Wormholes or tunnels in the fabric of spacetime are terribly unstable. As soon as at least one photon hits them, the wormhole closes instantly. New research suggests that the secret to a stable wormhole is in their form.
Wormholes, if they exist, will allow us to travel from point A to some extremely distant point B without worrying about travel time. The transition would be incredibly rapid. A real cheat code of the universe. See a star millions of light years away? You could reach it in just a few minutes if you had a wormhole leading to it. Unsurprisingly, this is a very popular science fiction topic.
But wormholes are not just a figment of our imagination, created in order to cut out all the boring scenes of interstellar travel (and this is centuries and millennia). We learned about them thanks to Einstein's general theory of relativity: matter and energy bend and deform the fabric of space-time, the curvature of which tells matter how to move.
So when it comes to wormholes, you just have to ask yourself: is it possible to warp spacetime in such a way that it overlaps itself, forming a tunnel between two distant points? The answer was given in the 1970s - yes. Wormholes are quite possible and not forbidden by general relativity.
But wormholes are very unstable because, in essence, they are made up of two black holes touching each other and forming a tunnel. That is, we are talking about points of infinite density, surrounded by areas known as the event horizon - one-sided barriers of space. If you cross the event horizon of a black hole, you will never go back.
To solve this problem, the entrance to the wormhole must be outside the event horizon. This way you can cross the wormhole without hitting the barrier. But as soon as you enter the wormhole located between the huge masses, the gravity of your presence will distort the wormhole tunnel, collapsing it. When closed, the tunnel will leave behind two lonely black holes, separated by a space in which the remains of your body will hang.
But it turns out there is a way to place the entrance to the wormhole further from the event horizon and make the tunnel stable enough for you to get through it. This requires a material with negative mass. This is a common mass, but with a minus sign. And if enough negative mass was collected in one place, it could be used to keep the wormhole open.
As far as we know, there is no substance with negative mass. Anyway, there is no evidence that it is. Moreover, if it were, it would violate many laws of the Universe, such as inertia and conservation of momentum. For example, if you kicked a ball with negative mass, it would fly backward. If you place a negative mass object next to a positive mass object, they will not gravitate. On the contrary, objects will repel each other, accelerating instantly.
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Since negative mass seems to be a myth, it can be assumed that wormholes hardly exist in the universe.
But the idea of wormholes draws on the mathematics of general relativity - our current understanding of how gravity works. More precisely, our current, incomplete understanding of how gravity works.
We know that general relativity does not describe all gravitational interactions in the universe. It gives in to strong gravity with small bodies. For example, in front of the bowels of black holes. To solve this problem, we need to turn to the quantum theory of gravity, which would combine our understanding of the world of subatomic particles with our broader understanding of gravity. But every time scientists try to piece it together, everything just disintegrates into dust.
However, we do have some clues on how quantum gravity might work and we can understand wormholes. It is possible that a new and improved understanding of gravity will show that we do not need matter with negative mass at all, and that stable, traversable wormholes are real.
A couple of theorists from the University of Tehran in Iran have published a new study of wormholes. They applied some techniques that allowed them to understand how quantum mechanics can change the standard big picture of relativity. Scientists have found that traversable wormholes can exist without a substance with negative mass, but only if the entrance does not represent an ideal sphere, but is slightly elongated.
The results are interesting, but there is one catch. These hypothetical traversable wormholes are tiny. Very tiny. The wormholes will be only 30% longer than the Planck length - 1.6x10 (to the power of −35) meters. The traveler should be the same size. Yes, besides, this microscopic traveler must fly at almost the speed of light.
Despite the problems that have surfaced, the study opens up a small rift, so to speak, in the view of the existence of wormholes, which can be expanded with further research.