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White Holes: The Black Hole’s Overshadowed Twin

  • Tristan Senoaji
  • Jan 4
  • 4 min read

When people hear the term ‘white hole,’ they might think it’s some sort of incredibly powerful space phenomenon much like a black hole. Well, they’re not far off. First of all, let’s get something straight: unlike their very real twin, the black hole, white holes are completely a figment of scientists’ imagination. It’s all just a theory and equations.


But since it has never been and has yet to be proven to be real, why are we still talking about this? Well, some scientists still hold true to the belief that white holes are plausible in our universe and may actually be connected to black holes in a completely different way we see it right now. So, what are white holes exactly?


Hold on, let’s talk about their more popular sibling first.


Black holes seem to take in all the spotlight (literally). Based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, we know space-time bends and curves around balls of large mass. By definition, a black hole is an extremely large mass that is squeezed into such a tiny size that the density of this ball (called the singularity) will have an intense gravitational pull that bends and warps space-time (Wald, 1997; Carroll, 2004). It sounds impossible to comprehend.

This is a labelled drawing of how a black hole would look from Northern Arizona University
This is a labelled drawing of how a black hole would look from Northern Arizona University

The singularity has infinite mass, density, and gravity (Temming, 2014). Objects that have this kind of gravitational pull won’t let anything close escape; not even light (Wald, 1984). It’s like the universe’s strongest vacuum cleaner. If one is somehow unfortunate enough to stumble across one, they’d be immediately sucked into the black hole’s event horizon or the point of no return. Here, the laws of physics, logic, or nature do not apply and scientists can only imagine what happens next. Some say spaghettification and there are a range of incredible hypotheses that have been conjured with regards to this, but it’s easy to say it’s a safety hazard (Wheeler, 2007).


Now, the much lesser known twin


The concept of white holes are regions in spacetime that act as the theoretical reverse of black holes, expelling matter rather than absorbing it. These are products of scientists observing a black hole’s environment if it had no mass or even negative mass meaning instead of creating infinite gravity with its mass, it creates a negative gravity that pushes things away. Imagine a black hole’s singularity or the dense core of a black hole if it had no mass (Bardeen, 2018). It doesn’t make sense, exactly why several scholars deny the existence of a white hole. It was rooted in the solutions of Einstein’s equations of general relativity by Karl Schwarzschild, the first man to play around with the ideas of a white hole. Although, if white holes do exist, scientists presume they would work like the opposite of a black hole. A black hole’s reversal or mirror image.


Much like a magnet, where one attracts, the other repels. While a black hole can be seen as an area of no escape, you can describe a white hole as an area of no admission. Instead of infinitely sucking objects into its event horizon, white holes emit a gravitational pull the other way and instead don't let anything from the outside enter. If real, they would be seen ‘spitting’ or ‘burping’ objects out of their singularity (Hamilton, 2001; Chown, 2024).


Are they connected?


The most popular theory of this black and white hole conundrum is that they are all of the same. Though rooted in mostly speculation, many believe the two holes are two sides of a wormhole. If you’ve watched any sci-fi or space fantasy films like Star Wars or Interstellar, you’ll understand that wormholes are basically tunnel shortcuts that cross and bend space-time to get from one point to another (Stojkovic, 2023).


This is a visual example of what a theoretical wormhole would look like
This is a visual example of what a theoretical wormhole would look like

The theory is that the entrance to a wormhole is the black hole and the exit is a white hole. The gravitational pull of a black hole’s singularity will pull objects inside, but instead of destroying it, the theory suggests they get released out by the force of a white hole (Chown, 2024). While many can create theories, these are one of the infinite things that may be left unknown in our infinite universe.


References:


Bardeen, J.M. (2018). Models for the nonsingular transition of an evaporating black hole into

a white hole. arXiv arXiv:1811.06683v2


Carroll, S. M. (2004). Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108770385


Chown, M. (2024) A white hole is a time-reversed black hole, but could one really exist out


Hamilton, A. (2001) White Holes and Wormholes. jila.colorado.edu.


Stojkovic, D. (2023) What are wormholes? An astrophysicist explains these shortcuts


Temming, M. (2014) Sizes of Black Holes? How Big is a Black Hole? Sky & Telescope


Wald, R.M. (1984). General Relativity. University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 0-226-87033-2


Wheeler, J.C. (2007). Cosmic Catastrophes: Exploding Stars, Black Holes, and Mapping the

Universe (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511536625


Wald, R. M. (1997). Gravitational Collapse and Cosmic Censorship. arXiv

arXiv:gr-qc/9710068. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-0934-7. ISBN 978-9401709347.

 
 
 

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