Does an evaporating black hole tunnel into a white hole? · revision history
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Accepted · first revision · record
- Title
- Does an evaporating black hole tunnel into a white hole?
- Plain
- Some quantum gravity models predict that the collapsed matter bounces back, turning the black hole into a white hole that releases what fell in. The predicted lifetime, and therefore any observable signal, depends on poorly controlled quantum effects.
- Precise
- Loop quantum gravity and related models propose a quantum transition from black hole to white hole (Haggard and Rovelli 2014) with a lifetime scaling between $M^{2}$ and $M^{3}$ in Planck units. Compute the transition amplitude from a well-defined quantum gravity path integral and determine whether this channel dominates over Hawking evaporation. Answer yes or no, with the lifetime as a function of $M$.
- Settled by
- A controlled amplitude calculation fixing the tunneling lifetime, compared with the Hawking evaporation time of order $G^{2} M^{3}/(\hbar c^{4})$.
- Kind
- well-posed
- Answer type
- yes-no
- References
- (empty)
- Literature status
- open
- Status note
- Lifetime estimates remain model-dependent as of 2026.
- Posed since
- 2014