The 'Smearing Out' Or Removal Of The Singularity Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 266):

The balance of opinion among the experts is that all matter entering a black hole eventually encounters a singularity of some sort. But what if quantum effects remove the singularity somehow? 

Unfortunately, since we have no complete quantum theory of gravity, we cannot model the consequences of quantum effects in smearing out the singularity with any confidence. Whether they actually result in the complete removal of the singularity is uncertain. Some physicists expect this to be the case, and even argue that the very concepts of space and time will cease to apply under these extreme conditions. Just what sort of structures might replace them is a matter for conjecture. The safest position, therefore, is to regard the singularity as merely a breakdown of known physics, rather than the end of all physics.

Blogger Comments:

As previously explained, from the perspective of the universe outside a black hole, matter entering a black hole never reaches the singularity, because the ever increasing expansion of time intervals entails that this would take an infinite amount of time.

As previously explained, from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, even the misapplication of quantum theory to space-time has no bearing on what is purported to happen at the singularity itself, since the uncertainty only lies in the range of potential locations of the singularity.

From the perspective of the General Theory of Relativity, on the one hand, the concepts of space and time do apply within the event horizon of a black hole, if only because these are the dimensions that are affected by the matter that created the black hole; and on the other hand, space and time are dimensions, not structures, and thus cannot be replaced by structures.

On the basis of the above, the singularity is not a breakdown of known physics. Moreover, physics, in the sense of phenomena (data), only ends when the construing of meaning ends, and physics, in the sense of metaphenomena (theories), only ends when the reconstrual of meaning ends.