Can Wormholes Fix A Major Problem With Black Holes?

 

Scientists from the University of Valencia and the University of Lisbon have looked past general relativity in an attempt to answer the main question with black holes: the infinite singularity at their center.

 

The black hole they looked at is a special case that doesn’t exist in reality, as it’s electrically charged and doesn’t rotate on itself. In their solution, the singularity is not a point of infinite density but a wormhole, a bridge towards a different position in time and space.

 

To reach this solution, published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, the researchers liken the black hole to a graphene layer or a crystal. Their geometry can be used to repeat the geometry of space-time within black holes all the way to the singularity.

 

“Just as crystals have limitations in their microscopic structure, the central region of a black hole can be inferred as an anomaly in space-time, which requires new geometric elements in order to be able to define them more precisely,"  said lead author Gonzalo Olmo, from the University of Valencia, in a report. "We explored all potential options, taking inspiration from facts observed in nature."

 

Defining the singularity of a black hole has so far proven extremely complex, and to provide a full description of it, it’s essential to combine relativity and quantum mechanics – but they don’t play well together.

 

“Our theory naturally solves several problems in the interpretation of electrically-charged black holes," Olmo clarified. “In the first case, we resolve the problem of the singularity since there is a door at the center of the black hole, the wormhole, through which space and time can continue.”

 

In their explanation, the singularity is interchanged by a wormhole whose size is directly proportional to the electrical charge of the black hole. The bigger the charge, the bigger the wormhole. Ideally, a brave explorer could jump into this black hole, where he or she would then be stretched by the powerful tidal forces (in a process known as spaghettification), through the wormhole, and return back into the universe in a single piece.

 

This discovery is interested because although wormholes are expected in general relativity, they generally require some exotic matter to be stable. These wormholes instead appear simply from ordinary matter and energy.

 

 References:

cqgplus, Classical and Quantum Gravity