Here’s one harsh truth that we all need to live with: reality is far more puzzling than any of us can comprehend. The Universe, including the quantum realm, works in much more mysterious ways than even scientists realize. The good news is that the world doesn’t stop looking for answers.
Black holes are easily among the most mysterious cosmic objects in the Universe. These cosmic monsters are basically destructive, as anything that gets too close will be absorbed by the infinite gravity that black holes can generate. But there’s also a positive side to black holes. For instance, a supermassive black hole exists at the core of our own Milky Way galaxy, influencing the motion of stars. Without that specific black hole, which is known as Sagittarius A, life might not have been possible on Earth.
But what if there’s even a more positive side to black holes than we think?
Can a black hole take us to another universe?
Although the generally accepted idea in the scientific world is that going anywhere near a black hole would be an awful idea, as it would mean writing our own death sentence, there’s a very slight possibility that being absorbed by a black hole doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll kick the bucket. That theoretical scenario, although highly unfeasible, has been speculated on in the 2014 sci-fi movie Interstellar, where the main character, played by Matthew McConaughey, dives directly into a black hole. As a result, he somehow travels back in time.
Surely, you might be tempted to say that ‘Interstellar’ is just a sci-fi movie and therefore cannot be taken seriously. Well, you know what? That’s absolutely correct! But still, the movie explores a very small chance that getting near a black hole doesn’t automatically mean a death sentence.
Nobody knows for sure what happens to the matter gathered by a black hole
The main reason behind the speculative and theoretical concept that falling into a black hole might take you to another universe is that scientists can’t know for sure what happens to matter that gets absorbed by a black hole. Once it passes the Event Horizon of a black hole, nobody knows for sure what happens to it. It’s just reasonable to assume that it gets completely destroyed. But why wouldn’t that matter pop up in some other universe or dimension?
The scenario also remains highly farfetched because there’s no absolute proof that other universes even exist. Physicists, in general, believe that the chances are pretty high for our own universe to be just a small part of what they call a ‘Multiverse,’ as the math calculations seem to support the claim. But even so, nobody can prove for sure, at least not yet, that we indeed live in a Multiverse. Therefore, how could someone ever prove, with our current technology, that a black hole could take us to another universe?
Black holes, by definition, defy the laws of physics in several ways. The singularity at their center represents an infinitely dense point, time dilation goes bananas, the Event Horizon represents a point of no return for anything that lands there, and so on. Given the rebellious nature of black holes, it was probably just a matter of time until scientists started to come up with all sorts of odd theories and scenarios.
What’s for sure is that jumping in a black hole to find out if it will indeed take you to another universe or not would be a huge mistake, as the risk overwhelmingly outweighs the possibility for a black hole to play the role of a cosmic door. Gladly, there’s no black hole in our Solar System as far as astronomers know at this point.
