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Could Black Holes Be Portals to Other Universes?
David Shiga writes "Astronomers have identified many objects out there that they think are black holes. But could they be portals to other universes called wormholes, instead? According to a new study by a pair of physicists, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They have discovered that wormholes with the right shape would look identical to black holes from the outside. But while a trip into a black hole would mean certain death, a wormhole might spit you out into a parallel universe with its own stars and planets. Exotic effects from quantum physics might produce wormholes naturally from collapsing stars, one of the physicist says, and they might even be produced in future particle accelerator experiments."
Wasn't this an episode of the original The Tomorrow People, except that transit time felt like it took much longer than it really did, whereas the reality of time dilation would likely be the reverse?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
A question that was never asked before today!
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
"Err... Captain, are you *sure* that's a wormhole and not just a blackhole?" "Shush! If there's one thing I learned at Starfleet Academy it's the difference between a wormhole and a
What would a blackhole going through a wormhole look like?
(Or is that when the 503 error happens?)
I always knew that black holes were portals.
I mean, isn't this basic science? You go in one side and you come out the other.
It's kinda like Pac-Man, right?
I simply never thought of black holes and wormholes that way. Going to another universe/dimension/time/etc - gosh that's something that I don't think even science fiction has considered. I always thought they were just kind of, um, holes or something.
Oh, wait, there's another small problem to address first -- all the known black holes are a bajillion miles away. Maybe we should work on answering the question of how to get there before we start to obsess about what's on the other side. Or perhaps the multiverse is just teasing us, saying "Hey, there's a portal here to another universe -- want to see what's on the other side? Too bad you won't know for a few thousand years! Psych!"
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
A chemistry teacher of mine in high school (early 90's) of mine had a big, long lecture about the universe and built it all up from subatomic particles and ended with the vastness of space. It was his Xmas gift for his classes every year, and we loved it. Well at least those with half a brain did.
Anyway, his twist at the end resembled this article. He said that everything in the universe has gravity. Well, if everything has gravity, then the universe itself has a gravitational pull. Eventually the mass of the universe would be such that any light trying to escape it would be pulled back inside, which would make the universe appear to be black hole from anyone on the outside looking in...
a portable hole into a bag of holding!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, I'm no physicist, but it seems reasonable to me to assume that if the formation of black holes can rip through to another universe, or perhaps another part of a curved universe, then an event would take place on the other side: the formation of a matching wormhole mouth.
We have to assume that if blackholes can form in our universe, then they can form in the "other" universe. So we would be seeing the spontaneous formation of black holes occurring here that are the result of collapsing stars on the other side.
So my question is, what does this event look like from the perspective of the other side, and have we observed it happening here?
You know, the really really bad guys. Give them a ship with food, guns and other building blocks for "civilization". If they make it, well we win. If they don't, well too bad but that relieves the load on prisons. What? It worked for Australia didn't it? Ok laugh now - that was supposed to be funny.
Hmmm, come to think about it; not a bad idea at all.
If this were true... Shouldn't we see some black holes spitting out extradimensional spaghetti noodles?
rj
New Scientist has a link to the paper, which is small and off to the side and easily overlooked (and does not make clear that the whole paper can be accessed, not just the abstract). The paper is here for anyone who may have missed it.
Who needs a multi-verse explaination when it suffices to explain a blackhole as vast swaths of time/space condensed to an ultra-hyperfine, darn-near-singular point? That's what I had always thought they were, anyways.
Who knows, maybe a black hole is just an area approaching infinity, shrinking all that comes to the area with it. Why not? And Hawking's Radiation naturally permeates all of the universe but remains unobservable as it's particles are so large that it would fit many solar systems in it's space, but shrinks down at a black hole to a (weakly) observable radiation. It's not as if something that large would be identifiable; it would be discounted to an observation of the basic state of the universe. Our universe is only our observable universe; all this multi-verse and worm-hole stuff isn't any more real science than my silly-sized particle, just imaginative speculation.
Demented But Determined.
toilets are in fact, gateways to other people's homes? perhaps someone could make a pretty picture to make this argument more plausible.
Sorry to split semantic hairs here...but we are geeks after all...
The word "universe" logically means "everything." From Dictionary.reference.com:
1. the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm.
An etymological analysis reveals the word to be of Latin origin, the prefix "uni" meaning "one" and "verse" derived from the word for "to turn," implying something to the effect of "all things turned to one." (I also have a beef with the misuse of "uni" in such words as "unisex," but I won't get into that here).
Anyway, if it is possible to get to a "parallel universe" then that means that it exists. If it exists, then that means that it is already part of the universe. Therefore saying that there are many universes is a simple logical contradiction.
So, perhaps these other places exist, and are parallel to the place in which we exist. I am envisioning something like a stack of 4 dimensional space-time continuums all lined up along a fifth dimension, with worm holes propelling objects along the 5d axis between these continuums. That may be possible for all I know, but they aren't parallel universes; they are all part of the universe.
The article claims, that unlike a black hole, a "wormhole" (in the sense they explain it) has no event horizon. If it has no event horizon, it means light can escape it.
So it wouldn't look like a black hole AT ALL. I call bullshit on the whole article.
Basically he is saying send all the religeos nuts into a ship and blast them to the nearest workhole. That. Plan. Is . BRILLIANT!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This sounds like it's based on string theory. String theory has absolutely no evidence that it is correct--it just sometimes appears to describe some phenomena better than quantum mechanics or general relativity. I think of it more as a interesting mathematical construct rather than anything like a physical theory.
For those of you at work, beware the obligatory goatse reference the parent decided to post
It depends on the size of the black hole. Small ones will have sharper gravitational gradients that will result in tidal forces that could inflict serious entropy on you, but a large enough black hole could have a surface gravity less than earth and much less significant tidal forces.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The black hole is either two things to me. One it is a giant particle unknown to physics. Maybe something equivalent to the early universe particles. I heard there were alot microblackholes then. Not sure on that. The other alternative to me is a microgalaxy where space is actually condensed but still exist. Yeah,strange. Definitely good for science fiction and better than the dead nothing superparticle.
Bad idea. I fear the consequences of allowing the two most dense entities in the universe to cross paths:
Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Demented But Determined.
Christ, how is THIS news? People have been speculating about this kind of thing since the theorization of Black Holes. Carl Sagan talks about in one of the more trippy, pot induced segments of 1980's Cosmos!
I think I'm getting too damn old. The entire internet is looking like a dupe to me.
Black -> White holes was an older theory. That's NOT the theory of wormholes. A Black/White hole system is one way. Matter enters a Black Hole and exits a White Hole. Both are continually connected to one another. Additionally, your history is off, because it wasn't just a thought experiment questioning an opposite. It was an attempt to answer the question "Where does the matter entering a black hole go?" The logical answer (physics aside) would have been a white hole.
:P
Wormhole theory is different. The theory of a wormhole is that under certain conditions, the warping of space-time can be so extreme that two massive distortions can connect to one another. Essentially, that the singularities of 2 black holes touch, and open up a tunnel through space-time, which is shorter than the trip through normal space-time. These connections can last for a single instant or longer, but they are not considered to be permanent, and are, hypothetically, rarely stable last I read.
Whether they connect to other points (black holes) within our own Universe, or within other Universes depends largely on the shape of the Universe and if multi-verse theory is even real. The shape being the major determining factor in a great deal of such very theoretical physics.
Finally, a wormhole looping back on itself would not longer join spans of space, but instead, spans of time. It would connect to it's past or future self, because doing so would involve looping, and a common theory is that the more a wormhole loops, the more it displaces itself within time.
Who knew reading a Brief History of Time so many years ago would eventually pay off?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ask and ye shall receive...
Merchant-Ivory fans will need no explaination, but in case the relevance isn't obvious, the scene is an open carriage ride through the country with Mr. Emerson showing the sights to Miss Honeychurch, "...and on your left..."It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If a black hole could port stuff from our Universe elsewhere there's really no argument to stop the reverse being true either.
:-/
This would, however, mean that the laws about preserving mass, energy etc. must have a bigger scope, or those holes could cause quite a bit of an imbalance. Or maybe there's always an opposite flow somewhere else, a bit like communicating vessels but in multiple dimensions..
Meanwhile, back in the real world, I got a parking ticket
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