# Is There Such A Thing As A White Hole? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 14, 2001, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-white-hole/58020 "2001-03-14T23:08:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Xploder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/a183cd/32.png) [@Xploder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xploder)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2001, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-white-hole/58020/1 "2001-03-14T23:08:12Z")
As in, the opposite of a Black Hole? I seem to recall reading about them a few years back but, of course, can’t recall where and perusing my many books can’t find anything about it. IIRC, it was said that a White Hole was where the energy from a Black Hole went… I know this sounds rather nutty, but is there a study somewhere on this? ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2001, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-white-hole/58020/2 "2001-03-14T23:22:09Z")
Well, there’s this explanation: > [@](#): > > ## What is a white hole? > > The equations of general relativity have an interesting mathematical property: they are symmetric in time. That means that you can take any solution to the equations and imagine that time flows backwards rather than forwards, and you’ll get another valid solution to the equations. If you apply this rule to the solution that describes black holes, you get an object known as a white hole. Since a black hole is a region of space from which nothing can escape, the time-reversed version of a black hole is a region of space into which nothing can fall. In fact, just as a black hole can only suck things in, a white hole can only spit things out. > > White holes are a perfectly valid mathematical solution to the equations of general relativity, but that doesn’t mean that they actually exist in nature. In fact, they almost certainly do not exist, since there’s no way to produce one. (Producing a white hole is just as impossible as destroying a black hole, since the two processes are time-reversals of each other.) from a [black hole FAQ](http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html#q10) I found. In essence, white holes are regarded as a mathematical quirk with no corresponding physical reality. There doesn’t seem to be any mechanism through which they could form. (Although the destruction of a black hole [isn’t necessarily impossible](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=63496)–at least for quantum/low-mass black holes.) ---
**Author:** ![Seraphim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ad7895/32.png) [@Seraphim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seraphim)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2001, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-white-hole/58020/3 "2001-03-14T23:49:46Z")
Short answer: No. “White” holes, as conceptualized in 1965 by the Soviet scientist Igor Novikov and the Israeli physicist Yuval Ne’eman, would be time-reversed version of a black hole. As you recall, a black hole tends to suck up all the matter and energy around it, forever trapping it behind its event horizon, of which nothing can escape. A white hole, on the other hand, would continuously pour out energy and matter from its “antihorizon”, of which nothing can _enter_. The prevailing theory for the time was black holes and white holes were linked by what are called Kerr tunnels. If, say, you were to enter a black hole in one quadrant of the universe, and managed to survive the trip through the Kerr tunnel, you would exit via the white hole in some other part of the universe. Just imagine the travel opportunities! Unfotunately, it was too good to last. A physicist named Douglas Eardley analyzed Novikov and Ne’eman’s models, and published his “White Holes Are Shy” Theorem in 1974. Eardley proved that white holes are inherently unstable. The matter and energy a white hole ejects would build up outside its antihorizon, unable to enter. After a short time, the white hole would be surrounded by a dense shield of energy, which Eardley called a “blue sheet”. This sheet causes the space-time region around the antihorizon to become sharply distorted. Eventually, the space becomes so warped that the former antihorizon becomes a true horizon, and from that point on prevents any more material from leaving the hole. Hence, the former white hole is now a black hole. This conversion process happens fairly rapidly: A white hole of ten solar masses turns into a black hole in less than a thousandth of a second. A white hole of a million masses would take under two minutes. Conclusion: If there ever was a white hole, it would have turned into a black hole long ago. Hmmm…this was my hundredth post too. Did I forfeit my right to a post party? ---
**Author:** ![Xploder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/a183cd/32.png) [@Xploder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xploder)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2001, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-white-hole/58020/4 "2001-03-15T00:33:46Z")
Thanks VERY much for the responses. After tearing my hair out trying to remember where I had read this, I finally found it in one of Jack L. Chalker’s Well World novels. He postulated that the known universe was maintained in a steady state by a master computer that monitored the state of everything. If anything were to happen to make the universe “collapse”, the master program would then punch a hole through the multiverse into the center of the largest black hole it could fin and thus cause a new Big Bang which could then have the computer’s master program written to. Or something like that…