Expert: Tom Whiting - 3/6/2008

Question
To Whom it May Concern,

 Do you think there is any way a white hole could actually exist?

Sincerely,

Jana Hucker

Answer
Hi Jana,
No.  Not from a gravitational standpoint.  The term came up
(erronously) many years ago when distant quasars were first discovered and we didn't know what they were initially.
They were extremely white, hot, very energetic almost point-like sources, so they were initially nicknamed 'white holes' since we really didn't know what they were.  So the science fiction people started coming up with the idea that a black hole and a "white hole" could possibly connected by a time traveling "worm hole"...perhaps.

Well, turned out it was all a big sci-fi dream.  The "white holes"
(the quasars, standing for Quasi-stellar source) turned out to be just the cores of very very distant,
very active galaxies. Dubbed AGN's or Active Galactic Nuclei)
thought to contain a massive black hole in their cores with almost
continuous infalling stars being devoured by the massive central
black hole, with the subsequent release of energy in the form of
high speed jets out through the poles of the accretion disk around
the massive black hole, in the core of very distant galaxies, and
I mean 3-10 billion lightyears distant.
So, very quickly, the term white hole faded, and so did the idea
of the connecting worm holes at the macro-level.
{Real worm holes are thought to exist down at the very small
quantum level (way below the size of an atom) but not at our
standard macro-level.}
So for the moment, a white hole does not exist.
But small white dwarf stars (with it's high gravity, but not to the extent of a black hole) do exist, as does 10 mile diameter Neutron Stars, with their tremendous gravitational component, but those are other stories.

Hope this helps,
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA