In my last post, I talked about the idea of close driving and whether it would one day be possible. Today I will talk about another trick faster than light: worms.
Worms are an old idea in a common relationship. It’s based on work by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, who tried to figure out how basic pieces might behave in a twisted twist. The idea was to treat antiparticle-grain pairs as two ends of a time pipe.
This Einstein-Rosen Bridge would look like a black hole at one end, and a black counter-hole, or white hole, at the other end.
The idea of the physics of grains never came out, but the work of other researchers prompted the study of ER bridges as a possible shortlist through space. If worms were easy to move, you could dig them through space like a worm digging a hole through an apple.
A removable worm would shorten through space. (ESO / L. Calçada)
It didn’t take long for theorists to find that this didn’t work. While worms are a legitimate solution to Einstein’s alliances, they fall apart so quickly that you wouldn’t have time to go through them. In general, worms cannot be moved.
Of course, it won’t be impossible to stop a continuous theory, and they soon worked out that you could make a worm by lining it up with some kind of negative energy. The only kind of negative energy that can be used for close driving. But as I said last time, there doesn’t seem to be an issue with negative mass / energy.
But all is not lost. We know that Einstein ‘s theory needs to break down at quantum blades because it is a classical theory. Apparently, there is some quantum theory that supersedes general relevance.
We do not yet have a full quantum integrity model, but we do have a number of approximate models that will put us in the right direction.
One of these models is called Einstein-Dirac-Maxwell theory. It is so named because it incorporates aspects of Einstein’s theory of gravity, Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, and Dirac’s theory of quantum grains. A team recently discovered a worm solution to the Einstein-Dirac-Maxwell joints.
The team found their worm solution easy to overcome. Moreover, the solution does not require any negative energy states. In principle, this would allow you to travel through the borehole without the need for a negative mass.
In small plates gravity must have a quantum nature. (Wolfram Physics Project)
The only catch is that you had to be in a quantum state. So microscopic lumps of atoms could travel through this wormhole, but not humans.
While this is an interesting work, it is only a toy model. There are many solutions to Einstein’s equations that cannot exist for reasons other than gravity. The team plans to examine their idea to see if their solution is still another impossible idea, or if there might be a way to create this type of quantum worm.
And if this idea works, it will still be easier to go through the eye of a needle than it will be to enter the farthest heavens.
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.