Don’t let the name fool you – a black hole is anything but empty space. According to a study, they really could be the doors to other dimensions, but you may have a little trouble getting back.
Contrary to what countless sci-fi movies show, anyone who managed to get through would end up ‘spaghettified’ and stretched out like pasta, according to new research published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.
The traveler would get squished back down to size once they reached the other side, but it’s unlikely they’d be alive to see it.
A place where matter has been squashed to such a density by gravity that the normal laws of physics break down, scientists have previously held the theory that all matter inside of a black hole is destroyed, so there would be no way of actually making it through.
But this new research suggests that – just like in films – it could act as a doorway.
The new theory rejects the view 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 proposes that at the heart of the simplest type of electrically charged, non-rotating black hole, is a small spherical surface which acts like a ‘wormhole’ – a doorway or tunnel through the fabric of spacetime, the Independent reports.
Dr Gonzalo Olmo, from the University of Valencia in Spain, said:
Our theory naturally resolves several problems in the interpretation of electrically-charged black holes.
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.
Now we just need to figure out how to get through without dying…
