2. The Schwarzschild Geometry
The Schwarzschild metric is the simplest non-trivial solution to Einstein’s field equations. It is the metric that describes every spherically symmetric vacuum spacetime. The the external and internal forms of metric can be expressed as (coordinates in the external metric are primed to distinguish them from the internal metric coordinates):
Equation
1 is the external metric with
being the timelike coordinate and
being the spacelike coordinate. The Schwarzschild radius of the metric is given by
in units with
. We use the prime notation for the coordinates here to distinguish the external coordinates from the internal coordinates. The external metric is the metric for an eternally spherically-symmetric vacuum centered in space. This metric is also used to describe the vacuum outside a spherically symmetric object occupying a finite amount of space with a finite mass (like a star or planet). This metric as written in Equation
1 becomes the Minkowski metric as
.
Equation
2 is the internal metric with
t being the spacelike coordinate and
r being the timelike coordinate. This metric is currently believed to describe the interior of a Black Hole. But consider the case of a spherically-symmetric vacuum surrounded by a spherically-symmetrically distributed infinite amount of mass. This would be a spacetime surrounded by a shell with an infinite Schwarzschild radius (because the mass of the shell is infinite). Since this is a spherically symmetric vacuum, it must be described by the Schwarzschild metric. This is also the description of spherically-symmetric vacua in our Universe, since the surrounding Universe is effectively a shell of infinite mass (every region of the Universe is light-like connected to the Big Bang in all directions, which acts as a shell of infinite mass/Schwarzschild radius). Therefore, the internal metric describes the spacetime of the pockets of empty space in the Universe. The constant
u in the internal metric is a time constant whose value in years will be later derived from cosmological data. Choosing a value for this constant amounts to choosing the units of time for analysis. This metric is essentially the Minkowski metric with a variable speed of light, which can also be interpreted as an expanding or collapsing space.
So the Schwarschild metric describes the curved spacetime caused by an infinitely dense shell from two perspectives:
The external metric describes the spacetime around an infinitely dense shell of finite mass and radius in the frame of an observer infinitely far away from the shell
The internal metric describes the spacetime inside an infinitely dense shell located at infinity in the frame of an observer at rest inside the shell. In the case of the Universe, the shell would be the entire Universe at time (as will be shown, the scale factor is zero there and therefore we have infinite mass and density).
Figure 1 shows the Kruskal-Szekeres coordinate chart
1 for both the internal and external metrics where light travels on 45 degree lines on the chart. This will help illustrate the above points more clearly.
On this diagram, the
lines represent the infinitely dense shells in both scenarios. We can see that at
(the ’Horizon"), both metrics are the same. The origin
location/time describes an infinitely dense point in space for the external solution (this is shown formally in
section 15) for all time and a time at which all infinite space is contracted for the external solution. The
lines are light-like because light cannot escape an infinitely dense region of space, regardless of the mass (i.e. the external observer cannot receive light emitted from the Schwarzschild radius and the internal observer cannot receive light from the time when space was infinitely contracted). The different quadrants of
Figure 1 will be examined in
section 8. We can also see in
Figure 1 that for the internal metric, the horizon is located at
, meaning the Schwarzschild radius and therefore mass of the shell is infinite (because
t is the spacelike coordinate). Thus, it is clear from the geometry that the source masses of the Schwarzschild metric are not concentrated at
(which is currently assumed and accepted by most physicists today, but is not anywhere mathematically implied or demanded in the derivation of the Schwarzschild metric), but rather at the event horizon itself.
Another way to look at the internal metric is that it describes an infinitely dense source that exists at a location in time, not space. The vacuum surrounding the source is a vacuum in time (i.e. the
r dimension is a vacuum). Just like the density of a massive free falling shell in a spatial vacuum is governed by the external metric, the density of a spherically symmetric, infinite 3D volume of space that physically moves through time (i.e. in a presentist Universe where only the present contains matter and energy and the past and future are vacuums) is governed by the internal metric. The source in this case would be the so-called ’Big Bang’, which, from our present perspective looks like an infinitely dense shell a finite time in the past away from us in all directions. It will be shown that the scale factor of the metric is zero at that time meaning that the infinite 3D space is compressed there, which means the mass of the source for the internal metric must be infinite, which is exactly what we expect for the Universe at a time when the scale factor is zero. As will be shown in
section 15, the horizon of the external metric looks like a shell (viewed from the outside) from far away, but becomes an infinitely dense point in the frame of an observer approaching it. Likewise, the Big Bang looks like an infinitely dense shell (viewed from the inside) at times later than the Big Bang, but looks like an infinitely dense point (because the proper distance goes to zero regardless of coordinate distance at that time) in the frame of an observer in the Universe as the Universe approaches that time. In other words, both the internal and external metrics look the same in the frame of an observer approaching the source, which is to be expected since they have the same mathematical description there.
Now we must show that the space in the internal metric is homogeneous. The equation for a 2D hyperboloid surface embedded in three dimensions is given by:
For our purposes, we will be considering the special case where
, which gives the one and two sheeted hyperboloids of revolution. Next, we note the following relationship with regards to the Kruskal coordinates:
Equation
4 is only for one dimension of space, but we know that the metric is spherically symmetric and can therefore extend Equation
4 to 2 spatial dimensions by simply adding a Y coordinate to get an equation that matches the form of Equation
3 where
:
Equation
5 describes 2D hyperboloid surfaces for a given
r where the external metric has positive
and the internal metric has negative
. This means that the external metric describes a 1-sheet hyberboloid while the internal metric describes a 2-sheeted hyperboloid.
We will for now focus on regions I and II from
Figure 1, where region I captures the external metric and region II captures the internal metric. If we choose some constant value of
in each region and plot Equation
5 for each region, we get the surfaces shown in
Figure 2.
In the internal case where we have two separate sheets, we will only focus on the top sheet for now. The meaning of the bottom sheet will be discussed in
section 8. In the external metric, the sheet represents an equatorial circle of space around the central body at all times. This circle is on a plane with a normal at the center and pointed vertically in
Figure 2. If we then consider circles on all planes whose normals are at different angles relative to the normal of the plane we are currently visualizing, we get a 2D spherical surface representing the space surrounding the central body at constant
r.
Now imagine we are situated at some point in empty space in the Universe facing in some direction. There is a plane of infinite space at the present time perpendicular to the direction we are facing. This plane is the hyperbolic sheet depicted on the left side of
Figure 2 where we are situated at the apex of the sheet. So the direction we are facing is the normal vector to this sheet (with the vector origin at the apex of the sheet) and just like in the external case, there are similar planes constructed from normals at all different angles to the direction we chose to face and when we put all of these together, we get an infinite 3D space at the present time.
But the points on this collection of sheets at
are spacelike to us because they all exist at the same time as us and we can only see points on past sheets whose light has had time to reach us. Light paths in
Figure 1 are lines at 45 degrees and light cones in
Figure 2 are oriented vertically where the beginning of the Universe is at the origin between the two sheets and time moves forward as the top sheet moves up the diagram vertically. So we can construct an image of what a 2D slice of the Universe would look like to us in this geometry with our position at the center.
Figure 3 shows the present sheet (
) where we are positioned in space at the apex of the sheet. We then show a cross section of that sheet on the Kruskal-Szekeres coordinate chart with the past light cone shown (dashed lines at 45 degrees emanating from
at
). That light cone intersects past sheets of constant
(past sheets not shown in the top left of
Figure 3 but are represented by the hyperbolas the dashed lines intersect in the top right of the figure) and these intersections are projected onto the plane at the origin to give us a 2D image of our past light cone of the Universe. The density of the coordinates at different radii (and therefore times) is depicted with the shading inside the projection.
Despite the hyperboloic nature of the spacelike planes, space still looks flat from our perspective because our past light cone intersects past surfaces as circular cross-sections. As we can see in the lower projection in
Figure 3, concentric circles around the center of the projection (marked with ’x’) are circles of constant distance and time from us. So we see that as we look further away in space and back in time, the Universe becomes more dense until at the beginning of the Universe, which corresponds to an infinite distance and finite time from us, the Universe is infinitely dense. This is in line with our current observations of the Universe.
We can further extend this to three spatial dimensions by adding a
term, but given the spherical symmetry we can define
and change Equation
4 to
In this formulation, we put ourselves at
and can then make the projection in 3 dimensions such that the 2D projection of
Figure 3 will become a 3D ball that, from our reference frame, is isotropic, homogeneous in space and inhomogeneous in time, which is consistent with the Cosmological Principle.
The Kruskal coordinates are therefore extrinsic coordinates, allowing us to view the full geometry from ’the outside’, as opposed to the Schwarzschild coordinates which are intrinsic. The extrinsic nature of the Kruskal coordinates is what makes the event horizon seem like a non-special location that is traversable without issue even though in actuality, that location/time represents a hard boundary of infinite mass density (the curvature there is not infinite, but the geometry is discontinuous there and that discontinuity is obscured in the extrinsic basis). This is the 4D equivalent of looking at the surface of a sphere in 3D using an extrinsic Cartesian basis (in fact, if we plotted a surface in the X, Y, Z Kruskal coordinates at fixed
r instead of T, X, Y as shown in
Figure 2, we would see spherical surfaces plotted in a Cartesian basis). Note that if we plotted one such sphere in the Kruskal X, Y, Z basis, we would see that the surface shrinks to a point when
, supporting the argument that the horizon is a point of infinite mass density. We can see this in the internal solution where all co-moving coordinate lines
t converge at
when
making
in equation
6. We can also see this in the external solution for a freefalling observer. Put the observer at
(
t is the time coordinate in
Figure 1 for the external solution) and some
in
Figure 1 and allow them to freefall. We can keep the observer on the
line during the fall in
Figure 1 if we hyperbolically rotate the spacetime as the observer falls. Rather than the freefaller moving to greater and greater
t in the diagram as they fall, they fall along the line
as greater and greater values of
t are hyperbolically rotated to
during the fall. Thus, as the frefaller approaches the Schwarzschild radius in the diagram, they approach the same
point that the internal observer reaches. The shrinking of the horizon to a point in the frame of a frefall observer is further discussed in
section 15. If, as the observer falls, we trace the past worldline behind it on the diagram (the points on the past worldline will be hyperbolically rotated downward as the fall proceeds such that
always represents the present time and the past worldline appears to ’grow’ behind it during the fall) we will see the worldline trace out a straight line in the diagram with increasing slope (the whole line rotates) as the observer falls between the initial radius and the final radius (likewise, the past worldline of an observer at rest in the field will trace out a hyperbola behind it). This procedure can be considered a ’presentist’ construction of the external metric.
We will discuss the meaning of the
term of the internal metric, which has units of time, in
section 6 but first let us show that this model fits current cosmological data for the expanding Universe.