Patness: for decades we had trouble determining how we had so much matter and so little antimatter. I don’t know that Black Holes cover it all, though.

I wonder if most antimatter was projected backwards in time and most matter forward, making the big bang the middle point in time and giving a kind of symetry. But at least some antimatter was projected forward, because high energy antiquarks can convert into electrons (explaining electron’s -ve charge), and this is the only way I know of that might explain where electrons come from. I wonder why they were projected in the proportions that they were though.

Either way matter is known to behave slightly differently to antimatter when time goes forward, which is why the +ve quarks formed nuclei and antiquarks made electrons. Gluons that have no charge and bind quarks/antiquarks into protons/antiprotons, but I don’t know where they come from.

Another thought is about where the energy came from – that to balance all the positive energy contained in light you’d need either equal amounts of negative energy in anti-light or store it in matter. Again there must be asymetry with time for light to prefer a ‘positive’ quantity. It’s thought that since light and matter are interconvertible (as black holes and relitivity demonstrate)  that matter itself is a storage of negative energy in a stable enough form (as the electron was to the antiquark), so perhaps light of correct energy might be able to eliminate matter.

One wonders what would happen if time was run backwards – maybe the rules about matter vs antimatter would flip and the planet become extremely unstable and self-detonate, perhaps gravity will invert and every matter particle repel, but maybe this all won’t happen if things seek instability instead (perhaps the atmosphere would pressurise itself in seeking instability, and I wonder what would happen on the atomic level, atoms may squish infinitely close to maximise hard-sphere repulsion and electrons might leave instantaneously and cluster together). You can have infinite instability providing there is no smallest unit of distance.

Not that I know anything about it, but from what I read there are increasing numbers of physicists who regard String Theory as an elegant mathematical construct- and nothing more, since there’s zilch experimental corroboration for it.  I’ll wait with Patness.

Not that the success or failure of String Theory will have much effect one way or the other on my life of irrepressible hedonism…

Timmeh:

In concept, String Theory is great – but its a mathematical theory, not a physical theory. Stubborn as I am, I just won’t be convinced until the hard data starts crashing down my doors.

But it’s had my interest for a while . RBH, too; rotating black holes, I think, that was what got Stephen Hawking back on the blackboard.

Bahamat:

I think all the matter here was made that way, since the big bang would have been too dense to expand and shouldv’e formed a black hole.

Seems feasible – for decades we had trouble determining how we had so much matter and so little antimatter. I don’t know that Black Holes cover it all, though.

Meant to give this link:
http://www.superstringtheory.com/blackh/blackh5a.html
I think I had one to many after work.

timmeh: Well what if black holes shoot streams of energy?

They do, and this i believe is observed. By the same mechanism as I explained, with the particle being a photon and the antiparticle being an antiphoton. (This is why destructive interference confuses me, you have 2 photons of positive energy cancelling, so where does the energy go? It seems like it needs constructive interference elsewhere to dump the energy through some unknown mechanism.

Think of a black hole doing to matter what a magnifying glass does to light rays

Bending light, I suppose gravity does, and that’s why light can’t escape. But light has zero mass, so gravity shouldn’t affect it, and yet it does because it can’t escape black holes? Gravity is one of the less understood things which is why people have trouble linking it to conventional forces, I personally think it isn’t just one effect, that it has 2 aspects that both depend on mass. One is a conventional newtonian ‘potential’ like you get with magnetism and electrostatic, the other is the einsteinian bending of time, possibly along certain vectors more than others thus causing the object to appear to move towards mass, personally i ran out of 4d graph paper a long time age

There is a possible answer in “rotating black holes”.

That is beyond my scope of knowledge

It’s also likely black holes are the precursor of a “big bang”.

Agreed, and it could be like a slow stream of matter and energy as the primordial black hole evaporates. HOWEVER, perhaps the antimatter that was projected forwards in time had a negative gravity when time was going forward, and if it existed long enough it may have cancelled out gravity among the matter enough to expand, but this would need a helluva lot of cancellation because the initial density would’ve been far beyond what you need for a black hole. Elimination of matter by antimatter in itself isn’t enough to explain because there is more than enough matter combined to make a black hole

I kind of lean towards the string theory.

String theory attempts to link gravity to the more conventional forces through extra little dimenstions. Whilst I will say I simply don’t know enough about this, there is the question of what are the stings made of? Why are they as they are in terms of shape, size, and why they combine as they do? There will always be an elimentry particle that has no clear self-justification for being the way it is. Whilst string theory is quite possibly an untestable theory just to explain a possible link, it nethertheless needs to be investigated and added to our catalogue of possibilities

Well what if black holes shoot streams of energy? Think of a black hole doing to matter what a magnifying glass does to light rays. There is a possible answer in “rotating black holes”.
It’s also likely black holes are the precursor of a “big bang”.
I kind of lean towards the string theory.
take a look at this site. http://www.superstringtheory.com/blackh/blackh3a.html

patness- true, and realisticly speaking it has to be above a certain size to actually grow faster than it ‘evaporates’ (which is faster for smaller), it’s more or less beyond feasibilyity to make something of that size, the really tiny ones created through high speed particle colisions in labs and the upper atmosphere present no threat.

If you’re interested, the black hole ‘evaporates’ as a way of restoring entropy (which is lost when stuff falls in). The nothingness immediately outside a black hole splits into a particle and antiparticle (one with +ve energy, one with -ve), the antiparticle is projected into the blackhole (causing a little elimination) and the particle projected away, which restores entropy. I think all the matter here was made that way, since the big bang would have been too dense to expand and shouldv’e formed a black hole.

may be, Bahamat – if it gets a mad scientist driven to create a large black hole. But on the atomic scale, a black hole isn’t anything – far too removed of any sort of matter to do harm. The rate at which it grows once it starts absorbing matter would be scary, were it formed near matter.

But, I jest not when I say these are merely a blip on the relative radar.

Lordklegg – I can see your point of view, particularly whether or not it’s a bad thing – I wonder if it’d be kindest to put the planet out of it’s misery once and for all – to end world suffering through complete extermination of life. Global warming won’t do this unless it spirals out of control (where the evaporated water would overall perpetuate the warming despite anthropic CO2 production falling/stopping)

Perhaps creation of miniture black holes here on earth may be one way of speeding on fate if we’re rich and determined, and able to get our hands on the equipment. There won’t be anything to stop the black hole oscilating through the centre of the earth, gaining mass as it goes. Nukes just aren’t enough, though they may end world hunger to a large extent.

We know what’s coming.  We know what’s causing it (carbon-interest propaganda aside).  We know what we need to do to head off the disaster.  And there are other good reasons for doing it anyway. 

It’s a pretty good test of our ability to live intelligently, but we’re failing.