Question: what is the basics of a worm hole and how is it different to a black hole?

James Holloway answered on 18 Mar 2013:

A blackhole is a region of space where the gravity is so intense that nothing, not even light can escape from it. There is a surface around each blackhole called the ‘event horizon’. If you cross this you can never come back!

To understand what a wormhole is you have to first know what a ‘whitehole’ is. You can think of a whitehole as literally a blackhole in reverse. Matter and light cannot enter a whitehole but can escape.

Now, a wormhole is a theoretical idea that is a blackhole connected to a whitehole. In theory, you’d be able to send something into a blackhole and see it come out of the white hole.

There are problems though, the intense gravity in either hole would destroy anything going through. Whiteholes can only exist if coupled with a blackhole that has been there forever, not one that formed from a dead star (this is a result of some very unpleasant complex maths). Also, we havn’t seen a whitehole in nature nor do we know of anyway one can form. So i don’t think we’ll ever be able to use wormholes!