Google's quantum computer suggests wormholes are real

It is not new that black holes, or wormholes (wormholes), are part of the human imagination — after all, they have been discussed since the 1940s, mainly in the academic field. Albert Einstein was one of the main names that pointed out the possibility of the existence of this space phenomenon, which dictates the behavior of matter when moving at unimaginable speeds and how the force of gravity would be capable of blurring the line between space and time. And now, thanks to Google's quantum computer, this phenomenon is closer to being proven

Understand the concept developed by Einstein

In the field of quantum physics, Einstein he brought forward several theories, many of which he himself said would be fundamentally incorrect, but worth studying. And isn't it that one of this genius's most famous theorems, the existence of wormholes, could be proven correct?

That's what some of the most established universities in the United States are saying. Researchers from Caltech, from MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Harvard, together with some of the greatest minds in the world Google and fermilab reached this conclusion using a device called Sycamore Quantum Processor, developed by Google, to generate and control something equivalent to a wormhole.

Its operation is based on two of the theorems that Einstein worked on together with Nathan Rose, in 1935. One of them deals with the event called singularity, which happens when the total mass of a dead star in space equals zero, based on the infinities predicted in the center of black holes.

On top of that, the pair worked on solutions using complex mathematical formulas; in one of these cases, to replace two singularities interconnected in a tube, they developed the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges, or, as they are commonly known, wormholes. 

In the theory called ER, the two scientists said that, in principle, an object could enter one side of the tube and exit through the wormhole, even if they were a huge distance from each other. This idea served as fruit for many science fiction authors, including Gene Roddenberry, from the many Star Trek series, since with it spaceships could travel unimaginable distances instantly. 

Discovery raises some questions

There are, however, many practical issues surrounding this spacewalk. One of the main ones is the instability of these holes, which in theory would only be controlled by vast amounts of negative energy. In the same year as the ER theory, Einstein joined forces with another physicist, Boris Podolsky, who immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union.

Together, Einstein and Podolsky worked on so-called quantum entanglement, or the behavior of two objects when they come into contact with each other in a way that their physical properties combine. Even without knowing what these properties are, the concept has become an important aspect of the scientific field. It generated a paradox known as EPR: in it, it is known that even separating two objects, placing them at a colossal distance and measuring the physical properties of one of them, you would immediately know those of the other body, even without knowing what they are before measuring the two.

These two questions, ER and EPR, have hung in the air for decades, but in recent years, researchers have come to the conclusion that the two have a very deep connection, so much so that it was determined that they are both functionally identical. Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind, renowned physicists and successors of Einstein, continued the work of researching the subject, with Maldacena presenting his discovery very succinctly: ER = EPR. 

If this finding is indeed correct, even without generating and maintaining wormholes, there is a way to measure an event using the EPR theory, something that has been done for a long time. And that's where we come to today's news. On a article published on the platform Nature, scientists came up with a simpler way to address this issue, using a computerized model in a quantum system, through Sycamore. 

The result of the experiment was exactly what they expected, and they were even able to simulate the conditions where they would be able to see a theoretical wormhole, through positive and negative energy. Based on this, they were able to determine that even if the positive is unstable, the negative, consequently, would be stable, exactly what the ER theory determines.

Knowing that the theories are the same, they came to the conclusion that wormholes are not mere products of fiction but something mathematically possible. Of course, they weren't able to generate one and no practical experiments were done; everything was determined by quantum behavior, so don't get excited because it's not time yet to travel through the stars.

Conclusion

The main thing about this discovery is that now researchers will have a new field to work on not only ER theory and EPR paradox, but also about the theory of quantum gravity, which deals with the extension of gravity on a tiny scale. Scientists have been searching for a solution for many, many years, and thanks to new revelations, it will be possible to arrive at answers that until a few years ago were considered impossible.

LEARN MORE

reviewed by Glaucon Vital in 29 / 1 / 24.