White holes, which are theoretically the exact opposites of black holes, could constitute a major portion of the mysterious dark matter that’s thought to make up most of the matter in the universe, a new study finds. And some of these bizarre white holes may even predate the Big Bang, the researchers said.
By Charles Q. Choi | SPACE.com
Black holes possess gravitational pulls so powerful that not even light, the fastest thing in the universe, can escape them. The invisible spherical boundary surrounding the core of a black hole that marks its point of no return is known as its event horizon. [Images: Black Holes of the Universe]
A black hole is one prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Another is known as a white hole, which is like a black hole in reverse: Whereas nothing can escape from a black hole’s event horizon, nothing can enter a white hole’s event horizon.
Previous research has suggested that black holes and white holes are connected, with matter and energy falling into a black hole potentially emerging from a white hole either somewhere else in the cosmos or in another universe entirely. In 2014, Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at Aix-Marseille University in France, and his colleagues suggested that black holes and white holes might be connected in another way: When black holes die, they could become white holes.
