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posted by hubie on Friday November 18 2022, @02:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the time-to-fire-up-the-Rocinante dept.

"You'll get to know the difference when you either die or you pass through":

A team of physicists from Sofia University in Bulgaria say that wormholes, which are hypothetical tunnels linking one part of the universe to another, might be hiding in plain sight — in the form of black holes, New Scientist reports.

Black holes have long puzzled scientists, gobbling up matter and never letting it escape.

But where does all of this matter go? Physicists have long toyed with the idea that these black holes could be leading to "white holes," or wells that spew out streams of particles and radiation.

These two ends could together form a wormhole, or an Einstein-Rosen bridge to be specific, which some physicists believe could stretch any amount of time and space, a tantalizing theory that could rewrite the laws of spacetime as we understand them today.

Now, the researchers suggest that the "throat" of a wormhole could look very similar to previously discovered black holes, like the monster Sagittarius A* which is believed to be lurking at the center of our galaxy.

"Ten years ago, wormholes were completely in the area of science fiction," team lead Petya Nedkova at Sofia University told New Scientist. "Now, they are coming forward to the frontiers of science and people are actively searching."

[...] The only way to really tell for sure would be to scan these celestial oddities with an even higher-resolution telescope.

The other option, of course, would be to risk it all by flinging yourself into a black hole.

"If you were nearby, you would find out too late," Nedkova told the publication. "You'll get to know the difference when you either die or you pass through."

Also see: Wormholes Could Be Hiding in Plain Sight

Journal Reference:
Valentin Deliyski, Galin Gyulchev, Petya Nedkova, and Stoytcho Yazadjiev, Polarized image of equatorial emission in horizonless spacetimes: Traversable wormholes, Phys. Rev. D, 106, 2022. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.104024


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Friday November 18 2022, @08:46AM (2 children)

    by Opportunist (5545) on Friday November 18 2022, @08:46AM (#1280315)

    In some other universe, far, far away? Because we did find a few black holes, but none of those elusive fountains of matter and radiation. And wouldn't you think something that spews out matter and glows like a bonfire would be easier to detect than something that is black enough to even swallow the light?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday November 18 2022, @06:39PM (1 child)

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday November 18 2022, @06:39PM (#1280384)

    That's one of the obvious candidates - except that "far away" is probably meaningless in context. Distance is a property of the universe itself - seen from the outside a universe is likely a literal geometric point, with an infinite number capable of existing in a space of zero volume.

    In fact, such "bubble universes" are a possibility for pre-big-bang cosmological evolution - the theory being that such "bubbles" spawn a new universe with slightly different physical laws that the parent. There's a fair chance that the total energy of the universe is approximately zero (gravitational potential energy being inherently negative), so that a universe need only have some trigger-event to come into existence. Given enough time in such a scenario, eventually *some* of the universes spawned would have forces fine-tuned enough to be able to create atoms, planets, and even life.

    Otherwise, if a wormhole exit was in our universe, what would you expect it to look like? All the radiation, etc. that lets us spot black holes occurs in the accretion disc - the stuff that actually falls in would get spit out the other side would have already been cooling for however long it takes to pass through the wormhole - we'd see nothing more than a cloud of gas with no obvious source. Just one more nebula with no obvious remnant of a star that birthed it.

    • (Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday November 18 2022, @10:06PM

      by Opportunist (5545) on Friday November 18 2022, @10:06PM (#1280411)

      So that other universe would be where ours drains to?

      In other words ... it would be our universal sewer system?