14 DAY TRIAL // A Russian cosmologist says that life could very well survive inside black holes, simply because these objects have the ability to sustain stable orbits within. Certain types of black holes have been found to have such orbits well past their event horizons, which was a remarkable discovery in itself.
According to the new idea, planets could definitely survive inside black holes. The question as to whether life could endure as well is still open for debate, although the expert who made the proposal believes that it can.
It could be that the internal structures of certain black holes are so complex, that they allow for elementary particles, including photons, to orbit the central singularity unimpeded. The announcement was made by Vyacheslav Dokuchaev, from the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), in Moscow.
The cosmologist, who is based at the Institute for Nuclear Research, says that even planets could orbit around such a singularity. The interesting thing is that, theoretically speaking, there's no reason to believe that such a planet is inevitably doomed to be sucked all the way in by the black hole.
This idea applies only to charged, rotating black holes, a specific subclass of these objects. Previous studies have revealed the existence of photons inside these structures. The elementary light particles were found to orbit the singularity in stable, periodic orbits.
Dokuchaev says that the stable orbits do not occur immediately past a black hole's event horizon. When a particle, for example, passes it, it experiences distortions in spacetime that makes radial dimensions appear more time-like, rather than space-like, as usual.
But the expert argues that traveling even further inwards can lead a particle past another boundary, called the inner Cauchy horizon. Beyond this point, stable orbits become a reality, he adds, quoted by Technology Review.
One interesting fact about planets existing in such orbits is that they would be extremely bright. Inside the event horizon of a black hole, there are vast amounts of photons trapped by the gravitational pull of the singularity.
The expert also speculates that planets revolving around such singularities could support the necessary chemistry for the development of life. But this also holds an implication for the existence of more technologically-advanced alien races.
“Advanced civilizations may live safely inside the supermassive BH in the galactic nuclei without being visible from the outside,” Dokuchaev speculates. He now plans to investigate this theoretic idea as much as possible.