8 Things You've Always Wanted To Know About Black Holes

1. We Might Already Be In One

Never mind falling into a black hole, there are some who think that we're already there.

There are those who think that universes are born when a black hole forms and all the energy and matter that falls into it and is booted out of a white hole in another universe. This theory does seem to tie in with the idea that our universe began life as a singularity (whatever one of those is) and answers that question "what was there before the big bang?".

Although this seems like a wildly abstract theory, there could actually be ways to test it. The first way would be to ascertain the shape of the universe, something that scientists are already trying to figure out. If the universe turns out to be "closed", then the whole born-in-a-black-hole theory looks a lot more likely. In a closed universe, you could set off in one direction and eventually arrive back where you started, much like on our spherical Earth.

Another way to test this would be to look at how the things in our universe rotate. Black holes rotate, and if our universe was born inside a rotating black hole, then the things in it would tend to rotate in the same direction. This doesn't work on small scales, but if we found that the universe tends to favour a certain direction of spin on a massive scale, it could well be the evidence we need.

Who knows, perhaps there isn't a singularity at the centre of every black hole, but another universe much like ours with another person like you wondering about the black holes in their universe.

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