Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What are white holes?

Transcript

What are white holes? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, or I have a question for you about science
0:12
Speaker 1: and naming things. You know, that's that's an issue with me, right, Daniel,
0:16
Speaker 1: I've heard that before. Yes, what happened? Did they give
0:19
Speaker 1: something a totally absurd name? Again? In physics? Well, I'm
0:23
Speaker 1: sort of wondering about like the process, you know, like,
0:25
Speaker 1: how do you feel about pre naming given a name
0:29
Speaker 1: before it's born? Yeah, exactly, like what happens? Is it okay?
0:33
Speaker 1: Or how do you feel about if we give something
0:35
Speaker 1: a name before we discover it, like before we even
0:40
Speaker 1: know if it exists. That way, you know, we don't
0:42
Speaker 1: have to argue about it afterwards. Is it like reserving
0:46
Speaker 1: a website name? Like you can just come up with
0:49
Speaker 1: a name and if somebody discovers it, you own it. Yeah.
0:52
Speaker 1: Or like one of our marital harmony strategies in my
0:55
Speaker 1: in my marriage at least, is pre assignment of blame, Like, well,
0:58
Speaker 1: if this happens, your fault, and we agree that so
1:02
Speaker 1: we don't have to argue about it afterwards. And how's that?
1:05
Speaker 1: How's that worked out? It's great, it's great, and you
1:08
Speaker 1: know you just accept the blame and move on, all right,
1:10
Speaker 1: It's always my fault. Physics as well. No, but sometimes
1:16
Speaker 1: sometimes in physics, you know, um, people have an idea
1:19
Speaker 1: for a thing. We don't even know if it's actually
1:21
Speaker 1: a thing in our universe, but they give it a
1:23
Speaker 1: name anyway. Alright, So from now on, I say, any
1:27
Speaker 1: future particles discovered should be called the or the I
1:33
Speaker 1: think I've created a monster, the Wren. Hi. I'm I'm
1:54
Speaker 1: a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
1:59
Speaker 1: I'm a part of physicists and a cheese aficionado. What's
2:02
Speaker 1: your favorite cheese, Daniel? Oh, these days, I'm into the
2:05
Speaker 1: sheep's cheese. I've been traveling through Europe last few weeks
2:08
Speaker 1: and enjoying a lot of really interesting, soft, creamy sheeps cheesus.
2:12
Speaker 1: I don't know the names of any of them, Thom,
2:14
Speaker 1: I just gobble them up and smile. Maybe you can
2:16
Speaker 1: pre name them. That's right, They're called Daniel's favorite cheese.
2:20
Speaker 1: One Daniel's favorite cheese too. Well, before we get too cheesy,
2:25
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
2:29
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radio That's Right, in which
2:32
Speaker 1: we zoom around the universe trying to find interesting, fascinating
2:35
Speaker 1: black things, white things, dark things, light things, cheesy things,
2:39
Speaker 1: creamy things, and tasty things to talk about to entertain
2:43
Speaker 1: and educate you. And we are qualified to do this
2:45
Speaker 1: because we are the authors of a book called We
2:47
Speaker 1: Have No Idea, a Guide to the Unknown Universe. So
2:51
Speaker 1: if you are interested in all of these topics, then
2:53
Speaker 1: check that out. What exactly does that qualify us for
2:56
Speaker 1: other than shilling our book on our podcast? Isn't that
3:02
Speaker 1: the synonym for podcast or just a schiller? You know?
3:07
Speaker 1: I heard somebody stay the other day. Every conversation is
3:10
Speaker 1: a podcast if you just close your eyes, or every
3:12
Speaker 1: podcast um is a conversation if you open your eyes,
3:16
Speaker 1: that's right. But we do love to explore things about
3:19
Speaker 1: the universe that we know and things about the universe
3:21
Speaker 1: that we don't know, like some things that are out
3:24
Speaker 1: there that we don't understand, some things that might be
3:26
Speaker 1: out there and we don't even know if they do exist.
3:29
Speaker 1: We love to delve into the unknown and try to
3:32
Speaker 1: just chat about with you so that you understand as
3:34
Speaker 1: much as theoretical physicists do or don't. That's right. We
3:39
Speaker 1: like to explore things and nobody knows right to right,
3:43
Speaker 1: and we like talk about why nobody knows anything about them.
3:45
Speaker 1: That's right exactly. And you know, one of my favorite
3:48
Speaker 1: things in physics is that there are multiple ways to
3:51
Speaker 1: sort of create a new idea. Like one way, the
3:54
Speaker 1: classic way is what you discover something new in the universe, like,
3:58
Speaker 1: what's this weird thing? It's doesn't it isn't explained by
4:02
Speaker 1: any law of physics, therefore we need a new law
4:04
Speaker 1: of physics. Or this tells us is something else in
4:07
Speaker 1: the universe we didn't understand. That's a classic way, right,
4:10
Speaker 1: Like you're doing something else, like you're in a bathtub,
4:12
Speaker 1: or you're playing around with radioactive materials, and eureka, do
4:17
Speaker 1: not play with radioactive materials in the bathtub? How many
4:20
Speaker 1: times do I have to tell you that? I think
4:23
Speaker 1: you're thinking of a toaster? That's the know. No, there's
4:27
Speaker 1: more than one thing that doesn't mix well with bathtubs. Okay,
4:30
Speaker 1: it's not an exclusive. Isn't this how power plants work?
4:35
Speaker 1: Just a giant bathtub and some radioactive material Yeah, first
4:38
Speaker 1: you get a radioactive toaster. Okay, then um no, that's
4:43
Speaker 1: the recipe for the beginning of a terrible superhero novel. No.
4:46
Speaker 1: But one way is to stumble over something new, usually
4:49
Speaker 1: when you're doing a science experiment, but but not always right.
4:52
Speaker 1: The other way, though, is to think of something new,
4:56
Speaker 1: say like, huh, you know, if there's you know, X,
4:59
Speaker 1: y Z particles, why isn't there also a W particle? Right?
5:03
Speaker 1: Or you know, I see this pattern, you know, the
5:06
Speaker 1: particles go like one, two, three, five? Is there a particle?
5:10
Speaker 1: It's lots of number four. And that's another fascinating way
5:14
Speaker 1: to explore the universe because you're relying on our mathematical
5:18
Speaker 1: patterns and our understanding that the universe seems to follow
5:21
Speaker 1: these patterns, and and then following those patterns to find
5:25
Speaker 1: something real and out there in the universe. It's like
5:27
Speaker 1: the theory tells you there should be something there, and
5:30
Speaker 1: so you go and you look for it. Yes, and
5:32
Speaker 1: we've done this successfully. I mean, that's how the Higgs
5:34
Speaker 1: boson was discovered. We almost certainly would not have found
5:37
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson if we weren't looking for it, because
5:40
Speaker 1: it's pretty subtle, it's pretty hard to spot. But we
5:43
Speaker 1: suspect that it was there because of a theoretical pattern
5:46
Speaker 1: that made much more sense if you had this one
5:49
Speaker 1: extra little particle um and you know, we've done this
5:52
Speaker 1: lots of times in physics and also in chemistry, and like,
5:54
Speaker 1: look at the periodic table for years and years there
5:57
Speaker 1: were holes in that table. You say, huh, how can
6:00
Speaker 1: we have element number forty four and forty six? Where
6:03
Speaker 1: is element forty five? So you go out, you look forward,
6:05
Speaker 1: You're trying to make it right. There's lots of times
6:08
Speaker 1: when the theory guides you suggests there's a gap here
6:11
Speaker 1: where there might be something new and real out there
6:13
Speaker 1: for you to discover, and a lot of times you
6:15
Speaker 1: find it right, like that there was an element forty
6:18
Speaker 1: five and there was a Higgs boson. Yeah, I don't
6:21
Speaker 1: know about a lot of times, but non zero number
6:23
Speaker 1: of times, right, I wish it was more times. Um,
6:26
Speaker 1: Although you know, this is sort of the theoretical direction,
6:29
Speaker 1: and I think it's fascinating and it tells us something
6:31
Speaker 1: about how, you know, the theories in our minds are
6:34
Speaker 1: intimately connected with the reality out there in the universe. Although,
6:38
Speaker 1: because I'm an experimentalist, I really prefer the first way,
6:41
Speaker 1: you know, finding something new and weird out there, just
6:43
Speaker 1: jumping in a sort of metaphorical ship and sailing across
6:47
Speaker 1: the metaphorical ocean of ignorance to find something new and
6:50
Speaker 1: crazy that makes the theorists to rewrite their laws. Right,
6:53
Speaker 1: that's my personal scientific fantasy. But today we're focusing on
6:56
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah. So then you can win a metaphorical
7:00
Speaker 1: or get a metaphorical PhD. That's right. Well, you know,
7:03
Speaker 1: then I'll have metaphorical groupies, which are better than not groupies,
7:06
Speaker 1: you know. Hey, and you get the metaphorical prize. Metaphorical
7:10
Speaker 1: prize money comes with the medical for price. Yeah. Well,
7:13
Speaker 1: today we are going to be talking about a topic
7:15
Speaker 1: that kind of falls in that later a category, right,
7:19
Speaker 1: like the one where we physicists have dreamed about it,
7:23
Speaker 1: have thought about it, have imagined it, but we don't
7:25
Speaker 1: really know if it exists or if it's out there. Yeah,
7:28
Speaker 1: I don't even know if it falls into that category yet.
7:30
Speaker 1: It's like threatening to fall into that category. It's like
7:34
Speaker 1: you know, um, yeah, rolling down the cliff towards that category.
7:39
Speaker 1: You know, it's sort of like in the super category
7:41
Speaker 1: of that category. I even know if it really exists
7:43
Speaker 1: yet as an idea, but it's a fun topic to
7:45
Speaker 1: think about. Yeah. So it's a super fascinating topic and
7:48
Speaker 1: it came to us through a question from a reader.
7:50
Speaker 1: So today we'll be talking about white holes. What is
8:00
Speaker 1: white hole? How can you have a hole that's white?
8:03
Speaker 1: That's right, Um, that's the topic of today's podcast, and
8:07
Speaker 1: we want to give a special shout out to one
8:08
Speaker 1: of our listeners. You see, I alum Ryan Keith, whose
8:12
Speaker 1: birthday is this week, and this shout out comes to
8:15
Speaker 1: her from her sister, Kate Azar, who's also a u
8:18
Speaker 1: c I alum, and the two of them told me
8:20
Speaker 1: that they sometimes wish they were still on campus at
8:23
Speaker 1: u c I so they could get accosted by a
8:25
Speaker 1: random physicist asking them questions. But the only wish sets
8:30
Speaker 1: sometimes most of the time they're happy they're not being
8:33
Speaker 1: a cost by physics. Happy they don't want it often
8:37
Speaker 1: enough to actually go to campus and hang out, you know,
8:40
Speaker 1: or come knock on my door and offer to answer
8:43
Speaker 1: these questions. It's not that hard, you know. My office
8:45
Speaker 1: number is listed on the web, so anybody wants to
8:47
Speaker 1: come by and answer questions is welcome to But nobody
8:50
Speaker 1: ever does. I feel like that's when we know we'll
8:52
Speaker 1: have we made it, Daniel, when people show up at
8:55
Speaker 1: your office and they're like, hey, ask me a question. Yeah, well,
9:01
Speaker 1: I'll let you know that ever happens. Well, this is
9:03
Speaker 1: a perfect point to take a break. Well, so, white holes.
9:19
Speaker 1: This is a pretty crazy topic because I think everyone
9:23
Speaker 1: has heard of black holes, right exactly where most people
9:27
Speaker 1: have heard of them, But how many people have heard
9:29
Speaker 1: of white holes? Yeah? And black holes are definitely part
9:32
Speaker 1: of the sort of culture, and people have heard about them,
9:35
Speaker 1: and they're in movies and you know, probably in rap
9:37
Speaker 1: songs and all sorts of stuff. They've deeply penetrated the
9:40
Speaker 1: sort of social brain on physics. Um, And so I
9:45
Speaker 1: was curious, like, what do people know about white holes?
9:47
Speaker 1: Has anybody heard of them before? Does anybody understand it? Yes?
9:50
Speaker 1: As usual, Daniel went out there and talked to people
9:53
Speaker 1: in the street and asked them if they knew what
9:55
Speaker 1: a white hole was. And so, before you listen to
9:58
Speaker 1: these answers, think about it for a second. If you
10:00
Speaker 1: were accosted by a physicist, or if you went into
10:04
Speaker 1: Daniel's office and asked him to ask you a question
10:07
Speaker 1: and he asked you what is a white hole? What
10:10
Speaker 1: would you answer? You'd say, Oops, I regret doing this.
10:13
Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say, And usually I would say,
10:15
Speaker 1: no googling, But in this case, googling won't even help you. No,
10:19
Speaker 1: I've never heard that. I've heard a black hole though, Okay,
10:22
Speaker 1: And what's your best guess what a white hole might be? Then? Um,
10:24
Speaker 1: if black hole is black and white hole is white,
10:27
Speaker 1: I've not actually okay, you only guess is what it
10:30
Speaker 1: might be. I mean, so, if a black hole is
10:35
Speaker 1: a curvature of space time that light cannot escape from,
10:41
Speaker 1: I imagine a white hole would be the inverse of that.
10:44
Speaker 1: But like, like that's I can't even wrap my brain
10:46
Speaker 1: around quite what that would mean. No, I heard a
10:49
Speaker 1: black hole, not Honestly, all I think about is like
10:52
Speaker 1: a black hole. When I think of white hole? Is
10:54
Speaker 1: that I'm not my share? No, I like, yes, but
10:59
Speaker 1: no white hole. Yeah, it's like the opposite of a
11:01
Speaker 1: black hole. What does that mean? It's like the Big
11:04
Speaker 1: Bang essentially. That's kind of the only example that we
11:08
Speaker 1: have of it. I'm pretty sure I remember hearing about it.
11:11
Speaker 1: I have no idea what it is. Maybe there's like
11:13
Speaker 1: too much energy from stars. I don't know actually what
11:18
Speaker 1: it might be, all right. Not not a lot of
11:20
Speaker 1: familiarity with white holes, yeah, you know, and not a
11:24
Speaker 1: lot of people have a solid idea of what a
11:26
Speaker 1: white hole is, and you know, um, as you'll hear
11:30
Speaker 1: later on in the podcast, that puts them in some
11:32
Speaker 1: pretty good company. Well, I like the person who said, um,
11:35
Speaker 1: if a black hole is black, then a white hole
11:37
Speaker 1: is white. Boom's and you know what that person was
11:44
Speaker 1: thinking on their feet and that, and they're not too
11:47
Speaker 1: far off, you know, like that's basically the logic, right,
11:50
Speaker 1: That's that's the whole concept of a white hole is like,
11:54
Speaker 1: here's a thing, could we have the opposite thing? Right?
11:58
Speaker 1: Because you know, hey, and physics, there are lots of opposites.
12:01
Speaker 1: Particles have antiparticles, right, you know, um pass down plus
12:06
Speaker 1: has minus. You know, um, not everything has an opposite,
12:10
Speaker 1: like mass doesn't have negative mass, but there are a
12:12
Speaker 1: lot of things that have opposites. The universe likes to
12:16
Speaker 1: have symmetry, it seems, and so it's totally reasonable when
12:19
Speaker 1: you discover something to look for the sort of the
12:21
Speaker 1: opposite of the negative of it, the mirror reflection of it. Um. Well,
12:25
Speaker 1: technically that that a listener um that present is correct, right,
12:29
Speaker 1: It's it's like a black holes black and a white
12:31
Speaker 1: hole is white. That's pretty much all you need to know. Yeah,
12:34
Speaker 1: that's it, and that's our podcast for today, folks, Thanks
12:37
Speaker 1: very much, thank you very much. Well, this is kind
12:40
Speaker 1: of a crazy subject, and to be honest, I had
12:42
Speaker 1: not heard about white holes at all until I think recently.
12:46
Speaker 1: Maybe you brought it up or in one of our episodes,
12:49
Speaker 1: I mean thirty minutes ago, I said, let's do a
12:51
Speaker 1: podcast about them. When you sent me the notes for this, yeah,
12:55
Speaker 1: that's when I heard about it. Um, but what is
12:58
Speaker 1: it like a new idea? Is it something that's been
13:00
Speaker 1: around for a while, or is it, you know, something
13:04
Speaker 1: you just came up with. That's right, One of these days,
13:07
Speaker 1: I'm gonna prank you by inventing a totally ridiculous, made
13:10
Speaker 1: up idea and have you do a whole podcast about
13:13
Speaker 1: In the end, I'll reveal that it's just some silly
13:15
Speaker 1: thought of mine, um, thirty minutes and you're like, gotcha, Yeah,
13:23
Speaker 1: it will be a totally valid podcast episode that we
13:25
Speaker 1: will totally publish it. Now, that would be the control episode, right,
13:29
Speaker 1: we'll see how interested and um and in depth can
13:32
Speaker 1: Jorge go on a topic that's complete nonsense that we
13:38
Speaker 1: are control episode to see about anyone's listening to these
13:42
Speaker 1: or it's the Placebo podcast. Right, how much can you
13:44
Speaker 1: think you understand about something that actually means nothing? Um No,
13:49
Speaker 1: but it's not that old. I mean, the whole idea
13:51
Speaker 1: of black holes itself is not that old. It's like,
13:53
Speaker 1: you know, bad as old as general relativity, which is
13:56
Speaker 1: just about a hundred years right now. The black holes
13:59
Speaker 1: only discuss heard a few decades ago. Right, It's an
14:01
Speaker 1: actual thing in the universe. And so the first of all,
14:04
Speaker 1: black holes are a great example of the sort of
14:07
Speaker 1: theoretical lead discovery, like, wow, the equations tell us this
14:11
Speaker 1: could exist. Like we did a bunch of experiments, we
14:14
Speaker 1: learned something about the universe. We wrote equations that described
14:18
Speaker 1: what we learned, and then we explore those equations and
14:21
Speaker 1: discovered in some weird corners those equations just describe something
14:24
Speaker 1: strange we've never seen before. Let's see if that means
14:27
Speaker 1: the equations are wrong or there that things the equations
14:30
Speaker 1: are right, and that thing is actually out there. Right,
14:32
Speaker 1: So that's the sort of history of black holes. It's
14:34
Speaker 1: crazy to think that I'm older than our our confirmation
14:39
Speaker 1: of black holes. Like, for part of my life, we
14:41
Speaker 1: didn't have black holes. Existed. That's right. I might say
14:45
Speaker 1: that it's a more important moment in the history of
14:47
Speaker 1: physics discovery of black holes than the birth of birth.
14:52
Speaker 1: That remains to be seen, Like we'll see what physics
14:54
Speaker 1: relished to be TVD. It's tv D. That's right. Life,
14:59
Speaker 1: your life and over it. So you've got time to
15:01
Speaker 1: ratch that up. Um. White holes I think proposed originally
15:05
Speaker 1: in the sixties. And you know, the the whole idea
15:09
Speaker 1: is not too far from what from what that listener,
15:12
Speaker 1: what that interviewee said, which is like, Okay, we have
15:14
Speaker 1: this thing a black holes. Right. Black hole is a
15:16
Speaker 1: region where things can enter but nothing can escape, right,
15:20
Speaker 1: and that's why they seem black. That's the definition of
15:23
Speaker 1: a black hole. It's like a the part of space
15:26
Speaker 1: where there's so much gravity nothing can come out of it.
15:29
Speaker 1: That's right. And the way I like to think about
15:31
Speaker 1: it is not like the gravity is pulling so hard
15:34
Speaker 1: that even photons can't climb up that mountain, but that
15:38
Speaker 1: gravity is there's so much gravity there. The space is
15:41
Speaker 1: bent in such a way that there's just no paths out.
15:44
Speaker 1: You know, photons are zooming around inside the black hole,
15:47
Speaker 1: but it's just space is bent in a way that
15:49
Speaker 1: makes it sort of self contained. It's like cut off
15:52
Speaker 1: from the rest of the universe, like a hole in
15:54
Speaker 1: space literally, yeah, or sort of like you know, a
15:57
Speaker 1: sub universe, right, Like there's just no way out of it.
16:00
Speaker 1: You know, it's an escape room whether it just is
16:02
Speaker 1: no key, Um, it doesn't matter how smart you are.
16:05
Speaker 1: And so people thought, well, is it possible to the opposite, right,
16:09
Speaker 1: and the opposite of a black hole, and you name
16:11
Speaker 1: it a white hole? Right? Um, is a region where
16:15
Speaker 1: nothing can enter, right, So things can escape, things can
16:18
Speaker 1: shoot out of it, but nothing can go into it.
16:21
Speaker 1: Like if you try to go into it, but what happened?
16:22
Speaker 1: You get bounced back? Or yeah, well the way like
16:25
Speaker 1: nothing can leave a black hole, right because the space
16:28
Speaker 1: there is disconnected. You can't get into a white hole
16:31
Speaker 1: like you'll you know, the paths that approach a white
16:33
Speaker 1: hole get bent away from it rather than all getting
16:36
Speaker 1: bent to it, they just get bent away from it.
16:39
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, but you know, and that makes you wonder like, Okay,
16:41
Speaker 1: when you invert a white a black hole, you get
16:43
Speaker 1: a white hole. You like, inverted the word black into
16:46
Speaker 1: the word white. Why don't you invert hole also? Right?
16:49
Speaker 1: Like why isn't a black hole inverted into a I
16:52
Speaker 1: don't know, like a white what's the opposite of a hole,
16:55
Speaker 1: a bump? I don't know, a stump, white bump. And
17:01
Speaker 1: that explains that why they don't use it. They can't
17:04
Speaker 1: get any funding for white bumps. Yeah, exactly. And so
17:08
Speaker 1: the next thing you can do is you can say, well,
17:10
Speaker 1: is that possible? Like, you know, could that thing exist
17:14
Speaker 1: at all? It is? Do the equations in fact predict
17:18
Speaker 1: the existence of this kind of thing? Something where nothing, um,
17:23
Speaker 1: nothing can enter, but things can escape, right, And just
17:26
Speaker 1: like take a moment to think about like what that
17:28
Speaker 1: would mean physically, Like here's something where nothing is allowed
17:32
Speaker 1: to go in, but it's like shooting out particles all
17:35
Speaker 1: the time, right, Like things can leave it. It's like,
17:38
Speaker 1: you know it's what it has things inside, Yeah, but
17:41
Speaker 1: it's um If it doesn't have things inside, it doesn't exist, right,
17:44
Speaker 1: Like it only exists if it has some mass to it.
17:47
Speaker 1: It's not just that things can leave, but is that
17:50
Speaker 1: anything inside of it? It gets shot out kind of right,
17:54
Speaker 1: Like it's if it's the over site of a black hole,
17:56
Speaker 1: where like it gets sucked in and can't escape, then
17:59
Speaker 1: is the is it that anything inside just automatically gets expelled. Yeah,
18:04
Speaker 1: I think everything inside eventually gets kicked out. And so
18:08
Speaker 1: you know what would that be like what would it
18:10
Speaker 1: look like? You know, a white hole in that sense
18:11
Speaker 1: would be like a bright source of you know, radiation
18:15
Speaker 1: of particles and light and all sorts of stuff. And
18:18
Speaker 1: so in that sense of white hole is like a
18:19
Speaker 1: pretty good name for it. But you know it's like
18:22
Speaker 1: a bright source, you know, so it looks it's very bright.
18:25
Speaker 1: It's like white. Right, that's the idea of the name.
18:28
Speaker 1: I think why the name makes some sense. But you know,
18:31
Speaker 1: you can ask, like number one, is that consistent with
18:34
Speaker 1: any of the theories that we have? Right? That was
18:36
Speaker 1: just an idea, like, oh, here's a cool idea. Could
18:39
Speaker 1: we have a rainbow hole? Could we have a purple hole? Right?
18:42
Speaker 1: Could we have a white hole? And then you have
18:43
Speaker 1: to ask, like, you know, one to the equation support
18:46
Speaker 1: and two is it possible that actually exists out there
18:49
Speaker 1: in the universe? Okay, So that's that's kind of the
18:52
Speaker 1: short of it. Right. It's like imagine a black hole
18:55
Speaker 1: and then just imagine the opposite of it. That's the
18:59
Speaker 1: idea of a white hole. Right, I mean right, like
19:02
Speaker 1: anything you imagine. I don't know about a black hole,
19:04
Speaker 1: just trying not in said, but you know you have
19:07
Speaker 1: to ask, like the opposite along what axis? Right, Like
19:09
Speaker 1: what are you oppositing? You know, what are you inverting
19:12
Speaker 1: to make a black hole into a white hole? Right?
19:15
Speaker 1: Because you know you might not just everything. Yeah, what's
19:18
Speaker 1: the opposite of chocolate? Is it peanut butter? Or is
19:20
Speaker 1: it white chocolate or is it like you know, obviously
19:23
Speaker 1: it's white chocolate. That's still chocolate, right. I think my
19:30
Speaker 1: wife would disagree. I think she has strong opinions about
19:33
Speaker 1: whether white chocolate should be called chocolate. If you tried
19:36
Speaker 1: this rose chocolate, rose chocolate, I'm not making that up.
19:40
Speaker 1: That's the thing that's really round chocolate, white chocolate. And
19:43
Speaker 1: then in the history of chocolate science, they recently came
19:47
Speaker 1: up with a new kind of chocolate, rose chocolate. Wow.
19:50
Speaker 1: Was it a physicist who came up with that or
19:53
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it was a chocolate As
19:55
Speaker 1: well as our understanding of the universe, well, you know,
19:58
Speaker 1: there is that famous correlation between the amount of chocolate
20:01
Speaker 1: consumed per capita and the number of Nobel Prizes per capita.
20:04
Speaker 1: So yeah, maybe it was. Um, I don't know, we
20:08
Speaker 1: should do a whole podcast on rose chocolate, but maybe
20:10
Speaker 1: we should actually eat some first. Wait wait, wait, hold
20:12
Speaker 1: on a second, Actually I think that's not rose chocolate.
20:16
Speaker 1: I think it's called ruby chocolate. Yeah, that's right, it's
20:19
Speaker 1: ruby chocolate. All right, let's get into whether this even
20:23
Speaker 1: makes any sense theoretically or practically, and let's get into
20:26
Speaker 1: the whether or not these actually exists. But first let's
20:29
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Alright, we're talking about white holes, Daniel,
20:45
Speaker 1: and so you're saying it's like a black hole, but
20:48
Speaker 1: it's kind of like where you almost the opposite of it.
20:51
Speaker 1: If a black hole, um, doesn't let things escape, and
20:54
Speaker 1: that's why it looks black. The white hole just pushes
20:57
Speaker 1: everything out. That's why it looks white. Yeah, it look exactly.
21:00
Speaker 1: And so I was trying to understand, like, what is
21:03
Speaker 1: the white hole? How do you make one? What arrangement
21:06
Speaker 1: of mass in space would give you a white hole?
21:08
Speaker 1: Because like we understand how to make a black hole,
21:11
Speaker 1: You take a bunch of stuff, you squeeze it down
21:13
Speaker 1: to really small area, so you have so much gravity
21:17
Speaker 1: that you get this crazy curvature space and nothing can leave. Right,
21:19
Speaker 1: it's weird, it's crazy, it's real. But we understand how
21:23
Speaker 1: you might do that. How do you build a white hole? Right?
21:26
Speaker 1: What creates a white hole? What does it even mean?
21:29
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a question? Um so, a lot
21:31
Speaker 1: of times they explain black holes using the rubber sheet
21:35
Speaker 1: analogy of the universe, you know, like where you imagine
21:37
Speaker 1: that space is like a giant rubber sheet, and gravity
21:41
Speaker 1: is kind of like the putting a bowling ball on
21:43
Speaker 1: the rubber sheet and and seeing the indentation of it
21:46
Speaker 1: on the sheet, right, And a lot of times they
21:48
Speaker 1: explain black holes as least like if you put a
21:51
Speaker 1: like a Brazilian bowling balls, it's just going to create
21:53
Speaker 1: this giant hole DVID in the rubber sheet, right. Yeah.
21:58
Speaker 1: Um so it's a white hole kind of the opposite
22:00
Speaker 1: where you like, now you pinch a bit of that
22:02
Speaker 1: rubber sheet and then you lift it up to create
22:04
Speaker 1: like a like a peek instead of a hole. No,
22:07
Speaker 1: And that's part of the really confusing bit is that
22:10
Speaker 1: a white hole is also because that that would be
22:12
Speaker 1: like negative gravity or having negative mass, but it's not
22:17
Speaker 1: a white hole. A white hole is also just a
22:19
Speaker 1: blob of mass, and it has a gravitational force towards
22:23
Speaker 1: the white hole right, not away from it. This is
22:27
Speaker 1: the really confusing part. A white hole is the same
22:29
Speaker 1: arrangement of mass as a black hole, and it's sort
22:32
Speaker 1: of only exists sort of encounterpart to the black hole. Like,
22:37
Speaker 1: it's not clear that a white hole could ever exist
22:39
Speaker 1: on its own. It might be sort of just like
22:42
Speaker 1: a strange conceptual reflection of a black hole. Wait, you're
22:46
Speaker 1: saying that if I, if I was in the presence
22:48
Speaker 1: of a white hole, I would get attracted to it,
22:50
Speaker 1: but I just couldn't enter it. Yeah, that's right, And
22:52
Speaker 1: I think so there's one really crazy, weird conception of
22:56
Speaker 1: a white hole. I think the simplest place to start
22:58
Speaker 1: is actually to start with a word whole. Now, we
23:01
Speaker 1: once talked in our podcast about like our wormholes real, right,
23:05
Speaker 1: and it's possible the wormholes exist. Wormholes are allowed by
23:08
Speaker 1: general relativity, and wormholes in some conception are essentially a
23:13
Speaker 1: black hole, right where you can fall into the black hole,
23:16
Speaker 1: except it's a wormhole. It's not just a you get
23:20
Speaker 1: fall into the black hole and you're stuck there. Inside
23:22
Speaker 1: the black hole is a connection to somewhere else in
23:24
Speaker 1: the universe where you then get spout out. What's that
23:27
Speaker 1: other side of the wormhole? Well, it's a white hole.
23:31
Speaker 1: So you get sucked into the black hole and then
23:33
Speaker 1: you get shot out the white hole, right, and that
23:37
Speaker 1: and that sort of explains like how the black hole
23:39
Speaker 1: in the white hole are really two halves of the
23:41
Speaker 1: same thing. Right, A wormhole needs and and in and out.
23:45
Speaker 1: That's right for it, you know, to be effective. Right,
23:48
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a hole, that's right. And so
23:53
Speaker 1: that's one conception of a white hole. It's like the
23:55
Speaker 1: back end of a wormhole. Wait, do all black holes
24:00
Speaker 1: night to a wormhole or only some of them or no,
24:03
Speaker 1: we don't even know if they exist right now, most
24:05
Speaker 1: of the black holes that we do know exist are
24:08
Speaker 1: a different kind of black hole. They're the black kind
24:10
Speaker 1: of black hole that's formed by gravitation collapse. Like if
24:12
Speaker 1: a star and it's it's fusing, it doesn't want to
24:15
Speaker 1: fuse anymore. It's used of aile, it's fuel, and now
24:18
Speaker 1: it's collapsed into a really dense blob and it just creates,
24:21
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a singularity we don't know what's going on,
24:24
Speaker 1: but does not make a wormhole. But if wormholes do exist,
24:29
Speaker 1: then one idea of them is a pair of holes,
24:32
Speaker 1: the black hole in the white hole connected. But not
24:34
Speaker 1: every black hole is a wormhole, Okay, all right, So
24:37
Speaker 1: if a wormhole exists, one end would need to be
24:40
Speaker 1: a black hole, in the other end would need to
24:42
Speaker 1: be a white hole, right, And that's sort of how
24:44
Speaker 1: you make sense of a black hole and a white
24:46
Speaker 1: hole being formed from the same configuration of mass. Because
24:50
Speaker 1: in order to bend space in that way, to bring
24:53
Speaker 1: some distant part of space close so that you can
24:56
Speaker 1: go from like here to Alpha Centauri without actually traveling
24:58
Speaker 1: through all that space, takes a single configuration of mass.
25:02
Speaker 1: How you do it, I don't know. Nobody knows. But
25:05
Speaker 1: that's that's the reason why like a white hole in
25:07
Speaker 1: a black hole or sort of a reflection of the
25:09
Speaker 1: same arrangement of mass and energy that have, you know,
25:13
Speaker 1: being configured to do this to create this wormhole thing.
25:16
Speaker 1: And that's and that's the simplest sort of white hole
25:19
Speaker 1: to understand. It gets crazier from there, it gets crazy.
25:23
Speaker 1: There's there's multiple flavors of white holes. There's there's a
25:26
Speaker 1: lot of different flavors of white hole and some of
25:29
Speaker 1: them don't make any sense at all. Well, you were
25:30
Speaker 1: telling me earlier that they don't make any sense to anybody, right,
25:34
Speaker 1: Like these are these are a little bit far out
25:36
Speaker 1: there and nobody really understands them. Yeah, you know, I
25:39
Speaker 1: walked around campus and I went to some mathematicians offices
25:44
Speaker 1: and some theoretical physicist offices and folks that like even
25:47
Speaker 1: really think about the formal theory and um, and asked
25:50
Speaker 1: them about white holes, like what do you know about
25:52
Speaker 1: what holes? Do you have an idea? How would you
25:53
Speaker 1: explain this? And um? They were stumped. Also, you know,
25:56
Speaker 1: white holes are not something that most theoretical physicists thing
26:00
Speaker 1: about it very much. They're not um a sort of
26:02
Speaker 1: a topic of current research. They're not really taken very seriously.
26:06
Speaker 1: It's sort of like it's not really a well formed
26:09
Speaker 1: idea yet. It's like somebody said in one afternoon, like, oh,
26:13
Speaker 1: maybe there's a white hole thing, and somebody else picked
26:15
Speaker 1: it up and you know, walked a little further. But
26:17
Speaker 1: it's not like finished yet. It's not like black holes,
26:20
Speaker 1: where we had a really solid theoretical understanding of what
26:23
Speaker 1: they would be like before we found them. This is
26:25
Speaker 1: like maybe this might be a thing. Nobody's really even
26:29
Speaker 1: thought it through all the way yet, So I asked
26:32
Speaker 1: nobody sat down to do the math. It just kind
26:35
Speaker 1: of gets mentioned. Yeah, and there's a few places where
26:37
Speaker 1: people have worked it out, like this wormhole, black hole,
26:40
Speaker 1: white the whole thing, and a couple of other cases
26:42
Speaker 1: maybe we can talk about in a moment, But it's
26:44
Speaker 1: not something that's really rigorously understood or or not something
26:48
Speaker 1: that even people agree on what it means. You know,
26:50
Speaker 1: you say white hole to one theorist, they might understand
26:54
Speaker 1: something totally different than another theorist. So it's really just
26:58
Speaker 1: it's sort of it's an idea of an idea so far. Alright,
27:01
Speaker 1: So step us through how it works with these white
27:03
Speaker 1: hole wormholes. So something goes into a black hole, it
27:06
Speaker 1: goes through the wormhole, and it comes out the other end.
27:09
Speaker 1: Does that kind of have what a white hole? Yeah,
27:11
Speaker 1: and that's how a white hole would be spewing stuff out? Right,
27:14
Speaker 1: What is it spewing out? Where is this stuff that
27:16
Speaker 1: it spews outcome from? It comes from the black hole
27:18
Speaker 1: on the other side, right, And that's why you know,
27:21
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily have to have anything in it. Um
27:24
Speaker 1: and you can still spew stuff out or conspuw stuff
27:26
Speaker 1: out forever without disappearing, because whatever goes in the the
27:30
Speaker 1: black hole on the other side comes out. But they're
27:32
Speaker 1: in totally different parts of the universe, right, yes, but
27:36
Speaker 1: sort of. I mean, remember we like to think of
27:38
Speaker 1: space is sort of a flat sheet, right, It's like simple,
27:42
Speaker 1: and you know, to go from here to there, you
27:43
Speaker 1: need to go through space. But space can have all
27:46
Speaker 1: sorts of different organizations, like it can be bent around
27:50
Speaker 1: in a donut so that you know, you leave off
27:53
Speaker 1: of one edge and you appear in the other edge,
27:55
Speaker 1: And you can have all sorts of really complicated geometry
27:58
Speaker 1: so that you can connect different parts of space. Things
28:01
Speaker 1: that you would think are really far apart. You can
28:04
Speaker 1: make it so you they're actually near each other, right,
28:07
Speaker 1: and as you can, And that's what a wormhole is.
28:09
Speaker 1: The way with the donut, have black chocolate frosting or
28:12
Speaker 1: white chocolate. It depends on whether you're going into the
28:15
Speaker 1: donut or out of the donut. Of course you're throwing
28:19
Speaker 1: it up for you eating that, Um, I think it
28:24
Speaker 1: tastes better going in there usually usually um. And And
28:28
Speaker 1: that's sort of the simplest conception of the white hole
28:30
Speaker 1: that I understand. But there are other ideas of white holes, right,
28:34
Speaker 1: and these are not consistent necessarily with the whole wormhole concept.
28:38
Speaker 1: They're just like different ideas of how a white hole
28:41
Speaker 1: might appear. And one of them says. One of them
28:44
Speaker 1: is that arguments sort of like this says that general
28:47
Speaker 1: relativity is supposed to be time symmetric, meaning the equations
28:52
Speaker 1: of general relativity work just as well for universe going
28:55
Speaker 1: forwards in time and backwards in time, right, And that
28:59
Speaker 1: might sound really weird to you. I think, how can
29:01
Speaker 1: the universe go backwards and time? That doesn't make any sense. Well,
29:04
Speaker 1: we don't know why how universe could go backwards, but
29:07
Speaker 1: we also don't know why the universe is going forwards.
29:10
Speaker 1: So it's sort of interesting to note that you could
29:13
Speaker 1: run the universe backwards in general relativity and get the
29:16
Speaker 1: same equations. Right, So a particle Earth going around the
29:21
Speaker 1: Sun one way, the general relativity says it also works
29:24
Speaker 1: the other way. Okay, So like if you hit reverse
29:29
Speaker 1: right or the back arrow in the streaming video player,
29:34
Speaker 1: it should look sort of normal, just backwards exactly. So
29:39
Speaker 1: then you can say, well, there are weird things in
29:40
Speaker 1: general relativity like black holes. So then what is the
29:44
Speaker 1: time reversed black hole look like? Right, how can you
29:48
Speaker 1: time reverse the black hole? IF's if general relativity is
29:52
Speaker 1: supposed to be time reverse doble, and general relativity predicts
29:56
Speaker 1: black holes, then what does the time reversed black hole
29:59
Speaker 1: look like? Boom, that's a white hole. It looks like
30:02
Speaker 1: something that's not sucking stuff in but just viewing stuff out. Yeah, exactly.
30:07
Speaker 1: But general relativity is not the only law out there, right,
30:11
Speaker 1: There are other laws like thermodynamics and the second law
30:15
Speaker 1: of thermodynamics that says and grope always increases, and so
30:19
Speaker 1: you know, you can't just create new matter, and you
30:23
Speaker 1: can't just like violate the second law of thermodynamics by
30:27
Speaker 1: like spewing that by undoing a black hole, right, And
30:31
Speaker 1: so it's just it's sort of an unfinished concept because
30:36
Speaker 1: while that would be allowed by general relativity, it's not
30:38
Speaker 1: allowed by the second law of thermodynamics, And so we
30:41
Speaker 1: don't really think that that's a thing. And so I
30:43
Speaker 1: sort of get the sense that, um, this white hole
30:47
Speaker 1: is sort of interesting to think about, but nobody can
30:49
Speaker 1: really make it work or makes sense. Is that kind
30:52
Speaker 1: of where we are with it? Yeah, exactly. It's like
30:57
Speaker 1: open territory and theoretical physics that no, but he has
31:00
Speaker 1: really gone and like chiseled out carefully to figure out
31:04
Speaker 1: what's going on and is this interesting? And can we
31:07
Speaker 1: even make a solid prediction experimentally of what to look for? Right?
31:11
Speaker 1: But it's it's interesting because it's, uh, it seems like
31:14
Speaker 1: there might be something there. Right, maybe in the future
31:17
Speaker 1: somebody will think about it carefully enough to figure out
31:19
Speaker 1: what ideas are important and how they fit together and
31:22
Speaker 1: how to make it all connect, and then we'll know
31:25
Speaker 1: what to look for. And you know that was the
31:27
Speaker 1: case also for other theoretical things, like before Peter Higgs
31:30
Speaker 1: came up with the Higgs boson, people knew that there
31:33
Speaker 1: was there was something interesting to be done there, like
31:36
Speaker 1: somebody had to figure out how these particles get masked.
31:39
Speaker 1: Didn't quite make sense, and and you know, a young,
31:42
Speaker 1: brash scientist waded into this muck and figured it out
31:45
Speaker 1: and made it all clear, and then us experimentalist knew
31:48
Speaker 1: what to look for. And that's sort of the stage
31:50
Speaker 1: we're at with white holes. It's like we're pre prediscovery.
31:53
Speaker 1: It's more of a like a fun maybe right now, Yeah, exactly.
31:57
Speaker 1: You might say, like, um, well, are there is there
32:01
Speaker 1: evidence of white holes? You know, like we look out there,
32:04
Speaker 1: even if we don't have a solid theoryical understanding, can
32:06
Speaker 1: we flip it on its head and say, let's just
32:08
Speaker 1: look for them, because if we find one, then that
32:11
Speaker 1: will give us a lot of clues as to how
32:13
Speaker 1: the theory has to work. Right. And then also, what
32:16
Speaker 1: would a white hole look like? Well, it'd be really
32:18
Speaker 1: bright source of crazy radiation, and you know, the university
32:22
Speaker 1: is filled with lots of crazy sources of radiation, and
32:25
Speaker 1: so sometimes people like to speculate, like, oh, this big
32:28
Speaker 1: gamma ray burst right, really a recent huge gamma ray burst,
32:32
Speaker 1: people thought, could this be a white hole? And most
32:36
Speaker 1: of the field went no, of course not, um it's
32:39
Speaker 1: a supernova. But you know, it's fun to speculate. You're saying,
32:43
Speaker 1: like maybe one of the stars we see at night
32:45
Speaker 1: could be like a white hole, or it could be
32:47
Speaker 1: except that we'd expect a white hole probably to be transient, right,
32:51
Speaker 1: like it would um give off a huge amount of
32:53
Speaker 1: radiation and then fizzle right, or or it could be
32:59
Speaker 1: it could be not for bread it all, like if
33:00
Speaker 1: it's the backside of a wormhole, then it only shows
33:04
Speaker 1: up when something goes through it. Right, If nothing is
33:07
Speaker 1: getting transited through the wormhole, then the white hole sort
33:10
Speaker 1: of I don't know, dark for a while, yeah, exactly. Um,
33:15
Speaker 1: And you know, other ideas are like, well, maybe the
33:17
Speaker 1: Big Bang was a white hole, right, and does that
33:21
Speaker 1: mean that our whole universe is the backside of a
33:23
Speaker 1: black hole from somewhere else? You know, like because if
33:26
Speaker 1: you're thinking about like crazy sources of radiation, spooky spewing
33:30
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, that kind of sounds like the Big Bang.
33:35
Speaker 1: Where Yeah, because the Big Bang, you get ask where
33:39
Speaker 1: did all this stuff in the universe come from? Exactly?
33:42
Speaker 1: Seems to sort of violate second law of the dynamics,
33:45
Speaker 1: you know, if you think of the universe as a
33:46
Speaker 1: closed system. So you know, and that's the sort of
33:50
Speaker 1: fun stuff to think about it. I think when theoretical
33:52
Speaker 1: physicists get tired of working on hard problems, they know, well,
33:56
Speaker 1: they like to bounce this kind of stuff around in
33:58
Speaker 1: their heads and see if they like find a new
34:01
Speaker 1: little bite to take out of it. But you know,
34:03
Speaker 1: it's not really something that it's like what a professional
34:06
Speaker 1: dreamers dream about exactly when they're not dreaming professionally. Yeah, exactly.
34:12
Speaker 1: When they're done eating the bananas and they smoke the peels,
34:15
Speaker 1: what do these guys think about and what do they
34:19
Speaker 1: do in their downtime? Yeah, and so I think if
34:22
Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of theoretical physicists in a room
34:25
Speaker 1: and you ask them all, or you get them all
34:27
Speaker 1: in separate rooms, you ask them all to define a
34:29
Speaker 1: white hole, I bet you would get as many different
34:31
Speaker 1: answers as theorists you ask. It's just like white chocolate,
34:35
Speaker 1: you know, if you ask people if they like white chocolate,
34:38
Speaker 1: you would get a very polarizing All the people with
34:42
Speaker 1: taste would say yes, and all the people who don't
34:45
Speaker 1: understand chocolate would say no. I mean, it's pretty simple,
34:50
Speaker 1: all right. So white hole sounds like they're a wait
34:54
Speaker 1: for it, maybe kind of thing. Yeah, it's sort of
34:57
Speaker 1: like there, like a weight hole. Yeah, either it's nothing
35:01
Speaker 1: or it's like a little bit of twenty second century
35:04
Speaker 1: physics that we're just hearing about for the first time now,
35:07
Speaker 1: you know, because if you hear, if you read about
35:10
Speaker 1: like the history of black holes, it's sort of existed
35:12
Speaker 1: as a crazy idea for a long long time decades
35:16
Speaker 1: before anybody took it seriously, and so maybe we're just
35:20
Speaker 1: into those sort of early stages of the history of
35:23
Speaker 1: white holes. In the future, textbooks be written about how
35:27
Speaker 1: you know, people banded this idea around for a while
35:29
Speaker 1: before X Y Z, physicists from you know, Ecuador or
35:34
Speaker 1: somewhere cool um finally figured out what it meant and
35:37
Speaker 1: then figured out how to look for it, and that's
35:40
Speaker 1: when progress really started. It could be just in the
35:43
Speaker 1: prehistory of the discovery of white holes, right, and hopefully
35:46
Speaker 1: there'll be a little asterisks that says. Daniel and Jorge
35:50
Speaker 1: made a podcast episode about it, which inspired that guy
35:53
Speaker 1: person in Ecuador, that girl are for guy in Ecuador,
35:57
Speaker 1: and there we go. Daniel and Jorge made a podcast
35:59
Speaker 1: about it in which no progress was made, but other
36:03
Speaker 1: people were inspired to actually make progress. Yes, that would
36:06
Speaker 1: be a wonderful story. Well it it sounds like a
36:08
Speaker 1: fun idea and I could potentially have big repercussions. I mean,
36:12
Speaker 1: the Big Bank does turn out to be a white hole,
36:14
Speaker 1: that would be a very big deal. Yeah, And you know,
36:16
Speaker 1: if there are black holes and they're white holes, then
36:18
Speaker 1: maybe there are roles holes out there in the universe.
36:21
Speaker 1: You never know, or gray holes or grab a gray
36:25
Speaker 1: warm holes, which is like a Game of Thrones reference
36:29
Speaker 1: and a physics reference. That's right. That's right, So you know,
36:34
Speaker 1: expand your mind and think about all the kind of
36:36
Speaker 1: things that could be out there in the universe that
36:37
Speaker 1: are out there in the universe, that are definitely not
36:39
Speaker 1: out there in the universe, or that you know, might
36:42
Speaker 1: eventually be in the minds of theorists and then discovered
36:45
Speaker 1: by experimentalists. The universe is crazy, It's filled crazy stuff,
36:50
Speaker 1: and one day we'll figure it all out. So go
36:52
Speaker 1: out there and get crazy and enjoy some white chocolate.
36:55
Speaker 1: See you next time. If you still have a question
37:05
Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
37:09
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
37:11
Speaker 1: at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
37:15
Speaker 1: one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
37:18
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
37:22
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
37:25
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit
37:28
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
37:32
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.