BLACK HOLE B lack holes are some of the most interesting pathologies in space and time delivered by Einstein's general theory of relativity. They form when matter collapses gravitationally onto itself, such as when massive stars burn out. They are a region of space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing--not even light--can escape. Hence John Wheeler called them "black holes." There is more. They incorporate singularities in spacetime structure: points where Einstein's theory breaks down, since the curvature of spacetime becomes infinite. And they can supply bridges to new universes. S uch a star may become a white dwarf or a neutron star, but if the star is sufficiently massive then it may continue shrinking eventually to the size of a tiny atom, known as a gravitational singularity. A black hole refers to the region in space in which the singularity’s gravitational force is so strong that not even light can escape its pull. ...
facts . .. WHITE HOLES AND WORMHOLES When Stephen Hawking proposed the idea that a black hole will eventually evaporate by leaking radiation from its event horizon, there was a problem. If it evaporates, what happens to all of the information it sucked in? If quantum theory is correct, this would defy a fundamental law that information cannot be lost – it’s called the no-hiding theorem. With the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system, then it must simply be residing somewhere else in the universe – a cosmic game of hide-and-seek. So theoretically, if information is getting sucked in, it must be getting spat back out somewhere, and likely that’s through a white hole. But is it really possible that white holes exist? One way to conceptualize this in a very basic mathematical sense is to think about the square root of 9. The answer is both 3 and -3. This is fundamentally part of what’s known as Schwarzchild geometry...