In many ways, black holes and wormholes are alike. Both are solutions to the gravitational field equations of general relativity, and both are the seat of strong gravitational forces. The main difference is that no object can theoretically return after crossing the event horizon of a black hole, while any body entering a wormhole could theoretically reverse its course. However, unlike black holes, wormholes are still purely theoretical objects. But physicists say some supermassive black holes may actually be wormholes. And it is their activity that would betray them.
Unusual gamma-ray emissions could reveal that what appear to be supermassive black holes are actually huge wormholes. Wormholes are tunnels in spacetime that can theoretically allow travel between two points in space. Einstein's theory of general relativity suggests that wormholes are possible, although their formation mechanism is still unclear.
Assuming that wormholes might exist, researchers have studied ways to distinguish a wormhole from a black hole. They zeroed in on supermassive black holes with masses millions to billions of times that of the Sun, thought to exist at the core of most, if not all, galaxies. For example, at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is Sagittarius A*, a black hole with a mass of about 4.5 million solar masses.
Any matter falling into the mouth of a supermassive wormhole would likely travel at extremely high speeds due to its strong gravitational fields.
Physicists modeled the dynamics of matter flowing through the two mouths of a wormhole to where those mouths meet, the wormhole's "throat." The result of these collisions is that spheres of plasma expand out of both mouths of the wormhole at relativistic speeds.
The researchers compared the emissions from these wormholes with those from active galactic nuclei (AGNs), whose electromagnetic emissions are far more intense than those from an entire classical galaxy. AGNs are usually surrounded by rings of plasma called accretion disks and can emit powerful astrophysical jets from their poles.
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Plasma spheres from wormholes can reach temperatures of around 18 billion °C. At such heat, the plasma would produce gamma rays with energies of 68 million electron volts. On the other hand, the accretion disks of AGNs do not emit gamma radiation, because their temperature is too low for that. Also, although AGN jets can emit gamma rays, these would mostly travel in the same direction as the jets — any motion in a sphere could suggest they are coming from a wormhole.
Moreover, if an AGN resided in a kind of galaxy known as a Seyfert type I galaxy — in which hot gas grows rapidly — previous work has suggested that it probably wouldn't generate a lot of gamma rays with energies of 68 million eV. If astrophysicists saw an AGN in a type I Seyfert galaxy with a significant spike in such rays, that could mean the apparent AGN was actually a wormhole, the researchers say.
