Crossable wormholes may exist, but they are not very useful for space travel, say physicists | Physics

Harvard University physicist, Daniel Jafferis, and his colleagues showed that there could be wormholes, theoretical portals in space-time that could create shortcuts for long journeys through the universe.

"But do not pack your bags for a trip to the other side of the galaxy," said Dr. Jafferis.

"Although theoretically possible, it is not useful for humans to travel," said the study's author. It takes longer to cross these wormholes than to go straight, so they are not very useful for traveling in space. "

The new theory was inspired when Dr. Jafferis and his co-authors began to think about two quantum-entangled black holes formulated in the RE = EPR conjecture by physicists from the Princeton Institute of Advanced Stanford University.

Although this means that the direct connection between the black holes is shorter than the wormhole connection – and that, therefore, the wormhole path is not a shortcut – the theory gives new information on quantum mechanics.

"From an outside perspective, traveling through the wormhole equates to quantum teleportation using entangled black holes," said Dr. Jafferis.

He and his colleagues based their theory on a configuration designed in 1935 by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, consisting of a connection between two black holes (the term wormhole was created by the American physicist John Wheeler in 1957).

As the wormhole is traversable, it was a special case in which information could be extracted from a black hole.

"This gives a causal analysis of regions that would otherwise have been hidden, a window on the experience of an observer in space-time, accessible from the outside," said Dr. Jafferis.

Until now, one of the main obstacles to the formulation of crossworm holes was the need for negative energy, which seemed incompatible with quantum gravity.

However, the team overcame this problem by using quantum field theory tools, computing quantum effects similar to those of the Casimir effect.

"I think that will teach us a lot about gauge / gravity matching, quantum gravity, and maybe even a new way of formulating quantum mechanics," said Dr. Jafferis.

The physicists presented their results on April 13 at the April 2019 meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver, Colorado.

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Daniel L. Jafferis. Worm holes traversable. Bulletin of the American Society of Physics: April 2019 meeting of the APS, abstract # B02.00002