So far, stellar and galactic black holes have been considered in light of how their major properties-extreme gravity, accretion disks, quasars, and so forth-affect matter, space, and time in the universe surrounding them. Very little has been said about what happens inside a black hole other than that matter is either crushed or falls down the hole's gravity well forever. This is partly because the inner workings of these cosmic oddities remain largely mysterious. Obviously, there is no known way to see into or directly measure the inside of a black hole.

But that has certainly not stopped people from trying to visualize what lies beyond the enigmatic event horizon. Ever since serious consideration of black holes began in the 1960s, various theories and mathematical equations have predicted that certain things are likely to...