The universe is full of STRANGE and FASCINATING objects. From stars and planets to nebulas and
dark matter there seems to be no end to what we can discover about the universe we live in.
Physicists have worked for the past few centuries to try and explain how and why
everything is the way it is. One of the greatest of these scientists was ALBERT EINSTEIN.
With his work we were able to understand so much MORE about
space and helped lead to many of the theories we have about our universe.
General Relativity, his most well known theory, explains how gravity works as a property of the
geometry of space and time. Along with a deeper understanding of gravity, general relativity
predicts MANY objects and features in our universe that had never been seen at that point.
BLACK HOLES
One type of object that Einstein’s General Relativity predicted are called BLACK
HOLES. Many of us now know that black holes exist in our universe but for a long time
they were just a piece of science fiction predicted by a theory. But more recently
astronomers were able to produce concrete evidence for their existence.
Black holes are INCREDIBLY DENSE spinning balls of matter that produce an ENORMOUS gravitational
pull. They are so dense in fact that they suck up everything that gets too close, including light.
Inside a black hole there is what is known as a SINGULARITY which is a point of unimaginable
density. The singularity is so dense, in fact, that our laws of physics completely break down
and cease to function. So physicists have no complete idea of what happens at the singularity,
but there are plenty of theories out there.
In addition to a singularity they also have an EVENT HORIZON which is the shell around the
black hole that not even light can pass through without being sucked down to the singularity
Comparing black holes and white holes
You may be thinking that both black holes and white holes share
MANY features, and you would be RIGHT.
They both have a singularity at their center which is the point their force
is directed towards for black holes or emanating from for white holes.
Another feature they share are their event horizons.
Recall that black holes have an event horizon that is the point of no return. Where the gravitational
pull from the black hole is so great that not even light can escape when reaching this point.
On a white hole, the event horizon is the point where the force moving
outwards gains SO much strength that it is IMPOSSIBLE to cross. The acceleration that
would be required to get through the event of a white hole grows to an insurmountable level.
Because we don’t know how white holes are formed, there are various theories that can help give us
some ideas. One of these theories is that a white hole is born after the death of a black hole.
Once dying they begin to spit out everything that they have drawn in over its life.
Remember, for a long time black holes were considered science fiction until
scientists found enough evidence to prove their existence beyond a doubt.
It appears that the same thing might be true for white holes.
There are astronomers and astrophysicists who have dedicated their careers to finding the signature
markings of white holes somewhere in our universe. But until they do, there are many theories as to
what we may learn when we do find them. The other end of a black hole theory
One theory regarding the structure of white holes is that they are the other end of black holes. The
theory continues that these two ends are connected by a wormhole. This means that whatever matter
and information is drawn into the black hole will eventually be SPIT out of the white hole.
This theory includes the possibility that the black and white holes can connect different points
over a VAST distance within our universe. But it also leaves the possibility that the black holes
in our universe are connected through a wormhole to white holes in an entirely DIFFERENT universe.
Theoretically this could both prove the existence of other universes AND white holes all at once. If
we find this to be true then communication and travel to another universe may be
possible if we can find a way to survive the trip into a black hole and out of a white hole.
The big bounce theory
Another theory that has been interesting scientists for some time is a new theory
about the BIRTH of our universe. Some scientists believe that our
universe could have been birthed from the matter expelled from a HUGE white hole.
White holes are believed to eject all the matter stored inside in a single outward pulse which is
consistent with what we know about the big bang.
Scientists have found that the math at points of time just after the big bang
look strikingly similar to the math that general relativity used to describe white holes.
White holes may be the answer we have been searching for as to what preceded the big bang
and why it occurred in the first place. Dark matter theory
But what happened before the big bang is not the only area that theorists are looking for
evidence of white holes in. An interesting theory that has been put forth that seeks to combine
two objects that continue to be unfilled gaps in physics, white holes and dark matter.
Of all the mass in the universe, dark matter makes up six times MORE mass than regular matter.
Even though there is so much more dark matter, we still don’t know what it is,
mostly due to the fact that it is invisible to every form of detection we know. But we know dark
matter IS out there, we can see its gravitational effects on regular matter throughout our universe.
This makes it incredibly difficult to study and produce strong theories about. But
according to one theory, white holes can give us answers as to what dark matter consists of.
A theoretical physicist used what we know about white holes from general relativity
and attempted to calculate how big white holes could be. They found that white holes may be very,
VERY small. So small that a single wavelength of light is larger than the entire white hole. These
would be incredibly small and incredibly dense objects that are spread throughout our universe.
Even microscopic white holes can have ENOUGH mass to cause the gravitational effects that
we attribute to dark matter. And because NOTHING can enter a white hole, any photon that strikes a
white hole would just bounce away from it. This means that there would be no way of detecting a
white hole leaving it invisible to our eyes. Discovering the first white hole
But there may have been a breakthrough in figuring
out what to look for when searching for white holes.
Not too long ago a NASA satellite picked up a strange burt of gamma rays coming
from a distant galaxy. When scientists find a gamma burst of this size the most common
cause of them are giant stars going SUPERNOVA. But this gamma ray burst
lasted much longer than expected and there was NO supernova that came along with it.
So there was NO explanation for what had caused this giant burst.
But a new theory arose, this gamma ray burst COULD have been caused by a white hole.
A white hole releasing all of the matter it has would appear as a giant gamma ray burst roughly
this size. Therefore it IS possible that this is the first time we have been able to observe
a white hole in our universe. And it will not be the last time as long as scientists keep looking.
Once we are able to confirm that white holes do in fact exist there is NO telling what else we
will be able to learn from them. Will we finally find wormholes that lead to another universe?
Will we understand how our universe formed in the beginning? Or are we going to learn
something completely unexpected? Only time and future exploration of our universe will tell.
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