In their 2014 study published in the journal Physical Review D, physicists Carlo Rovelli and Hal M. Scientists have continued to explore the potential connection between black and white holes. Unlike a black hole, a white hole will allow light and matter to leave, but light and matter will not be able to enter. Could this be a white hole - a theory put forward by Russian cosmologist Igor Novikov in 1964? Novikov proposed that a black hole links to a white hole that exists in the past. But the friend falls right in, to a place beyond 'forever.' Whatever that means." Maybe a black hole leads to a white holeĬertainly, if black holes do lead to another part of a galaxy or another universe, there would need to be something opposite to them on the other side. They'll just get redder and fainter as they approach the event horizon. "An observer far away will not see their astronaut friend fall into the black hole. "I think the standard story is that they lead to the end of time," said Douglas Finkbeiner, professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard University. As it stands, theory suggests that anything which goes beyond the event horizon is simply added to the black hole and, what's more, because time distorts close to this boundary, this will appear to take place incredibly slowly, so answers won't be quickly forthcoming. Why, we can't even take photographs of anything that takes place inside a black hole - if light cannot escape their immense gravity, then nothing can be snapped by a camera. (Image credit: Shutterstock)īut, the problem is that we can't get up close to see for ourselves. But, there's no evidence that wormholes are real or that a black hole would act like one. If wormholes exist, they might lead to another universe. Thorne told that journeys through these theoretical tunnels would most likely remain science fiction, and there is certainly no firm evidence that a black hole could allow for such a passage.Īrtist's concept of a wormhole. Indeed, Thorne, who lent his expert advice to the production team for the Hollywood movie Interstellar, wrote: "We see no objects in our universe that could become wormholes as they age," in his book "The Science of Interstellar" (W.W. But it doesn't seem likely that wormholes exist. "Reading Kip Thorne's popular book about wormholes is what first got me excited about physics as a child," Massey said. But it gained some fresh ground in the 1980s when physicist Kip Thorne - one of the world's leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein's general theory of relativity - raised a discussion about whether objects could physically travel through them. Such an idea has been floating around for some time: Einstein teamed up with Nathan Rosen to theorise bridges that connect two different points in space-time in 1935. They may even be, as some have suggested, a path to another universe. Or is it? Over the years scientists have looked into the possibility that black holes could be wormholes to other galaxies. Assuming this core has more than roughly three-times the mass of the sun, gravity would overwhelm to such a degree that it would fall in on itself into a single point, or singularity, understood to be the black hole's infinitely dense core. Ever since Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity was considered to have predicted black holes by linking space-time with the action of gravity, it has been known that black holes result from the death of a massive star leaving behind a small, dense remnant core. If that sounds like a disappointing - and painful - answer, then it is to be expected. "They'd be ripped to pieces by the enormous gravity, so I doubt anyone falling through would get anywhere." "Falling through an event horizon is literally passing beyond the veil - once someone falls past it, nobody could ever send a message back," he said. The simple answer to all of these questions is, as Professor Richard Massey explains, "Who knows?" As a Royal Society research fellow at the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, Massey is fully aware that the mysteries of black holes run deep.
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