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rotating maelstroms, they discovered some curious
features.
These included, according to Curiel, wormholes
that could lead you out of the black hole and into
another universe, as well as “closed timelike curves”
— looping paths in space-time that would eventu-
ally take a traveler back to the time and place she
began. It sounded like science fantasy, but Einstein’s
and Kerr’s equations suggested that these were real
possibilities.
Not everyone was on board with such fanciful
features lurking within black holes. In fact, most
physicists regarded them as “pathologies of the Kerr
solution,” Chesler says, so unstable as to be effectively
meaningless. “Like a pencil standing on its tip, if
you disturb a black hole in the slightest way, those
features will disappear.”
That, at least, was the presumption when he and
his colleagues decided to carry out the first detailed
numerical simulations of Kerr black hole interiors,
building on the work of others in the field. With any
luck, they’d figure out exactly what goes on inside.
GETTING TO WORK
They had their work cut out for them. “Although
Einstein’s equations have been around for more than
100 years, they are horrendously difficult to solve,”
Chesler says. Curiel calls them “probably the most
mathematically complex equations in physics.”
OUT THERE
Wormhole
Future
Present
Curved
space-time
CLOSED TIMELIKE CURVE
As the rules of
physics break down
within black holes,
unusual conditions
could result in
time travel.