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Hi Paul, I won't attempt to completely resolve your questions but will add to the discussion.
you have an idea of black hole which is not the Schwarzschild black hole that I opened the thread with and specified in the poll. Your idea is more general. A region with a horizon----that light can't get out of.
It is important to realize that in a homog isotropic universe, the mere fact that a spherical region contains enough mass that its radius equals 2GM/c^2 does not cause it to trap light. Wallace mentioned this early on. The gravitational field has no preferred direction. This does not depend on expansion. It would be true also in the unrealistic static case.
So we have to try to imagine how a spherical region with radius 2GM/c^2 could trap light. It isn't automatic.But we can still try to think about some situation like what you suggest, as a theoretical exercise. I will give it a try. I think to make things work we need to break homogeneity and have the big spherical region surrounded by a shell of comparatively empty space.
In this case I think yes. As long as the ball is effectively isolated in a huge void. (or reasonable facsimile )
But in the real universe our Hubble ball is not isolated. In the real universe things are uniform so there is no center to collapse to.
If the whole thing stopped expanding then the whole shebang would collapse. Then there would be no light-trapping horizon isolating a part of the whole. The whole uniform universe would be on its way to a crunch. Different from a black hole.
In that case doesn't matter if some particular region contains enough mass so that radius = 2GM/c^2. A particular spherical region could have far larger mass than that and still not trap light! I am talking the homogeneous case which seems to fit reality.
But if you want we can imagine that our Hubble ball is isolated by a huge surrounding void. So then it would have a center to collapse to. And we assume it stops expanding. The answer is YES it certainly traps light! And the singularity takes a while to form.
I'm not sure what the people inside would be seeing before the expansion stopped. It may depend on the model. Things could start falling towards the center long before the horizon forms and the light is actually trapped! Maybe someone else will step in and clarify.
you have an idea of black hole which is not the Schwarzschild black hole that I opened the thread with and specified in the poll. Your idea is more general. A region with a horizon----that light can't get out of.
It is important to realize that in a homog isotropic universe, the mere fact that a spherical region contains enough mass that its radius equals 2GM/c^2 does not cause it to trap light. Wallace mentioned this early on. The gravitational field has no preferred direction. This does not depend on expansion. It would be true also in the unrealistic static case.
So we have to try to imagine how a spherical region with radius 2GM/c^2 could trap light. It isn't automatic.But we can still try to think about some situation like what you suggest, as a theoretical exercise. I will give it a try. I think to make things work we need to break homogeneity and have the big spherical region surrounded by a shell of comparatively empty space.
PaulR said:...So my question is – am I right? Is it theoretically possible for a 13.7 billion year sphere to stop expanding and thereby immediately become a black hole long before any internal crush into a singularity?
And as a followup, how would someone in the center know since the initial action is 13.7 billion light years away?
In this case I think yes. As long as the ball is effectively isolated in a huge void. (or reasonable facsimile )
But in the real universe our Hubble ball is not isolated. In the real universe things are uniform so there is no center to collapse to.
If the whole thing stopped expanding then the whole shebang would collapse. Then there would be no light-trapping horizon isolating a part of the whole. The whole uniform universe would be on its way to a crunch. Different from a black hole.
In that case doesn't matter if some particular region contains enough mass so that radius = 2GM/c^2. A particular spherical region could have far larger mass than that and still not trap light! I am talking the homogeneous case which seems to fit reality.
But if you want we can imagine that our Hubble ball is isolated by a huge surrounding void. So then it would have a center to collapse to. And we assume it stops expanding. The answer is YES it certainly traps light! And the singularity takes a while to form.
I'm not sure what the people inside would be seeing before the expansion stopped. It may depend on the model. Things could start falling towards the center long before the horizon forms and the light is actually trapped! Maybe someone else will step in and clarify.
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