What if Black Holes are Wormholes?
Is anything as simultaneously terrifying and exciting as a black hole?
Probably not.
These enormous celestial structures devour anything unlucky enough to cross their path.
But what if there was even more to their mystique?
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if black
holes are wormholes?
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Black holes form when exceptionally massive stars die.
When such a star collapses, it condenses into a point of infinite density and mass – a
singularity – capable of bending spacetime around it, according to the theory of general
relativity.
The mass now inside the black hole is so strong that its escape velocity equals or exceeds
the speed of light, meaning that nothing - not even light - can escape it.
For many years, we believed that black holes existed, but they weren’t conclusively proven
until the 1960s, and it wasn’t until 2019 that we were first able to photograph one.
Despite that significant step, they remain incredibly mysterious and almost impossible
to study.
We’re especially unsure on what ultimately happens to any mass they absorb.
If a human were to fall into a black hole, most physicists agree that they’d die; “spaghettified”
as gravity stretches their mass out into one long string of atoms.
But what happens to those atoms that once made up your body?
Or to any other piece of intergalactic debris that black holes consume?
This is called the Black Hole Information Paradox: If information can’t be created
or destroyed, then what happens to matter inside a black hole is one of science’s
greatest mysteries.
If black holes were wormholes, though, it’d instantly solve this problem - because that
matter would have somewhere to go.
Crucially, wormholes aren’t proven to exist.
But they have been mathematically predicted by the theory of relativity, and they are
seen as being scientifically possible.
A wormhole is a hypothetical structure that bends spacetime so much that travelling through
it allows you to go from one point in spacetime to another - much faster than you ever could
by travelling between the two spots directly.
Also called Einstein-Rosen Bridges, they’re usually characterised as intergalactic shortcuts
to zap you from A to B - and are capable of disrupting time as well.
It surprisingly isn’t an impossible leap to say that black holes and wormholes could
be one and the same thing - given how little we know about black holes.
Failing that, though, wormholes could also be half black hole and half white hole.
A white hole is the hypothetical opposite of a black hole; a portal in spacetime where
matter is ejected but nothing can enter.
If a bridge between a black and white hole could exist, so that matter at the singularity
is spat back out again via the white hole, then this bridge could be reasonably described
as “a wormhole”.
So, while on one hand wormholes might not even exist, on the other it’s arguably possible
that black holes - or some black holes - actually could be wormholes, and such a discovery will
be made at some point in the future.
It actually wouldn’t disagree all that much with the laws of physics…
Although it’s still very much a theory only, at this point.
But, let’s imagine that there’s no question about it….
Black holes are wormholes.
And it’s theoretically possible to both travel to them and through them (and live
to tell the tale).
What would the immediate problems be?
Would they really be a viable means of transport?
And how would they change our world?
Using wormholes to jump across space definitely sounds cool, but we’d quickly discover some
sizeable issues.
First, we’d need a way to find out where any confirmed wormhole exits before stepping
into it…
Otherwise we’d be sending a probe or even a crew of astronauts into the greatest unknown
imaginable, without any indication of where they could end up.
No doubt some would be willing to take the chance for the sake of science and discovery…
but being stranded in deep space, potentially millions of lightyears away from anything
recognisable, with no chance of return is the ultimate in nightmare scenarios.
It’s also possible that wormholes aren’t even shortcuts at all.
Some speculate that the route through a wormhole could in fact twist and turn so much that
it’d be better to avoid it completely.
Despite what sci-fi suggests, even the unlikeliest of hypothetical wormholes aren’t instantaneous
leaps through spacetime, as anything entering into them still has a certain distance to
navigate.
By all accounts, sending people through black hole wormholes - even if we somehow knew that
they’d be able to physically survive the journey itself - would amount to a reckless
and blatant disregard for human life.
But still, the biggest issue with traversable wormholes would be their instability.
Even were it theoretically possible to travel through one and survive, it’s thought that
the structure itself would most likely collapse around you before you could complete the trip.
There are theories on how to prevent this, most of which require the use of “exotic”
- or non-baryonic - matter, to in some way line the outside of the wormhole and stop
it from breaking apart.
Currently, we can’t actually produce such matter, but in a world where black holes really
are wormholes it’d be a vital resource - with whole industries set up to create enough to
ensure that wormhole travel was as safe as possible.
And that’s without the added, almost incalculable threat of radiation exposure that wormhole
travel would bring, meaning we’d have to see major advances in that field, too.
Once we find a way to work out the length of a journey, its destination, and to avoid
wormholes simply disintegrating as soon as we enter them, though… the applications
would clearly be incredible.
Whole galaxies could now be reachable.
Earth-like planets would be relatively simple to visit, and ferrying people to and from
various points in the universe would suddenly be achievable.
Should we discover multiple black hole wormholes, then we’d soon be even more connected via
a vast, intergalactic web of trade routes and outer space highways.
But of course, if black holes were wormholes, and we could move between them, we could also
finally have found a feasible means of time travel.
Science says that we can’t travel in time because it’s impossible to exceed the speed
of light, but by travelling through a wormhole we could potentially get from one point to
another faster than light without locally exceeding it.
Voila, humanity could become a genuine race of time travellers.
At this point, black hole wormhole travel would surely need all manner of regulations
placed onto it.
The entry points and exit points of these magnificent, mind-bending tunnels would become
busy, thriving space-ports, with sprawling space cities popping up on nearby, alien planets,
as humanity stretches itself all across time, the galaxy and the universe.
And, in doing so, we’d dramatically increase our chances of solving the Fermi Paradox once
and for all, by actually encountering another extra-terrestrial species - perhaps one that
has long known that black holes were wormholes, and has been patiently waiting for us to cotton
on.
It’d change even the most fundamental aspects of our lives, and of our concept of space
- turning the great unknown into the great unexplored.
And that’s what would happen if black holes are wormholes.
What do you think?
Is there anything we missed?
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