Just like the elusive loch ness monster, a white hole is an interesting idea that has
not yet been proved to be real, but there's no good reason why it couldn't be real.
You see, white holes are highly speculative tales, told by astronomers to potentially
explain what's on the other side of a black hole.
So what exactly is a white hole, and do they really exist?
Let's find out...
A white hole is the exact opposite of a black hole.
A black hole sucks in matter and no matter can escape it.
Whereas a white hole spews out matter but matter cannot enter it, kind of like a teenager’s
bedroom.
Most physicists say that white holes are extremely unlikely to be real and their existence is,
in fact, impossible.
But new evidence suggests otherwise.
Since the two are so intrinsically linked, to fully understand what a white hole is,
we first need to have a little chat about black holes.
A black hole is formed when a massive star runs out of fuel to carry on the process of
nuclear fusion and so it collapses in on itself.
This is known as a supernova.
Then, its gravitational pull gets stronger and stronger, causing the collapsed star to
collapse further and further in on itself into a single point.
Eventually it reaches a point of infinite density known as a gravitational singularity.
The gravitational pull of a singularity is so powerful that nothing can escape it, not
even light.
And so we have a black hole.
A black hole is completely non-visible, because once light enters the singularity's event
horizon it can't escape it's gravitational pull, so the light never returns to our eyeballs.
But that's about all scientists truly know about black holes.
Okay they do know a little bit more than that, I am generalising.
Sorry Steve!
But my point is that we have only scratched the surface of what a black hole really is
and how it behaves.
And don't even get me started on what happens when you enter a black hole, and more importantly
what's on the other side of it, literally no one knows that, seriously.
There are countless theories out there of course.
Some theorise that black holes are portals to a parallel universe.
Others say they lead to wormholes that would theoretically allow us to traverse massive
distances in space, faster than the speed of light.
But for a long time the most universally accepted theory has been that whatever enters a black
hole is trapped there for eternity, like placing something inside a locked room, then destroying
the key.
Scientists have a special name for anything and everything that is sucked up by a black
hole, from stars to radio waves, photons of light and even entire solar systems.
Scientists simply call it "information".
For decades many scientists believed that when information is claimed by a black hole
it is lost forever.
But there's an alternative theory, which is backed up by brand new evidence that suggests
this information could possibly be recovered.
This is where white holes come in.
You see there's a fundamental problem with suggesting that all information that enters
a black hole is lost forever.
Both Albert Einstein and Issac Newton said "matter cannot be created or destroyed" it
can only change into other forms.
That's fine if the black hole functions as a locked room, trapping the information for
eternity.
Because nothing has been destroyed.
However in 1975 Stephen Hawking came up with the widely accepted idea of Hawking Radiation.
Which states that black holes actually radiate energy and even more incredibly he demonstrated
how black holes actually evaporate over time.
They're not permanent residents of space like we previously thought.
So when a black hole evaporates, what happens to all the matter that it has sucked up?
Hawking Radiation appears to contradict the idea that matter can't be destroyed.
There has been a ravenous debate raging on in the physics community about this, ever
since Stephen Hawking's revelation.
You know how feisty those physicists can get.
A possible answer to this dilemma is that black holes can actually turn into so-called
white holes.
When this happens the newly born white hole spews out all the information it sucked up
during its previous life as a black hole.
Like opening a can of miscellaneous space crap and shaking it all over the damn place.
If this theory is true then it once and for all settles the debate over hawking radiation
and the loss of matter inside black holes.
Because it means the matter isn't actually lost when the black hole evaporates, it is
instead recovered, albeit in considerably worse shape than when it entered.
Some people have even taken the idea of white holes one step further by theorising that
black holes are actually joined to white holes via a wormhole.
Which is a shortcut through space and if we were to enter a black hole, we could travel
huge distances through space at a rate considerably faster than the speed of light.
Not by actually traveling faster than the speed of light, according to Einstein's Theory
of Special Relativity, that's impossible.
But by simply taking a shortcut through the universe, by modifying the shape of the spacetime
continuum.
There's all kinds of extreme theories out there; often borrowed from science fiction.
Which state that these passages through spacetime would allow us to travel through time.
But that's mostly just speculation.
The general idea of the white hole/wormhole theory is that anything which enters a black
holes takes a quick stroll through the back alleys of the universe before being ejected
violently out of a white hole somewhere else in space, or possibly in another universe
altogether.
Some people even say that the big bang itself was a white hole.
Which came into existence as a result of a black hole forming in another universe and
expanding outwards into a brand new universe.
There's been a lot of research into this theory and it's not totally implausible.
If it were to prove true it would mean that our entire universe and everything we know,
is inside a black hole, which is part of a much, much larger, parent universe.
That's right, you could be living inside a black hole.
Whatever you may have heard or believe about white holes, there's no doubt that if they
do exist, they offer some incredibly exciting possibilities.
Which leaves the obvious question do they exist?
For a long time the existence of white holes has been vehemently opposed by many figures
within the scientific community.
Recently however, that all changed.
Observatories both here on Earth and in space are constantly monitoring for strange things
hitting us from far away in space, such as radio waves or gamma rays.
In 2006 a gamma ray burst was observed that didn't fit with the traditional parameters
under which gamma rays behave.
It had an extraordinarily long duration of 102 seconds, which means it had to have come
form a supernova explosion.
But there are no known supernovae that it could have come from.
The scientists who discovered the gamma ray burst actually said "this is brand new territory;
we have no theories to guide us."
So they basically said we have no idea what the hell that was, let's put it in a box somewhere
and forget about it.
Which they pretty much did.
But, five years later it has been suggested that the gamma ray burst in 2006 of unknown
origin could have actually come from a white hole popping into existence for 102 seconds,
spewing out a whole load of matter, then disappearing.
The features of the gamma ray burst perfectly align with what we know about white holes
and how they behave.
This explanation to this unusual gamma ray event has not been accepted by everyone but
it's the strongest evidence we have ever found that supports the existence of the mysterious,
interstellar, loch ness monsters that are white holes.