acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

ACM News

Physicists Create 'the Smallest, Crummiest Wormhole You Can Imagine'


View as: Print Mobile App Share:
Physicists reacted to the paper with interest and caution, expressing concern the public and media would mistakenly think actual physical wormholes had been created.

“What we have here in its construct and structure is a baby wormhole,” said Maria Spiropulu, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology.

Credit: Andrew Mueller/INQNET

In an experiment that ticks most of the mystery boxes in modern physics, a group of researchers announced on Wednesday that they had simulated a pair of black holes in a quantum computer and sent a message between them through a shortcut in space-time called a wormhole.

Physicists described the achievement as another small step in the effort to understand the relation between gravity, which shapes the universe, and quantum mechanics, which governs the subatomic realm of particles.

"This is important because what we have here in its construct and structure is a baby wormhole," said Maria Spiropulu, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and the leader of a consortium called Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics, which conducted the research. "And we hope that we can make adult wormholes and toddler wormholes step-by-step."

In their report, published Wednesday in Nature, the researchers described the result in measured words: "This work is a successful attempt at observing traversable wormhole dynamics in an experimental setting."

From The New York Times
View Full Article

 


 

No entries found

Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account