Authored by Jake Anderson via The Mind Unleashed blog,

New research into black holes has accelerated in recent years, producing some outlandish - though mind boggling - ideas. The newest theoryadvanced by researchers may take the cake in this regard.

A team of astrophysicists at Canada’s University of Waterloo have put forth a theory suggesting that our universe exists inside the event horizon of a massive higher dimensional black hole nested within a larger mother universe.

Perhaps even more strangely, scientists say this radical proposition is consistent with astronomical and cosmological observations and that theoretically, such a reality could inch us closer to the long-awaited theory of “quantum gravity.”

The research team at Waterloo used laws from string theory to imagine a lower-dimensional universe marooned inside the membrane of a higher dimensional one.

Lead researcher Robert Mann said:

”The basic idea was that maybe the singularity of the universe is like the singularity at the centre of a black hole. The idea was in some sense motivated by trying to unify the notion of singularity, or what is incompleteness in general relativity between black holes and cosmology. And so out of that came the idea that the Big Bang would be analogous to the formation of a black hole, but kind of in reverse.”

The research was based on the previous work of professor Niayesh Afshordi, though he is hardly the only scientist who has looked into the possibility of a black hole singularity birthing a universe.

Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven imagines the seed of the universe like the seed of a plant - a core of fundamental information compressed inside of a shell that shields it from the outside world. Poplawski says this is essentially what a black hole is, a protective shell around a black hole singularity ravaged by extreme tidal forces creating a kind of torsion mechanism.

Compressed tightly enough - as scientists imagine is the case at the singularity of a black hole, which may break down the known laws of physics - the torsion could produce a spring-loaded effect comparable to a jack-in-the-box. The subsequent “big bounce” may have been our Big Bang, which took place inside the collapsed remnants of a five-dimensional star.

Poplawski also suggested that black holes could be portals connecting universes. Each black hole, he says, could be a “one-way door” to another universe, or perhaps the multiverse.

Regardless of whether or not this provocative theory is true, scientists increasingly believe that black holes could be the key to understanding many of the most vexing mysteries in the universe, including the Big Bang, inflation, and dark energy. Physicists also believe black holes could help bridge the divide between quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity.