2007/04/20 by Thibault Damour, Sergey N. Solodukhin · 16 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.76.024016
published as Phys.Rev.D76:024016,2007 · 13 pages, no figures, Latex
arxiv created 2007/04/20 · openalex publication_date 2007/07/27 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We study to what extent wormholes can mimic the observational features of black holes. It is surprisingly found that many features that could be thought of as ``characteristic'' of a black hole (endowed with an event horizon) can be closely mimicked by a globally static wormhole, having no event horizon. This is the case for the apparently irreversible accretion of matter down a hole, no-hair properties, quasi-normal-mode ringing, and even the dissipative properties of black hole horizons, such as a finite surface resistivity equal to 377 Ohms. The only way to distinguish the two geometries on an observationally reasonable time scale would be through the detection of Hawking's radiation, which is, however, too weak to be of practical relevance for astrophysical black holes. We point out the existence of an interesting spectrum of quantum microstates trapped in the throat of a wormhole which could be relevant for storing the information lost during a gravitational collapse.