Though wormholes are still only theoretically possible, a team of researchers from Bulgaria’s University of Sofia think they have found a new way to find them.
Wormholes are theoretically possible shortcuts through space and time. Traditionally, sci-fi depictions show a spacecraft flying through or generating a wormhole to travel vast distances to distant regions of the cosmos in a short amount of time.
The problem is that we have just recently discovered the equipment necessary to directly witness black holes, despite the fact that they look extremely similar to wormholes. According to a New Scientist study, a group of experts now thinks that their mathematical model can help to distinguish between the two.
Black holes VS wormholes
Black holes are cosmic monsters that suck all matter & light in all surrounding. For years, physicists have speculated that in some situations, this stuff may be syphoned to “white holes” in other parts of the cosmos, which spew it out as particles & radiation.
Collectively, a black hole connected to a white hole is called a wormhole or Einstein-Rosen bridge. The theory posits that these objects could stretch infinite amounts of space-time, meaning they could bridge distant regions of the universe that would otherwise take eons to traverse by normal means.
Now researchers at Sofia University are theorizing that a wormhole’s “throat” may closely resemble previously discovered black holes, including Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy. Their new computer model, described in a new article in the journal Physical Review D, showed that the radiation emanating from black holes is almost impossible to differentiate from the radiation to is that it orbits outside of a wormhole.
The difference in the quantity of light polarisation emitted by a black hole and a wormhole, according to their model, is less than 4%.
“If you were nearby, you would find out too late”
While we don’t yet have the technology to distinguish between the two, researchers at the University of Sofia believe that one day we will be able to use an extremely precise instrument to measure light spilling out of black holes to confirm that they are, in fact, wormholes emitting electromagnetic radiation from a distant region of space.
“Wormholes were fully in the realm of science fiction ten years ago,” project leader Petya Nedkova of Sofia University told New Scientist. “They are now approaching the frontiers of science, and people are actively searching.”
Could we go to a black hole to see for ourselves as well? Sadly, Gaia BH1, the black hole that is nearest to Earth, is still 1,600 light-years distant in the constellation Ophiuchus. We might not even be able to travel the four light-years to Alpha Centauri, the star system closest to us.
Then there’s the fact that if astronauts ever travelled to a black hole, there’d only be one real way to determine whether it was a wormhole or not. “You’d find out too late if you were around,” Nedkova told New Scientist. “You’ll realise the difference when you either die or pass through.”
