Wormholes: what is it - a myth, a gateway to other worlds or a mathematical abstraction? What is a wormhole
Humanity is exploring the world around us at an unprecedented speed, technology does not stand still, and scientists are exploring with their sharp minds. the world around us. Undoubtedly, space can be considered the most mysterious and little-studied area. This is a world full of mysteries that cannot be understood without resorting to theories and fiction. A world of mysteries that go far beyond our understanding.
Space is mysterious. He keeps his secrets carefully, hiding them under the veil of knowledge inaccessible to the human mind. Humanity is still too helpless to conquer Space, like the already conquered world of Biology or Chemistry. All that is currently available to man are theories, of which there are countless.
One of the greatest mysteries of the Universe - wormholes.
Wormholes in space
So, a Wormhole (“Bridge”, “Wormhole”) is a feature of the interaction of two fundamental components of the universe - space and time, and in particular - their curvature.
[The concept of “Wormhole” in physics was first introduced by John Wheeler, the author of the theory of “charge without charge”]
The peculiar curvature of these two components allows one to overcome colossal distances without spending a colossal amount of time. To better understand the principle of operation of such a phenomenon, it is worth remembering Alice from Through the Looking Glass. The girl's mirror played the role of the so-called Wormhole: Alice could, just by touching the mirror, instantly find herself in another place (and if we take into account the scale of space, in another universe).
The idea of the existence of wormholes is not just a whimsical invention of science fiction writers. Back in 1935, Albert Einstein co-authored works proving the possibility of so-called “bridges.” Although the Theory of Relativity allows this, astronomers have not yet been able to detect a single Wormhole (another name for a Wormhole).
The main problem of detection is that, by its nature, the Wormhole absorbs absolutely everything, including radiation. And it doesn’t “let” anything out. The only thing that can tell us the location of the “bridge” is gas, which, when it enters the Wormhole, continues to emit X-ray radiation, unlike when it enters the Black Hole. Similar behavior of gas was recently discovered in a certain object Sagittarius A, which leads scientists to believe that there is a Wormhole in its vicinity.
So is travel through Wormholes possible? In fact, there is more fantasy here than reality. Even if we theoretically assume that a Wormhole will be discovered soon, modern science would be faced with a lot of problems that she is not yet able to cope with.
The first stone on the path to mastering the Wormhole will be its size. According to theorists, the first burrows were less than a meter in size. And only, relying on the theory of an expanding universe, can we assume that the Wormholes increased along with the universe. This means they are still increasing.
The second problem on the path of science will be the instability of Wormholes. The ability of the “bridge” to collapse, that is, to “slam shut,” negates the possibility of using or even studying it. In fact, the lifespan of a Wormhole can be tenths of a second.
So what will happen if we discard all the “stones” and imagine that a person nevertheless made a passage through the Wormhole. Despite the fiction that talks about the possibility of returning to the past, it is still impossible. Time is irreversible. It moves in only one direction and cannot go back. That is, “seeing yourself young” (as, for example, the hero of the film “Interstellar” did) will not work. This scenario is guarded by the theory of causality, unshakable and fundamental. The transfer of “oneself” into the past implies the ability of the hero of the journey to change it (the past). For example, kill yourself, thus preventing yourself from traveling into the past. This means there is no possibility of being in the future, where the hero came from.
There are many interesting things in outer space that are still incomprehensible to humans. We know the theory about black holes and even know where they are. However, of greater interest are wormholes, with the help of which movie characters move throughout the Universe in seconds. How do these tunnels work and why is it better for a person not to go into them?
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The films Star Trek, Doctor Who and the Marvel universe have one thing in common: traveling through space at enormous speed. If today it takes at least seven months to fly to Mars, then in the world of science fiction this can be done in a split second. High-speed travel is carried out using so-called wormholes (wormholes) - this is a hypothetical feature of space-time, which is a “tunnel” in space at each moment in time. To understand the principle of operation of the “hole”, you just have to remember Alice from “Through the Looking Glass”. There, the role of a wormhole was played by a mirror: Alice could instantly find herself in another place just by touching it.
The picture below shows how the tunnel works. In films, this is what happens: characters board a spaceship, quickly fly to the portal and, upon entering it, immediately find themselves in the right place, for example, on the other side of the Universe. Alas, even in theory it works differently.
Photo source: YouTubeGeneral relativity allows for the existence of such tunnels, but so far astronomers have not been able to find one. According to theorists, the first wormholes were less than a meter in size. It can be assumed that with the expansion of the Universe they also increased. But let's get to the main question: even if wormholes exist, why is using them a very bad idea? Astrophysicist Paul Sutter explained what the problem is with wormholes and why it is better for a person not to go there.
Wormhole theory
First, it’s worth finding out how black holes operate. Imagine a ball on a stretched elastic fabric. As it approaches the center, it decreases in size and at the same time becomes denser. The fabric bends more and more under its weight, until finally it becomes so small that it simply closes over it, and the ball disappears from sight. In the black hole itself, the curvature of space-time is infinite - this state of physics is called a singularity. It has neither space nor time in human understanding.
Photo source: Pikabu.ru According to the theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than light. This means that nothing can get out of this gravitational field once it gets into it. A region of space from which there is no exit is called a black hole. Its boundary is determined by the trajectory of the light rays that were the first to lose the opportunity to escape. It's called the event horizon of a black hole. Example: looking out of the window, we do not see what is beyond the horizon, and a conventional observer cannot understand what is happening inside the boundaries of an invisible dead star.
There are five types of black holes, but we are interested in the stellar-mass black hole. Such objects are formed at the final stage of the life of a celestial body. In general, the death of a star can result in the following things:
1. It will turn into a very dense extinct star, consisting of a series chemical elements, is a white dwarf;
2. A neutron star - has the approximate mass of the Sun and a radius of about 10-20 kilometers, inside it consists of neutrons and other particles, and outside it is enclosed in a thin but hard shell;
3. Into a black hole, the gravitational attraction of which is so strong that it can suck in objects flying at the speed of light.
When a supernova occurs, that is, the “rebirth” of a star, a black hole is formed, which can only be detected due to the radiation emitted. It is she who is capable of generating a wormhole.
If you imagine a black hole as a funnel, then an object falling into it loses its event horizon and falls inside. So where is the wormhole? It is located in exactly the same funnel, attached to the black hole tunnel, where the exits face outward. Scientists believe that the other end of the wormhole is connected to a white hole (the opposite of a black hole, into which nothing can fall).
Why you don't need to go into a wormhole
In white hole theory, not everything is so simple. Firstly, it is not clear how exactly to get into a white hole from a black one. Calculations around wormholes show that they are extremely unstable. Wormholes can evaporate or “spit out” a black hole and trap them again.
If a spaceship or a person falls into a black hole, he will get stuck there. There will be no way back - from the side of the black hole, for sure, because he will not see the event horizon. But the unfortunate person can try to find a white hole? No, because he does not see boundaries, so he will have to “fall” towards the singularity of a black hole, which may have access to the singularity of a white one. Or maybe not.
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Stills from the movie "Interstellar" with a wormhole (2014)
The space epic “Interstellar” (we are talking about a science fiction film released in October 2014) tells about astronauts who, in search of options for saving humanity, discover the “road of life” represented by a mysterious tunnel.
This passage inexplicably appears near Saturn and in space-time leads a person to a distant galaxy, thereby providing a chance to find planets inhabited by living beings. Planets that can become a second Home for people.
The hypothesis about the existence of a movie tunnel, called a “wormhole” or “wormhole” by scientists, was preceded by a real physical theory, which was proposed by one of the first astrophysicists and a former professor at the California Institute of Technology, Kip Thorne.
Kip Thorne helped astronomer, astrophysicist, popularizer of science and one of those who initiated the project to search for extraterrestrial intelligence - Carl Sagan - to create a model of a wormhole for his novel Contact. The persuasiveness of the visual images in the film for space scientists is so obvious that astrophysicists admit that these are perhaps the most accurate images of wormholes and black holes that exist in world cinema.
There is only one “small” detail in this film that haunts the attentive viewer: flying in something like this on a space express is, of course, great, but will the pilots be able to not give up during this very interstellar movement?
The creators of the space blockbuster chose not to mention that the original theory of wormholes belonged to other leading theorists of astrophysics - Albert Einstein began to develop it together with his assistant Nathan Rosen. These scientists tried to solve Einstein's equations for general theory relativity so that the result is a mathematical model of the entire Universe, along with the forces of gravity and elementary particles, which form matter. In the process of all this, an attempt was made to imagine space as two geometric planes connected to each other by “bridges.”
In parallel, but independently from Einstein, similar work was carried out by another physicist, Ludwig Flamm, who in 1916, also while solving Einstein’s equations, made his discovery of such “bridges.”
All three “bridge builders” suffered a common disappointment, since the “theory of everything that exists” turned out to be unviable: such “bridges” in theory did not act at all like real elementary particles.
Nevertheless, in 1935, Einstein and Rosen published a paper where they outlined their own theory of tunnels in the space-time continuum. This work as conceived by the authors, it was obviously supposed to encourage other generations of scientists to think about the possibility of applying such a theory.
Physicist from Princeton University John Wheeler at one time introduced the designation “wormhole” into the vocabulary, which was used in the early years to study the construction of models of “bridges” according to the Einstein-Rosen theory. Wheeler noticed: such a “bridge” is painfully reminiscent of a passage gnawed by a worm in a fruit. Let's imagine an ant crawling from one side of a pear to the other - it can either crawl along the entire curved surface, or, taking a shortcut, cross the fruit through a wormhole tunnel.
And if we imagine that our three-dimensional space-time continuum is the skin of a pear, that as if a curved surface covers the “mass” with much large sizes? Perhaps the Einstein-Rosen “bridge” is the very tunnel that cuts through this “mass”; it allows starship pilots to reduce the distance in space between two points. Probably in this case we are talking about the present mathematical solution general theory of relativity.
According to Wheeler, the mouths of the Einstein-Rosen “bridges” are very reminiscent of the so-called Schwarzschild black hole - simple matter that has a spherical shape and is so high density that the force of its attraction cannot be overcome even by light. Astronomers have a strong opinion about the existence of “black holes”. They believe that these formations are born when very massive stars “collapse” or die out.
How substantiated is the hypothesis that a “black hole” is the same as a “wormhole” or a tunnel that allows long-distance space flights? Maybe, from a mathematical point of view, this statement is true. But only in theory: there will be no survivors in such an expedition.
The Schwarzschild model represents the dark middle of a “black hole” as a singular point or central neutral stationary ball with infinite density. Wheeler's calculations show the consequences of what happened in the event of the formation of such a “wormhole” when two singular points (“Schwarzschild black holes”) in two distant parts of the Universe converge in its “mass” and create a tunnel between them.
The researcher found out that such a “wormhole” is of an unstable nature: a tunnel first forms and then collapses, after which only two singular points (“black holes”) remain again. The procedure for the appearance and slamming of the tunnel takes place so lightning fast that even a ray of light cannot penetrate through it, not to mention an astronaut trying to slip through - he will be completely swallowed by the “black hole”. No joke - we are talking about instant death, because gravitational forces crazy power will tear a person to pieces.
"Black holes" and "white spots"
At the same time as the film, Thorne released the book The Science of Interstellar. In this work he confirms: “Any body - living or inanimate - at the moment the tunnel collapses will be crushed and torn into pieces!”
For another, alternative option- Kerr’s rotating “black hole” - researchers of “white spots” in interplanetary travel have found a different solution to the general theory of relativity. The singularity inside Kerr’s “black hole” has a different shape, not spherical, but ring-shaped.
Her certain models can give a person a chance to survive in interstellar flight, but only if the ship passes this hole exclusively through the center of the ring. Something like space basketball, only the price of a hit here is not extra points: what’s at stake is the existence of the starship and its crew.
The author of the book “The Science of Interstellar,” Kip Thorne, doubts the state of this theory. Back in 1987, he wrote an article about flying through a “wormhole,” where he pointed out an important detail: the neck of the Kerr tunnel has a very unreliable section, which is called the “Cauchy horizon.”
As the corresponding calculations show, as soon as the body tries to pass past this point, the tunnel collapses. Moreover, subject to some stabilization of the “wormhole”, it, as quantum theory says, will immediately be filled with fast high-energy particles.
Consequently, as soon as you stick into Kerr’s “black hole,” you will be left with a dry, fried crust.
The reason is “terrible long-range action”?
The fact is that physicists have not yet adapted the classical laws of gravity to quantum theory- this section of mathematics is too difficult to understand, and many scientists have never given it an exact definition.
At the same time, Princeton scientist Juan Malsadena and his Stanford colleague Leonard Susskind suggested that wormholes are apparently nothing more than the material embodiment of entanglement at the time when quantum objects are connected - regardless of whether they are distant from each other friend.
Albert Einstein had his own name for such entanglement - “terrible action at a distance”, great physicist and did not think to agree with the generally accepted point of view. Despite this, many experiments have proven the existence of quantum entanglement. Moreover, it is already used for commercial purposes - it protects online data transmission, for example, banking transactions.
According to Malsadena and Susskind, in large volumes, quantum entanglement can affect changes in the geometry of the space-time continuum and contribute to the emergence of “wormholes” in the form of linked “black holes.” But the hypothesis of these scientists does not allow for the emergence of traversable interstellar tunnels.
According to Malsadena, these tunnels, on the one hand, do not provide the opportunity to fly faster than the speed of light, and on the other, they can still help astronauts meet there, inside, with someone “other.” There is, however, no pleasure from such a meeting, since the meeting will be followed by inevitable death from a gravitational impact at the center of the “black hole.”
In a word, “black holes” are a real obstacle to human exploration of space. In this case, what might “wormholes” be? According to Avi Loeb, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, people have many options in this regard: since there is no theory that combines general relativity with quantum mechanics, we are not aware of the full range of possible space-time structures where wormholes may appear "
They're collapsing
But here, too, not everything is so simple. The same Kip Thorne in 1987 established the peculiarity for any “wormhole”, corresponding to the general theory of relativity, to collapse if it is not tried to be kept open due to the so-called exotic matter, which has negative energy or antigravity. Thorne assures: the fact of the existence of exomatter can be established experimentally.
Experiments will show that quantum fluctuations in a vacuum are apparently capable of creating negative pressure between two mirrors that are placed very close to each other.
In turn, according to Avi Loeb, if we observe the so-called dark energy, then these studies will give even more reason to believe in the existence of exotic matter.
A scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says that “...we have seen galaxies throughout recent cosmic history moving away from us at an increasing speed over time, as if they were under the influence of antigravity - this accelerating expansion of the Universe can be explained if the Universe is filled with a substance with negative pressure, exactly the material that is needed to create a wormhole...”
At the same time, both Loeb and Thorne believe that even if a wormhole could appear naturally, it would require a mass of exotic matter. Only a highly developed civilization will be capable of accumulating such an energy reserve and subsequent stabilization of such a tunnel.
There is also “no agreement among the comrades” in their views on this theory. Here's what their colleague Malsadena thinks of Loeb and Thorne's findings, for example:
“...I believe that the idea of a stable, passable wormhole is not clear enough and, apparently, does not correspond to the known laws of physics...” Sabine Hossenfelder from the Scandinavian Institute theoretical physics in Sweden and completely smashes Loeb-Thorn’s conclusions to smithereens: “...We have absolutely no evidence of the existence of exotic matter. Moreover, there is a widespread belief that it cannot exist, because if it did exist, the vacuum would be unstable..."
Even if such exotic matter existed, Hossenfelder develops his idea, moving inside it would be extremely unpleasant: each time the sensations would be directly dependent on the degree of curvature of the space-time structure around the tunnel and on the energy density inside it. Sabine Hossenfelder concludes:
“...This is very similar to “black holes”: the tidal forces are too great and a person will be torn to pieces...”
Paradoxically, despite his contribution to the creation of the film Interstellar, Thorne also does not particularly believe that such a passable tunnel could ever appear. And the possibility of astronauts passing through it (without any harm!) - and even more so. He himself admits this in his book:
“...If they [tunnels] can exist, then I very much doubt that they can arise naturally in the astrophysical Universe...”
...So then believe in science fiction films!
Astrophysicists are sure: there are tunnels in space through which you can move to other Universes and even to other times. Presumably, they were formed when the Universe was just beginning. When, as scientists say, space “boiled” and curved.
These cosmic “time machines” were given the name “wormholes.” A “hole” differs from a black hole in that you can not only get there, but also come back. The time machine exists. And this is no longer a statement by science fiction writers - four mathematical formulas, which so far prove in theory that you can move both into the future and into the past.
And a computer model. This is roughly what a “time machine” in space should look like: two holes in space and time connected by a corridor.
“In this case we are talking about very unusual objects that were discovered in Einstein’s theory. According to this theory, in a very strong field, space is curved, and time either twists or slows down, these are fantastic properties,” explains Igor Novikov, deputy director of the Astrospace Center of the Lebedev Physical Institute.
Scientists call such unusual objects “wormholes.” This is not a human invention at all; so far only nature is capable of creating a time machine. Today, astrophysicists have only hypothetically proven the existence of “wormholes” in the Universe. It's a matter of practice.
The search for wormholes is one of the main tasks of modern astronomy. “They started talking about black holes somewhere in the late 60s, and when they made these reports, it seemed like science fiction. It seemed to everyone that this was absolute fantasy - now it’s on everyone’s lips,” says Anatoly Cherepashchuk, director of the Astronomical Institute of Moscow State University named after Sternberg. - So now “wormholes” are also science fiction, however, the theory predicts that “wormholes” exist. I’m an optimist and I think that the wormholes will also be opened someday.”
"Wormholes" belong to this mysterious phenomenon like “dark energy”, which makes up 70 percent of the universe. “Dark energy has now been discovered - it is a vacuum that has negative pressure. And in principle, “wormholes” could be formed from a state of vacuum,” suggests Anatoly Cherepashchuk. One of the habitats of “wormholes” is the centers of galaxies. But the main thing here is not to confuse them with black holes, huge objects that are also located at the center of galaxies.
Their mass is billions of our Suns. At the same time, black holes have a powerful gravitational force. It is so large that even light cannot escape from there, so it is impossible to see them with a regular telescope. The gravitational force of wormholes is also enormous, but if you look inside the wormhole, you can see the light of the past.
“In the center of galaxies, in their cores, there are very compact objects, these are black holes, but it is assumed that some of these black holes are not black holes at all, but entrances to these “wormholes,” says Igor Novikov. Today, more than three hundred black holes have been discovered.
From Earth to the center of our Milky Way galaxy is 25 thousand light years. If it turns out that this black hole is a “wormhole”, a corridor for time travel, humanity will have to fly and fly to it.
Science
The recently released visually arresting film Inresttellar is based on real scientific concepts such as rotating black holes, wormholes and time dilation.
But if you are not familiar with these concepts, you may be a little confused while watching.
In the film, a team of space explorers goes to extragalactic travel through a wormhole. On the other side they find themselves in another solar system with a rotating black hole instead of a star.
They are in a race against space and time to complete their mission. This kind of space travel may seem a little confusing, but it is based on basic principles of physics.
Here are the main ones 5 concepts of physics Things you need to know to understand Interstellar:
Artificial gravity
The biggest problem we humans face with long-term space travel, is weightlessness. We were born on Earth and our body has adapted to certain gravitational conditions, but when we are in space long time, our muscles begin to weaken.
The characters in the movie Interstellar also face this problem.
To cope with this, scientists are creating artificial gravity in spacecraft. One way to do this is to spin up the spaceship, just like in the movie. The rotation creates a centrifugal force that pushes objects toward the outer walls of the ship. This repulsion is similar to gravity, only in the opposite direction.
This is a form of artificial gravity you experience when you are driving around a small radius curve and feel as if you are being pushed outward, away from the center point of the curve. In a rotating spaceship the walls become the floor for you.
Rotating black hole in space
Astronomers, albeit indirectly, have observed in our Universe rotating black holes. Nobody knows what's at the center of a black hole, but scientists have a name for it -singularity .
Rotating black holes distort the space around them differently than stationary black holes.
This distortion process is called "inertial frame entrainment" or the Lense-Thirring effect, and it affects how the black hole will look by distorting space, and more importantly the space-time around it. The black hole you see in the movie is enoughvery close to the scientific concept.
- The spaceship Endurance is heading towards Gargantua - fictional supermassive black hole 100 million times the mass of the Sun.
- It is 10 billion light years away from Earth and has several planets orbiting it. Gargantua spins at an astonishing 99.8 percent of the speed of light.
- Garagantua's accretion disk contains gas and dust with the temperature of the Sun's surface. The disk supplies the Gargantua planets with light and heat.
The complex appearance of the black hole in the film is due to the fact that the image of the accretion disk is distorted by gravitational lensing. Two arcs appear in the image: one formed above the black hole, and the other below it.
wormhole
The wormhole or wormhole used by the crew in Interstellar is one of the phenomena in the film that whose existence has not been proven. It is hypothetical, but very convenient in the plots of science fiction stories where you need to overcome a large space distance.
Just wormholes are a kind of shortest path through space. Any object with mass creates a hole in space, which means space can be stretched, warped, and even folded.
A wormhole is like a fold in the fabric of space (and time) that connects two very distant regions, which helps space travelers overcome long distance in a short period of time.
The official name for a wormhole is an “Einstein-Rosen bridge,” as it was first proposed by Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen in 1935.
- In 2D diagrams, the mouth of a wormhole is shown as a circle. However, if we could see the wormhole, it would look like a sphere.
- On the surface of the sphere, a gravitationally distorted view of space on the other side of the “hole” would be visible.
- The dimensions of the wormhole in the film: 2 km in diameter and the transfer distance is 10 billion light years.
Gravitational time dilation
Gravitational time dilation is a real phenomenon observed on Earth. It arises because time is relative. This means that it flows differently for various systems coordinates
When you are in a strong gravitational environment, time moves slower for you compared to people in a weak gravitational environment.
