Black Holes Cannot Lead To Other Places In The Universe, Claims New Study

Could black holes be channels to other locations in space-time? Could they be wormholes linking different regions of the universe? A new research gives a resounding no to these questions.

 

Black holes are complicated creatures. They have constantly broken our physics and studying them has opened our eyes to the boundaries of our knowledge. One critical problem is the Information Paradox. Matter can’t escape black holes so, simplistically, once something gets in, its evidence is lost forever.

 

That’s a huge no-no in physics. The Information Paradox was one of the spaces that the late Stephen Hawking focused on. His, and others', work led to the understanding that black holes evaporate and that information is one way or another preserved. Understanding precisely how that takes place could offer crucial insight in the journey for unifying quantum mechanics with a theory of gravity.

 

One of the methods that herculean task is being attempted is with string theory. String theory suggests that the fundamental components of the universe are vibrating strings. So far there’s no proof that this is the ultimate theory of nature but its ability to find answers to key open questions in physics has been appealing to many.

 

When it comes to the Information Paradox, there have been many suggestions on how to solve that in string theory, counting the idea that black holes are wormholes, a theoretical construct very popular in sci-fi. Wormholes are an anticipated connection to two different points in space-time but there’s no proof that they exist.

 

A different theory instead realizes black holes in string theory as "fuzzballs", chaotic constructions that radiate energy (and thus information). Black holes, in this view, are not generally empty with their whole mass contained in a singularity at its middle. They are complex stringy structures.

 

“What we found from string theory is that all the mass of a black hole is not getting drawn into the center,” Professor Samir Mathur from Ohio State University described in a statement. “The black hole tries to squeeze things to a point, but then the particles get pushed into these strings, and the strings start to stretch and expand and it develops this fuzzball that expands to fill up the totality of the black hole.”

 

Professor Mathur, who amongst others, put forward the idea of black holes as fuzzballs nearly 20 years ago, put both the fuzzball theory and the wormhole model to the test. Publishing their paper in the Turkish Journal of Physics, Mathur and colleagues pretty much resulted in the wormhole approach doesn’t work.

 

"In each of the versions that have been recommended for the wormhole approach, we found that the physics was not constant," Mathur said. "The wormhole paradigm attempts to argue that, in some way, you could still ponder of the black hole as being effectively blank with all the mass in the center. And the theorems we verify show that such a picture of the hole is not a probability."

 

References:

 https://www.space.com/where-do-black-holes-lead.html

https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/black-holes