Portals between wormholes, or black holes, may still be stable, suggesting a wild new theory.
The findings contradict previous predictions that these fictitious shortcuts through space-time would soon collapse.
Sea changes are due to the small differences in relativistic mathematics used to describe such wormholes, which ultimately change our picture of how they behave. It happens to.
A series of metrics
First, a little background on how the general theory of relativity works. The theory of relativity is like a machine. When you place an arrangement of a particular object, for example mass or particles, the machine spits out how its collection behaves over time due to gravity. All general theories of relativity are based on the movement of space and time. Objects start at certain physical coordinates, move and end at other coordinates.
The rules of the general theory of relativity are fixed, but the theory itself provides a lot of freedom to describe those coordinates mathematically. Physicists call these various explanations “metrics.” Think of statistics as different ways to explain how to get to your grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving. These can be satellite-based addresses, latitudes and longitudes, or landmarks scribbled on napkins. Your criteria will be different in each case, but no matter which criteria you choose, you will end up with a big festival.
Similarly, physicists can use different criteria to explain the same situation. Just as you can start at an address and switch to a napkin to see if you are at the correct reference point, one measurement can be more useful than another.
Extended black hole
There are some potential criteria for black holes and wormholes. The most popular is the Schwarzschild metric, which is where black holes were first discovered. However, the Schwarzschild metric contains some crazy math. That metric does not work correctly at certain distances from a black hole, today known as the Schwarzschild radius or the event horizon.
Also, “malfunction” means that the metric is completely broken and it is no longer possible to distinguish between different points in space and time. However, there is another metric called the Edington Finkelstein metric. This explains what happens to a particle when it reaches the event horizon. The particles will fall straight through the black hole and will never be seen again. What does this all have to do with wormholes? The easiest way to build a wormhole is to extend the idea of a black hole with its mirror image, a white hole. This idea was first proposed by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, so the wormhole is sometimes referred to as the “Einstein-Rosen Bridge”. Black holes do not emit anything, but white holes do not. To create a wormhole, simply take a black hole and a white hole and connect their singularities (points of infinite density in the center). It creates a tunnel through space-time.
result? A tunnel that behaves very badly.
Narrow Path
With the existence of a theoretical wormhole, it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder what would happen if someone actually tried to get over it. This is where the mechanism of general relativity comes into play. Given this (very interesting) situation, how do particles behave? The standard answer is that wormholes are a nuisance. The white hole itself is unstable (probably not even present), and extreme forces within the wormhole cause the wormhole to stretch or break like a rubber band the moment it is formed. What happens if I try to send something? Well, congratulations.
However, Einstein and Rosen use the usual Schwarzschild metric to build wormholes, and most wormhole analyzes use the same metric. So Pascal Koiran, a physicist at the Lyon Higher Normal School in France, tried something else. Instead, use the Edington Finkelstein metric. His paper, which was published in the arXiv prepress database in October, will be published in a future issue of the Journal of Modern Physics D.
Koiran found that using the Eddington-Finkelstein metric makes it easier to trace the path of particles through virtual wormholes. He found that particles could cross the event horizon, enter the wormhole tunnel, and escape to the other side, all in a limited amount of time. Edington Finkelstein’s metrics did not work at that stage of the orbit.
Does this mean that the Einstein-Rosen Bridge is stable? Not perfect. The general theory of relativity teaches only about the behavior of gravity, not about other natural forces. For example, thermodynamics, the theory of heat and energy behavior, shows that white holes are unstable. And when physicists try to create a combination of black holes and white holes in the real universe using real materials, other mathematics suggest that energy density destroys everything.
However, Koylan’s results point out that it is not as devastating as the first appearance of wormholes, and that there may be stable paths through wormhole tunnels that are fully allowed by general relativity. It’s still interesting because it’s there.
If they could take us to my grandmother early.
