Are We Living Inside a Black Hole?

Do We Live in a Universal Nesting Doll of Black Holes? 

I just microdosed a little mushroom. Not for some trippy, psychedelic, perceptual changes or vibrant visuals, but for the gentle cognitive shift it brings as the “work grind” drifts into the background and my thoughts open up to grander questions.

Right now, I’m sitting on my patio outside of my secret hideout in the woods, gazing at a light‑pollution‑free view of the Milky Way. On the table beside me is a friend’s Matryoshka doll. You know them, wooden Russian nesting dolls, painted with serene faces and kerchiefs, each smaller than the last, and each neatly tucked away inside of each other.

As I look from the dolls to the sky, a thought drifts in…

Are We Living Inside a Black Hole?   

Imagine for a moment that our entire universe – all the galaxies, dark matter, cosmic microwave background radiation, everything – isn’t floating in an infinite void at all.

What if it’s contained within a gigantic black hole inside of some larger “parent” universe?

In other words, maybe the universe didn’t begin with the Big Bang.

Maybe it bounced into existence – inside of a black hole.

And maybe every black hole in every universe spawns its own new universe in turn.

Cosmic nesting dolls, stretching on and on forever.

Marvel Comics popularized the multiverse,  – but this black hole hypothesis is a real idea presently being explored by dedicated cosmologists.

And it might help solve some of the deepest puzzles in physics.

What We’ve Learned (and What’s Weird)

So, let’s rewind to what most of us learned in school.

Roughly 13.8 billion years ago our universe began as a hot, dense point of energy and then exploded and expanded rapidly in an event called the Big Bang.

Over billions of years, matter formed stars, galaxies, the cosmic web, and all guided by gravity (even if we’re still not exactly clear just what gravity is).

But regardless, the Big Bang model explains many observations beautifully.

It explains the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – the faint radiation left over from the early universe. It allows for large-scale structures like the cosmic web of galaxies, as well as dark matter (and again we really don’t know what dark matter is but it fills the need for a mathematical placeholder to help explain our equations – however I do have my own theories on this), and it also accounts for the redshift of distant galaxies that provides evidence that the universe is still expanding.

But it also leaves scientists scratching their heads about things like Dark Matter that won’t show itself but can pull on galaxies, Dark Energy, the mysterious force pushing the universe to expand faster, and, of course, the Initial Singularity, where if you rewind in time far enough back to it you’ll hit a moment of infinite density where physics breaks down and theories stop working.

Einstein’s general relativity describes gravity beautifully on larger scales including things like falling apples, orbiting planets, and swirling galaxies.

And quantum mechanics rules the tiny from atoms, to electrons, and subatomic particles.

But in extreme places, such as inside black holes or at the universe’s birth, the two clash, and equations fall apart.

The Big Bounce: A Different Cosmic Story. 

A team led by Enrique Gaztañaga at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. wondered if there might be a simpler calculation.

In their quest, they noted something strange – that the observable universe lies inside of its own gravitational radius.

And so they wondered, could this radius mean that the universe actually formed inside of a black hole, and not from an absolute singularity?

In this view, the universe didn’t start from nothing. Instead, matter collapsed into a black hole in a parent universe, then quantum effects stopped the total collapse from happening and triggered a bounce, launching a new universe: ours.

So, the Big Bang might really be a Big Bounce.

How Quantum Rules Change Everything 

The key: the Pauli exclusion principle says identical fermions (like electrons and protons) can’t share the same quantum state. Attempting to do this creates degeneracy pressure and acts to vehemently resist further compression.

This is what keeps white dwarfs from collapsing into neutron stars and, in theory, could stop the universe itself from collapsing to an infinitely dense point.

Instead, the universe reaches a point and is forced to bounce outward, avoiding the singularity.

It’s cosmic recycling, powered by the strange rules of quantum mechanics.

Abolishing the Laws of Gravity

To make the bounce work, in the quantum world gravity might do something surprising, it might do a flip at ultra‑high densities.

Gaztañaga’s paper hints at a hypothesis that if gravity interacts with the Higgs field (which gives particles mass) under extreme conditions, gravity itself might turn repulsive at very high energy densities.

So imagine a situation where gravity does a dramatic 180.  At ordinary scales, it pulls things together, at extreme densities, it pushes things outward, fueling the bounce.

It sounds radical, but it could explain how a black hole gives birth to a new universe.

Big Bounce Predictions We Can Actually Test

This could help solve the biggest challenge in physics by being able to unite gravity (general relativity) with quantum mechanics.

Gaztañaga’s model predicts a small positive spatial curvature in our universe. And as we can observe, instead of the universe being perfectly flat, it is gently curved like the surface of a giant sphere.

And the model also considers the possibility of there being ancient relics from previous universes that still remain, things like primordial black holes, or neutron stars formed before the bounce that might be visible if we are able look back far enough to see them.

If telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) find signs of unexpectedly old galaxies or relic black holes, it could hint that the universe indeed did have a “pre-bounce” past.

And early JWST data already suggests the presence of galaxies that look surprisingly mature for their age that are located in places where they don’t seem to “fit”.

A History of Bouncing Ideas

The entire idea of a universe that bounces, rather than beginning from nothing, isn’t brand new.

Georges Lemaître, in the 1920’s, first proposed the “Primeval Atom,” an early version of the Big Bang.

Oscillating Universe models that were presented in the mid-20th century suggested that the universe cycles through endless expansions and contractions.

Loop Quantum Cosmology in the early 2000’s applied quantum gravity to show that a bounce could replace a singularity.

And Ekpyrotic models that were developed at the same time proposed collisions between “brane” universes that spark new universes.

So, what makes Gaztañaga’s model stand out?

Its beauty comes from the fact that it stays inside known physics by using only Einstein’s gravity along with quantum degeneracy pressure.

It doesn’t invent new particles or even need speculative forces.

Cosmic Nesting Dolls

Imagine that every black hole in our universe forms another universe inside.

Inside each of these new universes, black holes are formed, and they create more universes.

And on and on it goes like cosmic Matryoshka dolls, only with no first or final universe.

From inside, we see our universe as vast and ancient. But from the outside, it’s just another child universe born from a black hole.

To us, from inside, it looks like an expanding universe.

But the cosmic catch is that if we live inside of a black hole, by definition, we can’t see “outside” of it – as nothing ever escapes out of a black hole.

But that doesn’t mean that we’re entirely blind either. We can look for indirect signs such as slight spatial curvature, relic black holes, or galaxies that shouldn’t be there and that don’t fit the standard Big Bang timelines.

Each clue won’t prove Gaztañaga’s theory alone, but together observations like this might help build a compelling case.

Why Even Ask?

The singularity (Big Bang) isn’t just bad math; it’s a sign where our present theories break down.

A bouncing universe elegantly avoids this and helps bridge quantum mechanics and gravity creating the long‑sought after “theory of everything.”

However, most physicists aren’t ready to rewrite textbooks just yet.

As Gaztañaga put it, “Challenging long-held assumptions is essential to scientific progress.”

And even if the idea turns out to be wrong, it did offer a more graceful origin story:

Collapse.

Bounce.

Rebirth.

Repeat.

Not creation from nothing, but an endless succession.

Cosmic Punarjanma

Ancient philosophies tell of eternal cycles: death, rebirth, and renewal.

Now, physics whispers a similar story – told in quantum rules, black holes, and nesting dolls.

Perhaps our universe isn’t the first. Perhaps it won’t be the last.

Maybe we’re just floating in an empty vacuum of ever-expanding space.

Maybe we’re a part of an eternal cycle living inside a black hole – part of an infinite cosmic Matryoshka.

And who knows? Maybe out there, in some depths of the unimaginably expansive universe, someone else is sitting on their own patio, staring at their own stars, and wondering along with all of the rest of us the exact same thing that we are…

– Written by a human.

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Michal Prywata: Inventor, entrepreneur, and multidisciplinary engineer with a focus on frontier technologies. Founder of ventures in fintech, healthcare, biotech, & space. On a relentless quest to solve complex problems and extend the boundaries of human potential.