Black holes, Rabbit holes and walking through stars

Literally as I hit 'publish' on my post yesterday on "Speech Problems" and my tangent into Watership Down, a question popped into my mind regarding this dream that I had mentioned about walking 'into' the Sun.  The question was:  "But just how would it be possible to walk into the Sun?"

The question came as a very serious one, meaning I took it as a matter of practical consideration.  I had this dream of walking into a/the Sun, and some of that symbolism was found in the Watership Down cartoon... what would that even mean, in any sort of relatable concept?  Again, just how could someone walk into the Sun?

I was surprised at how seriously I took the question (after just writing in my post about how I just had kind of let that whole thing sit for a bit).  But, since it was now interesting for me to think about, I thought I would give it a go.

I first reminded myself that the Sun was a star, just like any other that we see in the sky.  And it was in this reminder that I landed on this concept of black holes, which has come up before.  And then my train of thought became fairly fixated on this, for better or worse.

I first brought up black holes in a previous post "Phobias:  Bald Men" where I was just remarking on the similar symbolism between what a black hole looks like and what a 'New Moon Shining" (a Solar Eclipse) looks like.  They are fundamentally the same, visually, at least in 2D renderings of some artists.

Leo, however, asked in the comment section as to whether this black hole symbol was meant to represent something of a portal.  I responded by saying I didn't know, as I hadn't put much thought into it, and had only been thinking about the symbol as it relates to the potential alignment or linkage of the Anor and Ithil Stones.  Obviously some travel will happen as a result of that linkage, but as to its actual mechanics, I didn't and don't have any idea, or at least a favorite among multiple possible scenarios (each likely as unbelievable as the next).

It must have kept working the background of my mind, however, because I landed on black holes as a very quick answer to my original question.  Meaning this:

If the Sun is a Star, and Stars sometimes become Black Holes, isn't one potential answer to the riddle or question on my mind simply that one finds a 'Sun' (Star) that has become a black hole and passes into it?  I mean, don't consider the impossibility of how one actually does that for the moment, but isn't that a relatively straightforward answer to how one 'enters' into a star or Sun?

It seems so to me.

And again, I don't want to get caught in a trap of trying to assert mechanics of how everything is going to work, or could work.  That seems like it would be a less productive use of time.  I think the most important thing right now is to imagine other potential stories so that we can be more ready to believe the actual true stories when they come.  We don't need to get caught up in trying to verify everything or prove something could be - I am not sure that is possible.

But, this thought was interesting enough to me, I went down it a bit.  So, let's just categorize this under extremely weird and likely not true, but an interesting thought exercise.  Someone has to get somewhere in some way - this is just exploring that problem.

I am clearly not a physicist - theoretical or otherwise - so my knowledge of black holes is limited, and comes from movies, books, online searches, etc.  I don't know if anyone has seen Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan?  I remember there being a lot of weird things in that movie relative to black holes, time, relativity, etc.  But, the main character there, whose name was Cooper (meaning Barrel Maker.. of whiskey?) successfully went into a black hole, based on apparently 'real' science fundamentals provided by a Nobel prize winning physicist named Kip Thorne, so apparently at least one scientist thinks some kind of travel into or through Black Holes is theoretically possible.

On that Interstellar movie, by the way, you have again that similar theme one finds even in Watership Down.  There is a need to get a group of people from their old home (where there is present and future destruction) to a new home.  Watership Down involved rabbits travelling across the countryside to their new hill, while Interstellar involves travelling across space and through wormholes (and black holes).

Thinking more on Interstellar and how it treated time and its significant distortion, particularly as one approached the black hole, reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.  The book starts off with the chapter "Down the Rabbit-Hole".   In this chapter, we are introduced to the White Rabbit (as opposed to the Black Rabbit of Watership Down), who is very concerned with 'time', as he keeps checking his watch and exclaiming he will be late for a very important date.

He will proceed to go down a rabbit hole, and Alice will follow him, falling an extreme distance, and landing herself in Wonderland - a Land of Wonder.

Thinking of the rabbit, even though white, brought to mind the rabbit thoughts of my post from yesterday, particularly if my interpretation of Faramir as a 'rabbit' is correct.  The tie then becomes Faramir-rabbit potentially also entering a 'hole' or passageway, and this passageway being made from a star or Sun that has collapsed into some kind of black hole.

That last sentence, though, becomes a bit of fantasy-thinking I think, though, as it seems most knowledgeable people on black holes don't view them as 'going anywhere'.  They become almost infinitely dense and small at their singularity, but that is what they are - a small, dense point of mass... not a gateway or passage.  It seems anything passing into the black hole just becomes condensed into that point of mass.

However, in keeping a strange thought alive, I was introduced to the concept of a White Hole.  Seriously, these apparently exist (theoretically, and probably not likely in our universe).

This caught my attention - the Black and White imagery of these holes - because we see this in other things.  The Black and White Rabbit.  The Black and White squares of a chessboard (which also represent movement) and their corresponding chess pieces.  Yin and Yang, even.  The articles I read on these White Holes even consistently called them the Twins of Black Holes, which also stuck out to me because Twins seem to be a thing with Beings as well.

Anyway, not to let a crazy idea die too easily, I looked into these White Holes.  Apparently, where Black Holes suck everything in and don't let anything escape (representing entropy pretty much run to its extreme), White Holes act in the opposite manner... nothing can enter, and anything that tries is repelled in some way.  

Most scientist, from I read, seem to agree that these White Holes are not possible in our own universe.  In a reality governed by entropy, Black Holes are apparently the reality, while White Holes are sort of just a mathematical exercise. 

The biggest reason?  Time.

There is nothing in general relativity that dictates, per se, what way time flows in.  Black holes appear in our universe because time, or the future, happens in only one direction (I am summarizing as best I can what I have read and understand... which isn't much).  If you were to flip the flow of time, you would get White Holes, theoretically.

In some theories, these White Holes represent the 'exits' to Black Holes - again, a kind of yin and yang.  The White Holes, however, would need to exist in a place where such a phenomenon is possible - which may be a separate ' universe' altogether... one that has slightly different rules than our own, including how entropy is involved (or is not involved, rather).

Anyway, this seems all very incomprehensible to me, and I am not going to get into much more detail, other than to say that again going back to the White Rabbit of Alice's story, who is obsessed with Time and enters a Hole, we may be dealing with something like these types of Black Hole phenomenon as a portal to some other place.  My understanding is that if such a phenomenon were to exist, than you are also having to bring into play 'wormholes' potentially as a tunnel or expressway that would link these 'holes' or passageways.

Again, ordinarily I wouldn't go into 'mechanics' land with trying to figure out how something happens, in this case how Faramir ends up where he is going in this story, but some of these connections stood out so I wanted to log them.  It seems there is some pathway that has been created, whether as part of these type of Interstellar phenomenon, or as the Stones themselves replicating this type of behavior.  I don't know.  My guess is that, whatever they are, it was Asenath and those working with her who were the primary designers of whatever form this path will take.  Meaning, whatever this path, or these paths, turn out to be, they were placed on purpose, by super-intelligent Beings, for the express intent of bringing Beings to a place of gathering, perhaps.

The concept of this path or way being some kind of 'hole' or passage is further supported by a phrase that came to me a couple of weeks ago as I woke up from a dream.  I won't relay the entire context (not exactly needed or appropriate, honestly), but the phrase ended with "...out the gate".

At the time I heard it, I understood it to be "Out [of] the gate" with it being an expression like we would use in English to mean something like "Immediately, right away, or from the beginning".  This made sense to me given the context.

However, in looking at all of this stuff related to Black Holes, White Holes, Worm Holes, Rabbit Holes, or whatever, I thought I would look up the word 'gate' this morning.   There is that movie "Stargate" also, which involved interplanetary travel through some kind of wormhole, so I wanted to see what kind of definitions for 'gate' we had.

Etymonline gives me this:

"opening, entrance," Old English geat (plural geatu) "gate, door, opening, passage, hinged framework barrier," from Proto-Germanic *gatan (source also of Old Norse gat "opening, passage," Old Saxon gat "eye of a needle, hole," Old Frisian gat "hole, opening," Dutch gat "gap, hole, breach," German Gasse "street, lane, alley")

I bolded the Old Saxon definition above for a couple reasons.  First, I was surprised to see gate mean "eye of a needle", and in the context of me looking it up relative to black holes, because I used the phrase attributed to Jesus in the New Testament relating to camels and eyes of needles as I ended my "Phobias: Bald Men" post.  It was that post (linked earlier above in this post) where I first noticed and explored the Black Hole symbolism:

Anyway, black holes, as the theory goes, make things long and skinny as you get closer to the Event Horizon due to the gravitational field and pull.   For instance, as I understand it, if you fell feet first into a black hole, the massive difference in gravity at your feet compared with your head, would begin to stretch you vertically.  At the same time, you would be horizontally compressed, literally turning you into a long, skinny person (or a stripling, in the literal use of that term).

Not sure what that has to do with anything, either.   As I was typing that paragraph above, though, I did have the thought that such 'spaghetification' would definitely solve the problem Jesus posed about being able to pass through the eye of a needle.  Rich men, camels, and anybody could fit through that eye with all of their possessions after getting the spaghetti treatment of a black hole.

I still don't know what to do with this now, but the fact remains my son drew a picture of a monkey holding a banana and calling him spaghetti.  In the context of connecting that with everything else, for some reason talking about travelling through black holes (or something like them) doesn't sound so odd.  Literally every article I read about Event Horizons in Black Holes and travelling into them brings up the statement that were you to try and go into one, you would be turned into spaghetti.  Your name may as well be Spaghetti if you tried to go into them.

But, here in the definition of 'gate', we have an Eye of the Needle, something that only thin things like spaghetti could pass through, and we have the very specific mention of 'hole'.  Thus, I think that phrase is now a double meaning - something to happen immediately, once the hole or passage has been travelled.

So, I don't know.  Maybe the journey involves heading to some specific black hole and jumping on in.  Maybe the Stones themselves have some sort of quality that allows them to perform a similar function.  Or the Stones act as a Key in allowing one to enter into these spaces and travel where one needs to go - forming a link on both ends of this portal or gateway.  I have no idea.  It all sounds equally crazy.

As it stands, though, what I am saying is that it is possible, even if not fully conceivable, that Faramir, the black-white rabbit, hops into something like a black-white hole that used to be a Star/Sun (a "black sun" or an Oreo!), in order to go where he needs to.  Obviously a lot of problems with this, but just wanted to put it out there that it is on my mind for whatever reason.

Oh, one last kind of cool, interesting 'sync' to this thought train above.  I mentioned the movie Interstellar [Quick spoiler alert:  if you haven't seen it, but plan to, stop reading right here and then come back afterward before reading my next comment and viewing the clip!].  

Below I am going to insert a clip from the movie where Cooper and Amelia go by the Black Hole Gargantua, and then Cooper does a suprise detach and sends himself into the Black Hole.

Remember quickly that in my story articulated above I have Faramir potentially dropping also into a Black Hole, and thus Cooper stands in symbolically for Faramir here in our imaginations.

Before Cooper detaches, at around the 1:25 mark, he makes a comment that this maneuver of flying so close to the Black Hole will cost them 51 years due to the Time dilation.  Amelia responds by telling Cooper that he doesn't "sound so bad for pushing 120".  Meaning, Cooper is now 120 years old as they go by (and he eventually enters) Gargantua.

Faramir's recorded age when he died in Ithilien?  120 years old.