A few years ago, I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, when this completely random thought hit me: What if our entire universe is actually inside a black hole?
I had no formal physics training, but I'd always been drawn to cosmology and theoretical physics as a hobby—reading everything from Hawking to Greene, watching documentaries, and following the latest research out of curiosity. No equations or peer-reviewed papers from me, of course, but years of fascination with how the universe works. And something about this idea felt... right.
The Logic That Led Me There
My reasoning was embarrassingly simple:
We know black holes are these mysterious things that bend space and time in ways we can barely comprehend. We also know that time slows down as you approach one. What if, instead of being crushed into a singularity, matter and energy get compressed into something else entirely—another universe?
Think about it: From our perspective inside, this universe would appear to be expanding. But from the outside, it might just be the natural result of matter falling into a black hole in some larger reality we can't see.
The Big Bang? Maybe that was just the moment our "parent" black hole formed, and all the expansion we observe is really just the interior geometry of that black hole unfolding.
I remember feeling both excited and slightly ridiculous about this idea. It was the kind of thought you keep to yourself because it sounds like something you'd come up with after too much coffee and too little sleep.
When Science Catches Up to Daydreaming
Fast forward to 2025, and I'm starting to see headlines that make me do a double-take:
"Did our cosmos begin inside a black hole in another universe?"
"What if the Big Bang wasn't the beginning? Our research suggests it may have taken place inside a black hole"
"Black holes: not endings, but beginnings? New research could revolutionize our understanding of the universe"
Turns out, there's a Polish physicist named Nikodem Popławski who's been developing this exact theory for years. His research, published in serious journals like Physical Review D, suggests that instead of forming singularities, black holes with torsion (a property of spacetime) could actually create new universes.
The University of Portsmouth released research in 2025 showing that gravitational collapse doesn't have to end in a singularity—it can bounce back, creating an expanding universe that looks remarkably like our own.
Even more mind-bending: researchers at the University of Sheffield published a paper suggesting that what we call the Big Bang might actually be the "bounce" that happens when matter in a black hole reaches maximum density and then explodes outward into a new universe.
The Weird Satisfaction of Being Right (Sort Of)
There's this strange feeling when you see your random midnight thoughts showing up in actual scientific papers. It's not exactly validation—these physicists are working with mathematical frameworks far beyond my amateur understanding. But there's something deeply satisfying about knowing that curiosity and intuition, even from someone exploring these ideas as a hobby, can sometimes point in the same direction as rigorous science.
What strikes me most is how this happened: I wasn't trying to solve any cosmic mysteries. I was just curious about black holes and letting my mind wander. No agenda, no hypothesis to prove, just pure "what if?"
Maybe that's how a lot of breakthrough thinking actually works. Not through methodical reasoning, but through letting your brain make weird connections when you're not trying too hard.
The Beautiful Uncertainty
Here's what I love about this whole thing: we still don't know if we're living inside a black hole. As one researcher put it, "We can't rule it out completely, but so far there is no compelling evidence."
The beauty isn't in being right or wrong—it's in the fact that we can even ask these questions. That our reality might be far stranger and more nested than we ever imagined. That somewhere in another dimension, there might be beings debating whether their universe is inside a black hole too.
And maybe, just maybe, the next breakthrough will come from someone else lying in bed at 2 AM, letting their mind wander in impossible directions.
The Pattern I Keep Noticing
This isn't the first time I've had a random thought that later showed up in research. It makes me wonder: How many of our casual "what if" moments are actually picking up on something real? How often does intuition stumble onto truths that take science years to catch up to?
I'm not claiming any special insight here—just the perspective of someone who's spent years reading about these topics for fun. I think most of us have these moments where our curiosity leads us down interesting paths, we just don't always pay attention to them or we dismiss them as beyond our understanding. But maybe there's value in taking our questions seriously, even when they sound completely absurd.
After all, the idea that we're living inside a black hole sounded pretty absurd to me too. Now it's the subject of serious academic research.
Sometimes the universe (or whatever larger reality we're nested inside) has a sense of humor. Keep having those random thoughts. You never know which ones might be onto something.