What Makes Black Holes Black and White Holes White?

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SUMMARY

Black holes are defined as regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from them, making them appear "black." In contrast, white holes are theoretical entities that emit matter and radiation, making them "white," but they require negative energy density to exist, which is considered physically impossible. Current scientific evidence strongly supports the existence of black holes, while white holes remain speculative with virtually no observational support. The discussion emphasizes that black holes and white holes are not directly related and that the physics surrounding black holes is still not fully understood.

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  • General Relativity (GR) principles
  • Understanding of event horizons
  • Knowledge of Hawking radiation
  • Familiarity with the concept of singularities
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  • Research the implications of General Relativity on black hole physics
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Astronomers, physicists, and anyone interested in astrophysics, particularly those studying black hole phenomena and theoretical physics related to black and white holes.

  • #31
Technically Cygnus X-1, one of the strongest black hole candidates, is a mere 6000 light years distant - re: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/cygnusx1.html. It would still be a protracted journey with current technology - about 130 million years. Talk about those annoying 'are we there yet's.
 
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  • #32
Chronos said:
Yet we observe phenomena in various parts of the universe that cannot be accounted for by any known physics aside from black holes. The same cannot be said for white holes.

I was reading this https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/new-einstein-equation-wormholes-quantum-gravity and was wondering what the difference between white holes and worm holes would be? Maybe we do see evidence for white holes, but don't realize it- of course, I am most likely wrong.
 
  • #33
The short answer is nothing exits a black hole and nothing enters a white hole.
 
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  • #34
Chronos said:
You can't enclose anything infinite inside a finite volume.

Well, the 'depth' of a point is infinite.

Fervent Freyja said:
The nearest black holes are thousands of light years away...

phinds said:
What good would sending a camera in do? It can't come out again, nor can any information from it so what would be the point?

Also, the nearest known BH is tens of thousands of light years away so would take us hundreds thousands of thousands of years to get there.

There are other problems.

I don't think your camera idea works out too well.

Party poopers with no sense of humor.

Chronos said:
The short answer is nothing exits a black hole and nothing enters a white hole.

That depends. Are we talking about spacetime holes or humanoid holes?

I never heard of a 'white hole' beyond the biological realm before.
 
  • #35
rollete said:
Party poopers with no sense of humor.
No, party poopers who poop on crackpot science
I never heard of a 'white hole' beyond the biological realm before.
I take it you know little about cosmology. It's an extraordinarily common term (in cosmology). Just for grins, I just Googled it. ALL of the two pages were referring to cosmological white holes and I'd be surprised if the next 10 were not as well. I think your sense that it is a biological term is a significantly minority view.
 
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  • #36
rollete said:
Well, the 'depth' of a point is infinite.
No, the depth of a point is zero.
 
  • #37
The spatial precision of a point can be infinitely augmented (Planck length be damned). In other words, no limits to how small space can be parsed. That's 'depth' in a way, but one need not restrict the understanding of 'depth' to conventional tridimensional space.

Never argue with a layman!
 
  • #38
rollete said:
The spatial precision of a point can be infinitely augmented (Planck length be damned). In other words, no limits to how small space can be parsed. That's 'depth' in a way, but one need not restrict the understanding of 'depth' to conventional tridimensional space.

Never argue with a layman!
One needs to restrict the usage of terms here at PF to the standard convention used in science and engineering, otherwise you cannot have a meaningful discussion without pages and pages of back and forth arguing over what some term means. That's not helpful when people are trying to learn mainstream science.

In standard science and math a single point has no dimension and cannot have 'depth'. Furthermore, the division of space into smaller and smaller sections has absolutely nothing to do with depth unless you shoehorn some abstract meaning into it. Please don't do that.
 
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  • #39
There are good reasons to believe there is a limit to how small something can be and stiill be something - e.g., HUP.
 
  • #40
rollete said:
Party poopers with no sense of humor.

Get to it, then! Send a camera into a black hole for me. I will throw a party in your honor and gift you with whatever you wish.
 
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  • #41
A white hole is a time-reversed black hole. In classical kinematics and relativity, you can take any solution and time-reverse it and get another solution. But once you include thermodynamics, you see that most time-reversed solutions are not allowed. So, there's no reason to believe white holes exist.
 
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  • #42
ok that makes a lot more sense to me once you explain how the math and the numbers for it worked I didn't start the thread but thank you :bugeye:
 

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