WHEN BLACK HOLES TURN WHITE

Can bouncing black holes help physicists find the ultimate theory of everything?

- Colin Stuart

Somewhere out there in the vastness of space lurks a black hole smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence. Minuscule but mighty, it could hold the key to unlocking some of the greatest mysteries in the universe. Black holes are the ultimate cosmic laboratory, a way for physicists to test out their theories in an environment so extreme that space and time are curved and warped. Even light cannot resist their eternal grasp, so we see no light reflected from them at all. We can only spot them when their gravity affects something visible or they merge to create gravitational waves. Few places have such a high amount of energy in such a small space.

But what happens if you fall into one? The bad news is you're unlikely to survive the ordeal. The difference in gravity between your feet and your head would eventually get so extreme that it would overcome the forces holding your atoms together. You'd be torn apart into thin strips of human spaghetti, which is where the process gets its whimsical name: spaghettification. But where do your spaghettified atoms ultimately end up? What's at the bottom of a black hole?