this enormous ‘hole’. To get a ‘feel’ of this, imagine again the eye of a storm, but with clouds swirling all around, above, and below. A black hole in this sense would be more like the volume of space in a ball or balloon — completely surrounded. (Come to ‘think’ of it, aren’t all of our everyday ‘holes’ completely surrounded?)

Astronomers have proposed black holes to be the result of burned out stars that have collapsed to become so dense that they would trap anything that came near. Let’s use our imagination and take another approach. Could it be the case that the collapse of the star was just the initial stage of the creation of a black hole? Let’s imagine that the collapsed star has created a great turbulence in this region of space-time. And in terms of action-reaction, let’s imagine that in the ensuing moments, there is great activity, much turbulence arising from the de-configuration and degeneration of the various usual activities in the surrounding matter-energy fields resulting from this catastrophic gravitational change. In the resulting re-configuration, what we find is the development of a cosmic whirlwind-whirlpool phenomenon in this region of space-time. We see cosmic systems uprooted and rushing in to fill the gap – somewhat like how some of us back on earth cannot stand silence, and rush in to fill what we perceive as a hole in our conversations. But like in everyday situations, systems cannot all hold in the gap. So with much jostling for position, modified by the interaction of enormous attracting forces of varying intensities and masses with different orbital motions, the result is a cosmic re-configuration of encircling cosmic systems around a vast region of space-time. This eventually becomes what we might discover and call a black hole. The intensity of the upset in different surrounding astronomical systems would follow the usual diminution in terms of distance. In the surrounding regions nearer the black hole, we could expect to find, as theorized by scientists, extremely strong gravitational fields due to a greater concentration of matter-energy.

A question that now arises is this: Where is the collapsed star which initiated this cosmic upset? Could it be that similar to what we sometimes experience in our relationships back on earth, the star got caught up in the turbulence of its own creation, and is now not in the hole, but has become part of the mass-energy systems surrounding the hole?

The above scenario could lead us to propose that it might not be so much the case that nothing can get out of a black hole, as postulated by scientists, but that for some black holes nothing can get in! In other words any approaching material will be caught up in the peripheral circling energetic gravitational systems – somewhat like an approaching plane, caught up in the turbulence and centrifugal forces present in the region of clouds on the periphery of a storm center, and not having sufficient power to reach the center.

Now if you have not been using your imagination and find the above unbelievably silly, consider this- scientists theorize the existence of neutron stars with density of hundreds of millions of tons per cubic inch. Some scientific theories suggest an expanding Universe, others a pulsating Universe, one that contracted then expanded. (They don’t tell us what an expanding Universe is expanding into.) Some theories suggest that the Universe began with a big bang and will go out with a big crunch. (I wonder how the big crunch is reconciled with the conservation of energy principle which states that matter-energy cannot be created or destroyed.) If you have been using your imagination, then I invite you to have some fun filling in the holes in the report of this imaginary journey.