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What would happen to matter within a wormhole that closes?

Physics Asked on July 19, 2021

We’re not sure if wormholes can be held open, but we know they can exist, at least on quantum levels. I just watched a video where a physicist mentions that even if we could hold one open, sending matter into it should cause the wormhole to break down.

That left me wondering what exactly would happen to the matter as a wormhole collapsed.

This thought brings up some seemingly anomolous scenarios, like if some particle or even perhaps a string from string theory is perfectly symetrically placed between the two halfs of space where the wormhole collapses, could half of the particle or string be on one side of the collapse and the other half on the other side?

What happens to something inside a wormhole if it collapses? Theoretically obviously, since we dont know how to create / test them yet. What does the math say?

One Answer

This is actually happens in the most commonly studied metric in all of general relativity, the Schwarzschild metric. It's often said to describe a black hole, which is of course true. However, this black hole actually connects two universes by a wormhole. The reason you can't get from one universe to the other is because the length of the wormhole expands too quickly, so you can't actually get to the other side. As the wormhole gets longer and thinner, eventually it gets to a radius of $0$ right in the middle, and pinches off. This is the singularity. The singularity then advances, eating up the now broken wormhole on both ends, until everything inside the black hole has gone into the singularity.

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Answered by user1379857 on July 19, 2021

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