Black Holes are a very common topic in news, but what about White holes? Long before, the concept of White Holes has just been a figment of the imagination. The idea of general relativity gave birth to the idea of the black hole. However, in more recent studies, scientists are left wondering if these two ideas of spacetime may be representative of the same coin of opposite sides.
To an astronaut watching from afar, a white hole looks exactly like a black hole. It spins and has mass. Its horizon is also surrounded by dust and gas, creating what looks like a protective bubble that separates the object from the rest of the space. But if the crew kept their eye on the black hole, they will notice what will look like something that's impossible to happen to a black hole -- a belch.
"This is the time when the space crew can say that what they are looking at is a white hole," said Carlo Rovelli, a renowned theoretical physicist from the Centre de Physique Theorique in France.
Physicist would describe the white hole as a black home but in reverse time. If they had a video of the blackhole played backwards, that would best describe what would happen to an object if it found itself inside a white hole. It can be said that the sphere of the white hole is a boundary where nothing is to be admitted. No space craft, no matter how much it attempts to will be able to reach the edge of the region.
"Somehow, the idea of this can be quite disturbing. Nothing that happens in the outside will ever affect what happens within the white hole, since nothing from outside can come in," said James Bardeen. He is a professor emeritus in the University of Washington and pioneer in the study of the black hole phenomenon.
The black hole is one of the most famous singularities ever identified in space. The regions of the black hole are so wrapped that no exists are found in it. The outside world can influence what is inside the black hole but those inside could not affect the exterior.
"It took scientists all over the world around 40 years to understand the black hole phenomenon and it is only recently that people are starting to look at what the white hole offers," Rovelli said. While the theory of general relativity describes the concept of the white hole as a theory, no one has actually seen it in space. Even if large holes did form in the space, they wouldn't hang around too long. Some other matter in the orbit might collide with it and cause it to collapse.
"A white hole that is expected to live for too long is just unlikely," said Hal Haggard, a physicist in Bard College in New York. "The idea behind the white hole may not be what is expected, but it is something that is just too hard to ignore."
