What are White Holes?

Audrey McHugh (G9)

Science and Technology

Published Issue 3 2021-2022

Black holes are an amazing phenomenon, known as an unstoppable force sucking everything inside of it where not even light can escape. White holes are created when a star collapses in on itself, causing a massive explosion called a supernova. Though sometimes when a star has enough mass, it is proven that nothing can collapse it under the force of gravity. With it, the star's surface reaches an imaginary force called an “event horizon”* which causes the star to no longer be affected by time, constantly imploding on itself. But what happens when black holes die?

Since black holes constantly consume matter, something would have to happen to all of the mass and energy the black hole has. Physicists say that it is possible for something called a white hole to happen. A white hole is where a massive “belch” happens in space time where a force quite similar to a backwards black hole happens, causing the hole to “throw out” all of the things it has collected. This means anything inside the hole can freely traverse out of the hole, though no outside forces can get inside. It also has the mass of less than a single human hair making it thousands of times smaller than its darker counterpart.

Something to note though, is that white holes don’t really exist. Since black holes emit energy, which Steven Hawkings proved, it is possible for this to happen as the black hole could shrivel up and die, but that is only in theory. White holes have the ability to exist, but there has been no proven evidence that they do, similar to the situation wormholes are in. This is due to it breaking statistical law, which proves that the universe must get messier and messier over time, causing something like a white hole to be nearly impossible due to the fact that it is perfectly reversing the effect of a black hole. It would also be incredibly unstable, since the mass being projected out of it would collide with the matter in its orbit and cause it to collapse back into a black hole.

Though white holes may just be a concept, they have continued to stump many physicists and people alike, making for a phenomenon that could possibly outshine the strength of a black hole.