Could black holes be portals to other universes?

The objects scientists think are black holes could instead be wormholes leading to other universes, a new study says. If so, it would help resolve a quantum conundrum known as the black hole information paradox. A black hole is an object with such a powerful gravitational field that nothing, not even light, can escape it if it strays within a boundary known as the event horizon. But physicists in France, and in Germany now say that these objects could be structures called wormholes instead. Wormholes are warps in the fabric of space-time that connect one place to another. If you imagine the universe as a two-dimensional sheet, you can picture a wormhole as a "throat" connecting our sheet to another one. Physicists studying what such a wormhole might look like, and were surprised to discover that it would mimic a black hole so well that it would be virtually impossible to tell the difference. Matter would swirl around a wormhole in the same way as for a black hole, since both objects distort the space around them in the same way.

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders