While physicists have been trying to unravel the mysteries of black holes for decades, a new study suggests that they may actually be ‘back doors’ to other parts of the universe.
By this theory, anything travelling through a black hole would be ‘spaghettified’ (the process by which an object would be stretched out, just like spaghetti, due to gravitational forces on falling into a black hole), but returned back to its normal size when it emerges in a different region of the universe.
The study conducted by a group of physicists from the Institute of Corpuscular Physics in Valencia used geometric structures similar to those of a crystal of grapheme layer, which better match the activity inside of a black hole.
The study, published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, rejects the traditional theory that at the centre of a black hole, spacetime curves to an infinite point known as a ‘singularity’ and all matter is destroyed.
Instead, it proposed that the centre of an electrically charged, non-rotating black hole acts as a ‘wormhole’ through which space and time can continue.
“In the first instance, we resolve the problem of the singularity, since there is a door at the centre of the black hole, the wormhole, through which space and time can continue,” Gonzalo Olmo, a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the University of Valencia, was quoted by Daily Mail as saying.
The equations revealed that a wormhole at the centre would be smaller than an atomic nucleus, but increases in size relative to the charge stored within the black hole.
The study further stated that any matter passing through a black hole would be stretched to extreme measures, allowing it to enter the wormhole and would return to its normal size as it comes out on the other side.
While it’s unlikely that a human would survive this process, the study challenges the traditional theory claiming that matter inside the black hole would not be lost forever and would be expelled into another area of the universe.
