What are white holes?

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