I've just read from Black Holes and Time Warps that the singularity at the center of a black hole is made of something called quantum foam, making its dimensions only of space and not of time. As the black hole is formed, the dimension of time is lost at the singularity. A whole dimension being lost is akin to a cube becoming a flat square in our world. Thus black holes do not operate in hyperspace, or in higher dimensions, but in a lower one, one we cannot see because they swallow all light. In this manner, light seems to be a prerequisite for time. It also means that time cannot reverse inside a black hole as I'd originally wondered.
This should come as no surprise. Just as we are unable to see the theoretical higher dimensions of space, we are equally unable to see the lower ones, even if we can represent them visually, say on a piece of paper. And yet space without time, in the quantum foam of a singularity, is fittingly similar to the state of the universe before the big bang, when there was no time or light and energy was infinitely condensed. The light that is swallowed manifests as energy that is continuously built as the black hole gets bigger.
If so, a series of questions arises: what triggers the big bang explosion after the singularity runs out of fuel, or its implosion is complete? Are there millions of baby universes in the black holes of our universe, or have they yet to be born, waiting to swallow up everything in their neighborhood? Or is everything gravitating to a would-be black hole in the "center" of the universe, that will one day swallow every other black hole, and all the mass in the universe with it, triggering a Big Crunch that is simultaneously consistent with the Big Freeze- all that remains of the "outer" universe- as a shell of the inner one taking form?
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