Dr. Becky Smethurst is one of my favourite YouTube astrophysicists because of her infectious excitement about her field. She has a very entertaining style of presentation that mixes facts and mysteries. I also admire her work ethic because making YouTube space videos and writing space books is extra compared to her regular career as a Ph.D. researcher. I thought I would go through her video on her top 10 mysteries and answer any for which NPQG provides insight, which turns out to be 9 of 10. I will be brief here, because I’ve already written in detail elsewhere on this blog about each of these topics.
#1 What’s inside a black hole?
The inside of a black hole is pretty much like the inside of any other orb in the sense that the closer to the center the denser and more energetic it becomes. That is to say matter is compressed more and more and energy is denser and denser. You can think of it from a phase diagram point of view, and every layer will contain whatever forms of matter can exist at that pressure and energy level. Ultimately, a black hole center, in particular an SMBH center, may develop a core of tightly packed Planck point charges, i.e., electrinos and positrinos. I hypothesize that they are packed in a lattice structure and store the Planck energy per particle. A Planck core is the ultimate battery. It is also a place where there is only one microstate, and thus zero entropy. Also, time has stopped in a Planck core since no particles are moving. Furthermore the interior point charges of a Planck core can not participate in gravity since there is no way for them to transmit their mass. Not only that, but they would shield gravity coming from matter on the other side of the core. Planck cores are fascinating, but they will always be purely theoretical as there is zero chance they could be observed in an experiment.
#2 What’s the Universe expanding into?
The answer is either a) it’s not or b) itself. See mystery #3 for the explanation. The discussion of multi-verses is largely science fiction, not science. Also, there is a good chance that the Universe is infinite in all directions.
#3 What is dark energy?
Most galaxies have a central SMBH, and many of those SMBH form Planck cores at some point, and furthermore will occasionally release jets of Planck plasma, which will inflate and react and generate new matter and new spacetime æther. So there is a general process where matter is flowing towards the SMBH and spacetime æther is flowing away from the SMBH. Unfortunately GR-QM era physics has incorrectly latched on to the idea of an expanding universe, when it is really that spacetime æther is expanding in each galaxy, presumably until it encounters spacetime æther expanding from other galaxies. In any case, a photon traveling through multiple galaxies will always experience expanding spacetime æther local to each galaxy. So, the answer to this mystery is related to the energy held in spacetime æther and in Planck cores which erupt, breach, inflate, and react to produce more spacetime æther. Also, galaxies are not in general all moving away from each other – this is a mistaken conclusion of GR-QM era physics.
#4 What’s dark matter made of?
The dynamics of galaxies are largely misunderstood. First of all, spacetime æther is denser around matter-energy e.g., dust, gas, planets, stars, black holes and so on. While every spacetime æther particle is extremely low mass, a large volume of dense spacetime æther, does have a sizable mass. There are also other dynamics that may affect galaxy rotation curves, such as matter-energy ceasing to present mass if it joins a Planck core in an SMBH, as well as the reappearance of that mass when the Planck core breaches the event horizon at the poles and jets Planck plasma above and below the plane of the galaxy. Suffice it to say, taking all of these effects into account will likely resolve the vast majority of the galaxy rotation and dark matter conundrums.
#5 Where is all the antimatter?
What GR-QM era physics calls antimatter is right in front of our noses. See Anti-Matter Mystery Solved!
#6 What happened in the first 
First of all, there was no one-time inflation and Big Bang. That idea is based on faulty science. However, the usual picture of the Big Bang timeline can be roughly mapped at smaller scale onto the Planck plasma jets that emerge when the Planck core of an SMBH breaches the event horizon at the poles. So, with that reframing, what Dr. Becky said is roughly accurate.
#7 What came first: The galaxy or the black hole?
That is a good question. It can probably happen either way. Imagine a Planck plasma jet which terminates in a pile up of matter-energy. As that blob cools down and reacts it has a good chance of forming a proto galaxy which may include stars and black holes. It really just depends on your definition of when it is officially called a ‘galaxy.’
#8 What causes fast radio bursts?
See Anton Petrov’s video on this topic. Hint: magnetars!
#9 Why does the Sun’s magnetic field flip?
Not my area of study.
#10 Does life exist on other planets?
I think life will develop elsewhere if conditions are suitable. It’s really a question of whether those conditions develop and duration that the particular planet has before those conditions are eradicated.
J Mark Morris : San Diego : California
Neoclassical Physics and Quantum Gravity 