4. Symmetries of the Schwarzschild Geometry
Having discussed the geometry of the external metric, let us turn to the internal metric (Region II in
Figure 1). The internal form of metric can be expressed as:
Equation
20 is the internal metric and for the rest of the paper it is important to remember that when discussing the internal metric,
t is the spacelike coordinate and r is the timelike coordinate. To help distinguish between the
r,
t,
, and
coordinates in the internal and external metrics,
from this point forward, we will denote the external metric with primed coordinates: , , , and . So
r refers to the internal coordinate and
refers to the external coordinate. This delineation will be important in later sections.
The internal 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 coordinate density).
Figure 1 shows the Kruskal-Szekeres coordinate chart 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 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 10. 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.
So the internal solution describes a spherically symmetric vacuum surrounded by a horizon which, from the perspective of an observer at some r between the horizon and , surrounds the vacuum infinitely far away in space and at some finite time in the past. And from the perspective of that observer, this horizon, which looks like a surrounding sphere, is a time where space is infinitely dense. A spacetime fitting this description would be any empty space in the Universe whose surrounding mass is spherically symmetric. Voids in the cosmic web would be an example of such a spacetime, and the horizon of the metric in this case would be the Big Bang, which is an event at some finite time in the past that surrounds all points in the Universe which has an infinite density. And an observer in the present Universe can never reach the Big Bang, no matter how far they travel through space, which is in alignment with the fact that the surface, from the perspective of a present observer, is infinitely far away from them in space. So we might think of the expanding Universe as baking bread where the air pockets that expand as the bread bakes give the bread a web-like structure over time, where the bread itself would be analogous to the cosmic filaments of matter in the Universe.
Therefore, 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 (we will show that the scale factor at
is 0 in
Section 6). 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 isotropic and 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
22 is only for one dimension of space, but we know that the metric is spherically symmetric and can therefore extend Equation
22 to 2 spatial dimensions by simply adding a Y coordinate to get an equation that matches the form of Equation
21 where
:
Equation
23 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
23 for each region, we get the surfaces shown in
Figure 4.
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 10. 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 4. 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.
Light cones in
Figure 4 are oriented vertically and light travels on 45 degree lines. If we consider the right side of
Figure 4, representing the external metric, choose any point on the surface and project a past and future light cone out of that point (this will just be a vertical cone centered at that point). We see that the external metric is anisotropic and inhomogeneous because the surface is asymmetric relative to the surface left and right as well as into and out of the page. But the light cone is symmetric vertically relative to the surface. We can see this because we are allowed to circularly and/or hyperbolically rotate any point to a point at the throat of the surface and the space will remain unchanged. This is because the metric is spherically symmetric (representing circular rotations) and static (representing hyperbolic rotations). It becomes clear that the cone is vertically symmetric relative to the surface at the throat since both the cone and surface are vertically symmetric in a plane parallel to the throat. So any point we choose to start with can be moved to the throat of the surface and we see that the cone is vertically symmetric relative to the surface when we move a point there.
Now consider the top sheet on the left side of
Figure 4 representing the internal metric. Again choose any point on the surface and project a past and future light cone vertically from that point. Just like in the case of the external metric, we can move that point anywhere on the surface to the apex of the surface by hyperbolically and/or circularly rotating the point there (and the space will remain unchanged). When the point is rotated to the apex, we see then that the light cone is symmetric relative to the surface left and right and into and out of the page. This symmetry means the internal metric is isotropic and homogeneous. The cone is not vertically symmetric relative to the surface, however, and that reflects the fact that the internal metric is not static.
The above arguments tell us something important about the Schwarzschild metric. When the metric is derived from Einstein’s field equations, it is usually done from the perspective of the external metric. In the derivation, we assume spherical symmetry and a static spacetime. It is notable that in spite of the static assumption, we still get an internal metric that is non-static. This is because the static assumption for the external metric is actually an implicit assumption of hyperbolic symmetry. Therefore, we can more correctly state that the Schwarzschild metric is the vacuum solution to Einstein’s field equations that is both spherically and hyperbolically symmetric. This hyperbolic symmetry manifests itself as a static metric when the time coordinate is hyperbolic (the external metric) and an isotropic and homogeneous metric when the space coordinate is hyperbolic (the internal metric).
We can further extend this to three spatial dimensions by adding a
term to Equation
23, and given the spherical symmetry we can define
and change Equation
22 to
In this formulation, we put ourselves at
and the circles on the surfaces in
Figure 4 will become spheres that are isotropic and homogeneous in space and inhomogeneous in time, which is consistent with the Cosmological Principle.
Let us examine the Killing vectors for the geometry on a surface of constant
r in the internal metric. In the 1D spatial representation of the metric in quadrant II of
Figure 1, we see that the spacelike coordinate
t has positive and negative values. Given the spherical symmetry of the metric, we can construct a Cartesian basis in
t for the metric at fixed time
r as follows:
We know that
is a Killing vector of the spacetime and the
labels in
Figure 5 represent the 3 spatial directions in Kruskal coordinates. The perpendicular hyperbolas shown on the sheets on the left side of
Figure 4 represent the
and
coordinates of
Figure 5. So we see that we can construct a Cartesian basis for the 3D space of the internal metric out of Killing vectors and therefore the 3D space of the metric must be homogeneous and isotropic at a given time
r. So all motion through space in the internal metric can be described as motion in the basis depicted in
Figure 5 (i.e. even circular motion involves changes in location
t).
In the external metric, the
t Killing vector runs in the
T direction of the Kruskal coordinates and so it has more of a radial characteristic. Therefore, in the external metric,
can be seen as pointing in all directions at fixed
r. The circles on the sheets on the right side of
Figure 4 are circles of constant time
t.
Figure 6 shows these contours on a plane with the Killing/Basis vectors
plotted on the contours.
It is important to note here that in the external metric, the angular term
describes the translation of a reference frame along a curvilinear path, whereas in the internal metric, the term describes the precession of a reference frame about an axis of time. This implies that the angular term in the internal metric is describing a spin about the time axis (
r), which is discussed in
Section 5. Curvilinear motion through space is also discussed in
Section 9.
From this analysis, we can see that the Kruskal coordinates are 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 coordinate 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 4, 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 coordinate density.
To show this, we first note the definition of the Kruskal
T coordinate in terms of the Schwarzschild coordinates for the internal metric:
If we substitute Equation
25 into Equation
24 and solve for
R we get:
Therefore, we see that as
r approaches
u,
R goes to zero for all
t.
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 4 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 4 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 7 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 7 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 7, 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.