They discover that wormholes can allow time travel

As is well known, wormholes are theoretically original “shortcuts” in the spatiotemporal fabric. And for nearly a century, physicists have wondered if these objects (never observed until now) could one day help us travel quickly from one place to another (or from one time to another) in the universe.

In its most spectacular form, in fact, a wormhole would allow a mass equivalent to that of a human to travel dozens of light-years in a single moment, or perhaps move freely in time, traversing its flow from the past into the future and back with absolute freedom.

Of course, for that, the first thing is to find one, something that hasn’t happened yet, although physicists are stubborn and keep trying. When they succeed, they hope, at least, to be able to study what happens in these exotic objects, where quantum physics is supposed to go hand in hand with Einstein’s general relativity, the two hitherto irreconcilable theories that describe the universe. in which we live

The key lies in quantum effects

At the deepest level of physics, the realm of subatomic particles, physics allows us to explore situations that are “non-trivial,” that is, they do not follow the logic we are used to in the macroscopic world around us. But there, at the lowest possible level of reality, quantum effects give time and distance a certain margin for manoeuvre. And that’s exactly where the study authors factor in.

As Albert Einstein showed, on the scale at which we humans move, space-time can contract and expand due to the effect of gravity. In this way, a very massive object (planet, star, galaxy…) curves space-time around it, forcing objects (moons, rays of light, etc.) to follow those curves.

But if we keep adding more and more mass at any one point, there will come a time when space-time will bend so much that it will reveal two outer surfaces. Surfaces that remain connected through a wormhole. Theoretically, matter cannot pass from one side to the other, but there are particles, at both ends, that are ‘entangled’ with each other and would therefore be closely related even though they are each at one end of the hole.

Quantum entanglement is an effect that has been studied extensively and reproduced in multiple laboratories. If we change the state of one of the entangled particles, the other will immediately respond and assume the same state, no matter how far it is from the first.

For decades, researchers have been searching for scenarios, both real and theoretical, that would allow quantum effects, and even entire particles, to make it through strange forms of space-time unscathed. Shapes like those inside a wormhole.

Annular wormhole

In their study, the researchers proposed the existence of something called a “ring wormhole”, different from the classical model and which would connect different “levels”, i.e. distant regions of the universe or even different universes.

Applying the right physics, these ring-shaped clumps can, according to the researchers, create some very interesting types of space-time distortions in what would otherwise be classically flat space-time. Any “hole” that connects two separate regions of the universe.

In their work, the authors have traveled in that opening from one side to the other and in different places. For example, what effect would another static block have on the loop? And what if the input loop or the output loop is in similar or different universes?

And so the team explored a number of different solutions, including one known as a “time-locked curve,” which describes an object or ray of light traveling along a line and returning to the same starting point. And not only in space, but also in time. Thinking about this possibility, the late Stephen Hawking said that during this “circular” journey, many obstacles would certainly arise that would prevent this cycle from occurring. Although who knows? The possibility exists, and physicists may at some point discover some “paradox” in the laws of physics that opens the doors to these flights, today science fiction