Tuesday, 8 January 2013

general relativity - Are astronomers researching or trying to find signs of worm holes?

This has been considered long ago (Here's a paper talking about this).



Wormholes are not forbidden by physics, but the creation of wormholes is iffy ground. THere are two possible paths one can take to create a wormhole:



  • Choose a pre-existing wormhole in the quantum foam and "expand" it by feeding it exotic matter.

  • "Tear and sew up" space — we're not sure if this is allowed by physics, as it ventures into the area of physics that we don't have an adequate explanation for.

Whatever it is, the creation and sustenance of a wormhole requires us to have control over exotic matter (in this case, particles/waves with negative mass/energy density). Vacuum fluctuations already have regions of negative energy density, but they're an uncontrollable quantum phenomenon by current technology.



"Faster than light travel" is a different matter, though. While wormholes let one jump to another point in space, one does not attain a speed greater than c whilst in them.

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