What Is A White Hole? Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4's Space Anomaly Explained
by Jeremy Mathai · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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Shields up! This article contains spoilers for the "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4 finale, "Tomorrow's Enterprise."
Just when you thought "Star Trek" couldn't possibly come up with another mysterious instance of unexplained cosmic phenomena to throw at our favorite characters and put them in mortal peril, "Strange New Worlds" finds a way. More than at any other point in the Paramount+ series' run, Season 4 has increased the frequency of so-called gimmick episodes and genre-jumping adventures to even greater heights. But the finale brings us back to very familiar franchise waters: time travel.
Of course, even this temporal obstacle gets its own classic twist. Trekkies will be delighted to learn that this is the moment when the "Strange New Worlds" and "The Original Series" timelines finally converge — though not how any of us could've expected. We know that the doomed "Star Trek: Year One" spin-off isn't happening, despite the fact that the fifth and final season of "Strange New Worlds" is set to tee up the further adventures of the USS Enterprise under the command of James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley). Here, we receive just a glimpse of that possibility, and it's all thanks to a cosmic quirk that might make your brain hurt if you think about it too much.
Meet the spectacular white hole, the red-headed step-sibling of the much more famous black hole. In actuality, this description is a bit of a misnomer. As shown in "Tomorrow's Enterprise," white holes are believed to be the diametric opposite of black holes — a scientific theory that our crew is currently tasked with testing in the field. Things soon get weird when Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) experiences a "temporal incident" and, naturally, only exploring the white (and black) hole can save the crew.
Strange New Worlds' white hole makes time travel possible -- here's how
You didn't think "Strange New Worlds" Season 4 was done with time-travel shenanigans, did you? Traditionally, this franchise has found countless ways to plunge its characters into the past or the distant future — from interstellar squalls to futuristic portals to the capricious acts of godlike entities. We can now add another item to that ever-expanding list: white holes. And while previous installments (like J.J. Abrams' 2009 "Star Trek" film) have done similar things with black holes, this is the first in the franchise to tackle a much more theoretical concept.
Here's how it works. Uhura soon realizes that the strange transmission from the midst of the white hole has given her a flashforward to a year in the future, along with the knowledge that something terrible happens to our beloved Scotty (Martin Quinn). Once she investigates further and makes contact with the ghostly voice of, um, herself, things begin to click into place. After the opening credits sequence rolls, we relive the episode through the perspective of the future Enterprise crew ... with the Starfleet vessel (now firmly in the timeline of "The Original Series" and under the command of Paul Wesley's Captain Kirk) parked in front of a black hole. Yes, as you might've suspected, this is hardly a coincidence.
As Spock (Ethan Peck) points out, black holes and white holes are theorized to be "different sides of the same coin." In layperson's terms, this operates under the assumption that singularities are wormholes burrowing through space-time, with black holes and white holes marking entry and exit points. It makes for a convenient sci-fi plot device, particularly when both versions of Uhura end up swapping timelines halfway through the finale. But is this scientifically accurate?
The white hole/black hole premise of Strange New Worlds' Season 4 finale is (loosely) based on real scientific theories
At the risk of overstating matters, fans may be surprised to find out how often "Star Trek" actually abides by real science. That's obviously not always the case, as any number of bizarre and outrageous episodes can prove, but it happens more than one might think. (Remember when we asked a real astrophysicist about interstellar travel in "Trek"?) So, that brings us to the question of the day: What does actual science have to say about the existence of white holes?
The answer to that may, once again, come as a shock to some. According to one Space.com article, the premise of "Tomorrow's Enterprise" is quite sound — not just the idea that a white hole would be the exact inverse of a black hole, but that it actually operates in much the same way as in the "Strange New Worlds" Season 4 finale. According to the article:
"Physicists describe a white hole as a black hole's 'time reversal,' a video of a black hole played backwards, much as a bouncing ball is the time-reversal of a falling ball. While a black hole's event horizon is a sphere of no return, a white hole's event horizon is a boundary of no admission — space-time's most exclusive club."
That certainly sounds like it lines up with the past/future, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff going on here ... although we're not likely to read any reports of cosmic space babies being born within such entities anytime soon. But, hey, that goofiness is what "Star Trek" is all about! While we wait for our reality to catch up to the fictional utopia, we're happy to get our quantum-entanglement fix through "Strange New Worlds."