Theoretical Physicist
Appearances
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
I think, according to the physics, there is a non-zero chance that we could find a wormhole. So you're saying there's a chance. I think if we find a wormhole, that means someone else created it.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
General relativity is, in a nutshell, it is geometry. Cubes, we're thinking about spheres, cylinders. Pyramids. Pyramids, tetrahedrons, pick your favorite geometry. But there is a specific set of dimensions where general relativity works, and it does not. We have found that in dimensions of three, so we're talking about X, Y, Z, up, down, left, right, And the added dimension of time, right?
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
Physics tends to work, or our reality tends to be well-behaved, like a well-behaved child, right? But the difference here is that general relativity describes these geometries differently. Using curved surfaces or curved spacetime, how does event A and event B relate to each other through a curved surface, which is just a webbing of multiple events in between the two?
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
Earth going around the sun, if the earth has mass, the sun has mass, the earth is actually going to be more attracted to the sun. They both will pull on each other, but the earth sits in the curved surface that the sun creates, and that's why we're being attracted to it. That's general relativity in a nutshell.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
So very plainly, I would kind of describe the wormhole like a subway tube. So you get in on one side. So let's say you're getting in on Penn Station in New York and you get off at Grand Central. But the in-between, right? So just like the subway is going underground, the wormhole is kind of like what we call like a hyperspace. So you're not actually...
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
You know, traveling, like if you were on the surface, you're kind of tunneling through space-time itself and then coming out on another side. So it's a very weird kind of like physical attribute.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
I think the rubber sheet analogy is a scam. I think it's because it doesn't actually. So again, like our definition of general relativity, it doesn't give you the accurate description. This is an introductory to curved surfaces and things like that. Yeah. But it doesn't actually show you the dimensionality of space and time.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
So instead of using the rubber sheet, I tended to use putty. You can ball it up into whatever shape you want. and then deform it and curve it and spin it around. And now you're getting all of the physics that's kind of involved in the different configurations of space and time, which is general relativity.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
This is why, again, I say that the rubber sheet analogy is a scam because we assume that black holes are actually holes in space. They're not. They're spheres. And so they're actually squished spheres because they're rotating, right?
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
So it's a great image. And we've seen these. We've taken pictures of black holes and galaxies and seen that these are circles. These are spherical objects.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
And so then the next thing would be, okay, for a wormhole… What would it look like if I entered a wormhole from one side? Would it be a hole or would there be just some tube sitting in space? Well, no, it would be one sphere connected to another sphere.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
So one of the requirements for a wormhole is you need exotic matter.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
Yeah. So you need matter that's pushing out. You need matter to keep the wormhole, so to speak, open. And that means that that is matter that's not trying to clump together like our matter that we know of. You know, if you drop a ball, it's going to fall towards the earth. But this matter, if you drop a ball, it will repel. It will go in the opposite direction.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
It's very much like a bridge. You can do this thought experiment yourself. You take a sheet of paper, you fold it kind of like in half and you poke a pencil hole right through the middle. And that is essentially a wormhole. It connects two points in space and time together.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
It's like anti-gravity, but in a sense that we would need, you know, very weird atoms or something to hold the wormhole together. Hold it together and keep it open. So you need a force, you know, if you will, to push against the fabric of space-time to hold it open so that you can go through. Right. The other thing is, is that you need kind of like, so to speak, a...
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
I would say like a fake extra dimension so that you can travel from point A to point B. If point A is in four dimensions and point B is in four dimensions, how do you get from A to B if you only have four in between, right? So you would need kind of like an extra dimension to travel through and then fall back down into four.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
It could have a fifth dimension, right? So that you can have the ability to travel through it. And this is where we get the idea of like hyperspace.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
Star Trek, Star Wars, it's all in there. They went to a hyperspace. That was an extra dimension larger than the one that they actually lived in. Wow. To travel from point A to point B. Yeah.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
Yeah, it's entirely based on our understanding of our reality. And so according to physics and the standard model of everything, right, we have not seen any possible evidence or any clues the way matter behaves to suggest that there would be exotic matter without it escaping. to use for us specifically that wormhole.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
So that is why, you know, most people, if you ask them, well, what would happen if we found a wormhole? That means, well, we found evidence of another civilization. Wow. Or we put it there from the future, right? Which is another possibility.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
It could be. But all in all, it does suggest that something created it and not it being kind of naturally occurring because it seems unnatural to exist. Wow.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
Yeah, it's mainly because we can't test it. So it's still kind of looked at as like a science fiction. I wouldn't say it's fringe because we have real mathematical solutions that we can kind of simulate, if you will. But in terms of something being viably testable, because that's the scientific method, we have to recreate it. You can't test for a wormhole. You can't even create one experimentally.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
And so that is, I would say, the pushback or the grief against wormhole research is that, you know, this is, it seems like it is decades, if not centuries of technology ahead of us. And so then the question is, well, why would you study wormholes? Well- I would say, why would you not? Why not? That's kind of giving us another clue about how our universe could behave.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
And then given the fact that we've only seen 5% of our observable universe, the other 95% could have wormholes in it, and we just not looked hard enough.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
Because at one point, space travel was fiction. At one point, the cell phone was fiction. The computer was fiction. Quantum mechanics was fiction. So I look at all of these theories, and this is kind of my motivation as a theoretical physicist, is that someone has to work on these problems but do it creatively to generate the advancements in technologies decades later.
Short Wave
Could Wormholes Exist?
And so that is why I work on black holes and jet physics and things like that. And why one would work on wormholes, because we need somebody to solve these very, very fundamental or basic problems and do it creatively and innovatively. Right. So that we can have something to advance our technologies to later on.