We finally have a way to tell if that thing in space is a black hole or a wormhole: just watch how it shreds a star.
March 30, 2026
Original Paper
Relativistic Tidal Disruption in Black Hole and Wormhole Backgrounds
arXiv · 2603.26442
The Takeaway
The paper simulates how 'tidal disruption events'—where a star is shredded by gravity—differ between these two objects. If we observe a star being stripped of its gas in a specific way that leaves a larger-than-expected core, it could be the first smoking-gun evidence that wormholes actually exist.
From the abstract
Black holes (BHs) and wormholes (WHs) are characterized by distinct spacetime geometries, whose differences become pronounced close to the central objects. A useful way to probe such differences is via the dynamics of stellar tidal disruption events in the regime of strong gravity. Here, using a general relativistic smoothed particle hydrodynamics code inspired from an algorithm developed by Liptai and Price, we perform a suite of numerical simulations of solar mass polytropic stars in the backg