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One Theory Beyond the Standard Model Could Allow Wormholes that You Could Actually Fly Through
Wormholes are a popular feature in science fiction, the means through which spacecraft can achieve faster-than-light (FTL) travel and instantaneously move from one point in spacetime to another.
And while the General Theory of Relativity forbids the existence of "traversable wormholes", recent research has shown that they are actually possible within the domain of quantum physics.
The only downsides are that they would actually take longer to traverse than normal space and/or likely be microscopic.
In a new study performed by a pair of Ivy League scientists, the existence of physics beyond the Standard Model could mean that there are wormholes out there that are not only large enough to be traversable, but entirely safe for human travelers looking to get from point A to point B.
The study, titled "Humanly traversable wormholes," was conducted by Juan Maldacena (the Carl P. Feinberg Professor of theoretical physics from the Institute of Advanced Study) and Alexey Milekhin, a graduate of astrophysics student at Princeton University. The pair have written extensively on the subject of wormholes in the past and how they could be a means for traveling safely through space.
[...] However, Maldacena and Milekhin emphasize that their study was conducted for the purpose of showing that traversable wormholes can exist as a result of the "subtle interplay between general relativity and quantum physics."
In short, wormholes are not likely to become a practical way to travel through space – at least, not in any way that's foreseeable. Perhaps they would not be beyond a Kardashev[*] Type II or Type III civilization, but that's just speculation. Even so, knowing that a major element in science fiction is not beyond the realm of possibility is certainly encouraging!
Preprint Reference:
Juan Maldacena and Alexey Milekhin, Humanly traversable wormholes, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.06618.pdf
[*] Kardashev Scale
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @07:10PM
Fuller and Wheeler showed that they are unstable and that their ends pinch off faster than light can traverse them. Ever since that paper, people have been looking for the conditions for them to be traversable. Kip Thorne found a solution in the 80s, but it required unphysical space-time stress tensors.