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How do you spot a wormhole? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey, it Jorhan Daniel here, and we want to tell
0:03
Speaker 1: you about our new book. It's called Frequently Asked Questions
0:06
Speaker 1: about the Universe because you have questions about the universe,
0:09
Speaker 1: and so we decided to write a book all about them.
0:12
Speaker 1: We talk about your questions, we give some answers, we
0:14
Speaker 1: make a bunch of silly jokes as usual, and we
0:17
Speaker 1: tackle all kinds of questions, including what happens if I
0:20
Speaker 1: fall into a black hole? Or is there another version
0:22
Speaker 1: of you out there that's right? Like usual, we tackle
0:25
Speaker 1: the deepest, darkest, biggest, craziest questions about this incredible cosmos.
0:29
Speaker 1: If you want to support the podcast, please get the
0:31
Speaker 1: book and get a copy not just for yourself, but
0:34
Speaker 1: you know, for your nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, parents, dogs, hamsters,
0:39
Speaker 1: and for the aliens. So get your copy of Frequently
0:42
Speaker 1: Asked Questions about the Universe is available for pre order now,
0:46
Speaker 1: coming out November two. You can find more details at
0:49
Speaker 1: the book's website, Universe f a Q dot com. Thanks
0:53
Speaker 1: for your support, and if you have a hamster that
0:55
Speaker 1: can read, please let us know. We'd love to have
0:57
Speaker 1: them on the podcast. Hey or hey, would you be
1:10
Speaker 1: willing to take the ultimate cosmic bungee jump. I do
1:15
Speaker 1: like to bungee jump. But is there a safety equipment
1:18
Speaker 1: here involved? Do I get to wear a helmet and
1:20
Speaker 1: have some liability insurance? Oh no, there are absolutely no guarantees.
1:24
Speaker 1: It's just you and a wormhole. You're gonna take the jump,
1:28
Speaker 1: just me and the warm hole, and let even close
1:30
Speaker 1: in my wearing clothes. All right, I'll give you a space, dude.
1:34
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's a tough question, you know. I mean,
1:37
Speaker 1: on the one hand, there could be something amazing on
1:39
Speaker 1: the other side. On the other hand, I could, you know,
1:42
Speaker 1: be shredded to bits before I even go in, or
1:45
Speaker 1: maybe the thing will collapse while I'm going through it,
1:47
Speaker 1: or maybe i'll I don't know, take me to a
1:49
Speaker 1: black hole. All right, Well, you're standing on the edge.
1:52
Speaker 1: Time to make your decision? Are you going in? I
1:54
Speaker 1: think I'll be polite and let the physicists go in
1:56
Speaker 1: first after you. Daniel, this is this our sign, just
2:00
Speaker 1: not the subjects. Well, you can multitask, then you can
2:03
Speaker 1: be the first to study it, sending my paper from
2:05
Speaker 1: within the wormhole. You can have a loophole within the wormhole.
2:24
Speaker 1: Hi am or Hamman cartoonists and the creator of PhD comments. Hi,
2:27
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at
2:30
Speaker 1: U c Irne. And I've never written a paper from
2:33
Speaker 1: inside a wormhole? Interesting? What holes have you written papers
2:36
Speaker 1: from inside of? Sometimes my office feels like a black hole.
2:39
Speaker 1: You know, he can't actually get out. Oh, no information
2:44
Speaker 1: comes in. Grad students go in, nothing comes out. Undergrads
2:47
Speaker 1: come in, but they do escape, and usually with actually
2:49
Speaker 1: more information than they came in. So maybe my office
2:52
Speaker 1: is actually a white hole. Yeah, maybe you're just admitting
2:54
Speaker 1: hawking radiation or Hawking graduate students, whites and radiation or
2:58
Speaker 1: Daniel tegious physics. It is a white holy because your
3:01
Speaker 1: your wife, your son of white. But welcome to our podcast,
3:05
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
3:08
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we emit all kinds of crazy
3:11
Speaker 1: radiation from our brains into yours. We try to boil
3:15
Speaker 1: down everything in the universe and explain what we know
3:17
Speaker 1: and what we don't know to you, because the universe
3:20
Speaker 1: presents enormous, cosmic, amazing mysteries that are just fun to
3:24
Speaker 1: think about, fun to explore, fun to wonder about, and
3:27
Speaker 1: that's what we do with this podcast, is that we
3:29
Speaker 1: marin it in the joy of our cluelessness and the
3:32
Speaker 1: small amount of knowledge that we do have about the universe,
3:35
Speaker 1: and share all of it with you. Yeah, it is
3:37
Speaker 1: a wondrous universe, and we like to dive in and
3:40
Speaker 1: take a journey and try to worm all of this
3:43
Speaker 1: information and knowledge into your ears and into your brains.
3:47
Speaker 1: You could say we are creating an informational wormhole from
3:50
Speaker 1: our brains to yours. Yeah, we're connecting all of these
3:53
Speaker 1: brains across the planet together in a way right through
3:56
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation. Absolutely, And you know that's mostly a joke,
3:59
Speaker 1: but there are people out there who say that every
4:02
Speaker 1: bit of quantum entanglement, every bit of quantum interaction, is
4:05
Speaker 1: actually a mini wormhole between particles. And so while we
4:08
Speaker 1: joke about it, it could technically actually be true that
4:11
Speaker 1: we are creating wormholes from our brains to our listeners. Yeah.
4:15
Speaker 1: And so the universe has been surprising ever since we
4:18
Speaker 1: started studying in with interesting and incredible things like black
4:21
Speaker 1: holes and quasars and nutron stars, and so people and
4:24
Speaker 1: scientists wonder if there are more interesting kinds of things.
4:28
Speaker 1: We still haven't seen out there. We know there are
4:30
Speaker 1: things out there we haven't seen. Every time we turn
4:32
Speaker 1: on a new kind of eyeball look out in the
4:34
Speaker 1: universe and the new telescope, we find things out there
4:37
Speaker 1: that we never expected. So the story of the universe
4:40
Speaker 1: is one of constant surprise, of constantly going beyond the
4:43
Speaker 1: edge of our imagination and shocking us with the crazy
4:47
Speaker 1: things that reality has waiting for us. Yeah, we are
4:50
Speaker 1: eager to discover these crazy surprises. And one of the
4:53
Speaker 1: things that might be out there there are pretty interesting
4:55
Speaker 1: and could actually solve a lot of problems is this
4:58
Speaker 1: concept of a wormhole. Oh yeah, what kind of problems
5:01
Speaker 1: could wormhole solve? Like vacuum cleaners, Well, you know, I
5:04
Speaker 1: could fertilize our space compost. That's what warms do, and
5:08
Speaker 1: they could feed the space birds. That brings up an
5:11
Speaker 1: interesting question because in compost piles it's mostly the warm castings,
5:15
Speaker 1: to use the fly phrase, that fertilize the ground. And
5:18
Speaker 1: so are you suggesting that wormholes also like have some
5:21
Speaker 1: sort of product. Yeah, if you come out the other
5:23
Speaker 1: end of a wormhole, you are technically warmhole poop. You're
5:26
Speaker 1: transformed into something and nourishing now to fertilize the rest
5:31
Speaker 1: of space, and you probably have been scrambled, and so
5:33
Speaker 1: you are there for universe compost. I guess you could
5:36
Speaker 1: say that actually we are all made out of stars
5:39
Speaker 1: that have been composted right to allow for refertilization, and
5:43
Speaker 1: so we are all made out of star compost. I
5:46
Speaker 1: think we're pushing out the analogy. But the idea is
5:48
Speaker 1: that there might be wormholes out there. And you know,
5:50
Speaker 1: I guess the problems I was thinking about was space travel.
5:52
Speaker 1: You know, like, how are we ever going to get
5:54
Speaker 1: to another galaxy that's millions of light years away, or
5:58
Speaker 1: even just to the other side of our galaxy, which
6:00
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of light years away, Like even if
6:02
Speaker 1: you went at the speed of light, which is impossible,
6:05
Speaker 1: it would still take four hundred thousand years to get
6:07
Speaker 1: to the outside. Yeah, space is impossibly vast, and the
6:11
Speaker 1: speed of lights, though it seems fast, it's actually slow
6:14
Speaker 1: compared to the distances involved. So you're right, Actually getting
6:17
Speaker 1: around this incredible universe would require millions of years. And
6:21
Speaker 1: so if we could somehow connect places in space from
6:24
Speaker 1: here to there, so the distances between them were shorter
6:27
Speaker 1: than we originally thought we could drive through a loophole
6:31
Speaker 1: using wormholes to get there, and so indeed, it would
6:34
Speaker 1: be exciting if wormholes were there, But on the other hand,
6:37
Speaker 1: it might be dangerous. It would mean that other places
6:39
Speaker 1: in the universe could come to find us more rapidly.
6:42
Speaker 1: What if we just don't answer the door, you know,
6:44
Speaker 1: or page the wormho on our Yeah, I don't know.
6:47
Speaker 1: The wormholes have doors or locks on them, right, We
6:50
Speaker 1: can't just like somebody's ringing the doorbell on the other side.
6:52
Speaker 1: You can't just like, you know, not answer it. Well,
6:55
Speaker 1: in movies and science fiction movies, they use wormholes a lot.
6:57
Speaker 1: I feel especially they're recently right, I feel like they
7:00
Speaker 1: don't use warp drives anymore than now. They use wormholes.
7:03
Speaker 1: And it always looks like a giant ring that opens
7:06
Speaker 1: up some kind of like energy door, and then you
7:08
Speaker 1: go through the door and you appear on the other
7:10
Speaker 1: side in another part of the galaxy. It's like star
7:12
Speaker 1: Gate or something. Yes, star Gate that was the original wormhole, right,
7:15
Speaker 1: And they're all over the place in Rick and Morty
7:17
Speaker 1: if you watch that shows, it's like wormhole Bananza man.
7:19
Speaker 1: So they're used a lot, and they seem pretty simple
7:22
Speaker 1: on TV and on the movie screen, right, you just
7:24
Speaker 1: kind of walk through them. Yeah, you can like look
7:27
Speaker 1: through them, you can toss stuff through them. They seem
7:30
Speaker 1: to just sort of like connect to places in space
7:32
Speaker 1: and in time, and often they like not surrounded by anything,
7:36
Speaker 1: you know, there's just there or maybe they have like
7:37
Speaker 1: a small mechanical frame for whatever device is creating them.
7:41
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're pretty simple stuff. And so that would
7:43
Speaker 1: solve a lot of problems in terms of space travel
7:46
Speaker 1: and galactic travel and universe travel. But I guess the
7:49
Speaker 1: question is do they really exist and if they did,
7:53
Speaker 1: could we make one or find one at all? Right,
7:56
Speaker 1: it's a fun question like what if there are wormholes
7:59
Speaker 1: all over the universe? Where if they exist naturally, would
8:02
Speaker 1: we even know? Would it be possible, could there be
8:05
Speaker 1: one floating around in our solar system? How could we
8:08
Speaker 1: even tell? So to be on the podcast, we'll be
8:10
Speaker 1: asking the question, how do you spot a wormhole? How
8:18
Speaker 1: do you find a spot on a wormhole? Or how
8:20
Speaker 1: do you find a spot on a wormhole? No, it's
8:22
Speaker 1: more like you're driving down the freeway and you're looking
8:24
Speaker 1: for an exit, you know, so you're like, where's my exit.
8:27
Speaker 1: So now you're like, I gotta get to Alpha Centauri.
8:29
Speaker 1: Where is the nearest wormhole? It's like, where's this nearest
8:31
Speaker 1: subway station in Manhattan or something. You know, you got
8:34
Speaker 1: to look for the little sign and tells you they're
8:36
Speaker 1: stepped down. Just follow the rats. So the question is
8:39
Speaker 1: how do you find a wormhole? Especially, I guess even
8:42
Speaker 1: more difficult this how do you find a wormhole that
8:44
Speaker 1: takes you where you want to go? Yeah, that is
8:46
Speaker 1: a good question. I think let's start with like finding
8:48
Speaker 1: wormholes at all, and then we'll talk about planning trips
8:51
Speaker 1: and you know, bringing much. Well, well, I kind of
8:55
Speaker 1: want to know where I'm going for a Daniel, you
8:56
Speaker 1: mean we're just going to jump into this podcast without
8:58
Speaker 1: knowing where we're going. That's another really funny question. But
9:02
Speaker 1: you know, look, we'll pack enough snacks so we'll be
9:04
Speaker 1: fine no matter where we end up. All right, that's good.
9:06
Speaker 1: So anyways, it's usually we were wondering how many people
9:09
Speaker 1: out there maybe had an idea about how to find
9:11
Speaker 1: a warmhole or had heard of an idea about how
9:14
Speaker 1: to find one. So Danny went out there into the
9:16
Speaker 1: internet to ask people, could we ever detect a nearby wormhole,
9:21
Speaker 1: And so in the depths of these strange times, I'm
9:24
Speaker 1: very grateful to everybody who's answering questions online and participating
9:28
Speaker 1: in the podcast. We are soon opening up campus here
9:31
Speaker 1: you see irvines. I'll be walking around campus asking people
9:34
Speaker 1: in person. But if you'd like to participate online, you
9:37
Speaker 1: are still very welcome. Just right to me. Two questions
9:40
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it
9:42
Speaker 1: for a second. If you are looking for a warmhole,
9:44
Speaker 1: how would you find it? Here's what people had to say.
9:47
Speaker 1: Probably it's emitting some kind of radiation. If it's a wormhole,
9:51
Speaker 1: it's probably emitting some kind of lights. And maybe if
9:55
Speaker 1: it's interacting with other very massive things than some gravitational radiation.
10:00
Speaker 1: What is lately a lot of movies showing UFOs and
10:07
Speaker 1: it looks like the Navy said they confirmed that they
10:12
Speaker 1: are UFOs that they know. I don't know what they are.
10:16
Speaker 1: Probably somebody came through a wormhole and forgot to close it. Well,
10:20
Speaker 1: technically there's no way to know. Well, aless, you on
10:24
Speaker 1: Earth and you have a very talent the hole which
10:26
Speaker 1: would take you. If outside this window there was a
10:30
Speaker 1: worm hole, how would you know there was a worm
10:32
Speaker 1: all over there well afternoons, open the window and watch.
10:37
Speaker 1: That's true. I do not think we could detect a
10:41
Speaker 1: nearby wormhole. Hmm, interesting question. I don't know if we
10:47
Speaker 1: could be able to detect a wormhole because I don't
10:49
Speaker 1: even know if they made any light or radiation. So
10:55
Speaker 1: I actually think if there were a wormhole nearby that
11:01
Speaker 1: we probably wouldn't be able to detect it, unless maybe
11:05
Speaker 1: we were super close and could observe some of the
11:07
Speaker 1: effects directly. I'm not sure we wouldn't be able to
11:10
Speaker 1: detect it, but we might be able to observe it.
11:14
Speaker 1: For instance, if there was a new group of stars
11:18
Speaker 1: or a new constellation of stars that we've not seen before,
11:23
Speaker 1: maybe that could lead to the discovery of a wormhole.
11:28
Speaker 1: I think one possible way to do it is to
11:31
Speaker 1: basically shoot beam of light and kind of measure how
11:35
Speaker 1: far it goes into that warm hole. But I'm actually
11:38
Speaker 1: thinking about it again. Maybe a better response would be
11:41
Speaker 1: if we could detect the gravity coming from that location.
11:46
Speaker 1: Um that we did that we think that holds there probably,
11:49
Speaker 1: I think is the best response here. Well, I guess yes, Um,
11:52
Speaker 1: we would see the gravitational distortion. If there's something behind it,
11:58
Speaker 1: a cluster of stars or something, than we would see
12:01
Speaker 1: a sort of lensing effect. Yeah, if it collides with
12:04
Speaker 1: something big then like another wormhole, I guess we could
12:07
Speaker 1: have gravitational waves to see them. But I guess that's it,
12:13
Speaker 1: all right, A lot of polarized questions. People are like yes,
12:16
Speaker 1: some people are like no, possible. Nobody said like maybe maybe,
12:21
Speaker 1: I don't know. There need to be a lot of
12:23
Speaker 1: confidence here. Yeah, some people are skeptical that wormholes couldn't
12:25
Speaker 1: even exist in our universe, right, right, And we have
12:28
Speaker 1: a whole podcast about what a warm hole is, right, absolutely,
12:32
Speaker 1: we do. We talked about the science of it. We
12:34
Speaker 1: have another podcast about white holes, and lots of podcasts
12:37
Speaker 1: about black holes and all these fun concepts. Which holes
12:40
Speaker 1: haven't we talked about so many holes that we should
12:43
Speaker 1: never talk about. Yeah, it's not that kind of podcast.
12:48
Speaker 1: We're not explaining that kind of universe. No, We've done
12:51
Speaker 1: the white, the black, the worm There's no gray holes
12:54
Speaker 1: in physics as far as I'm aware. Blue holes, red holes.
12:57
Speaker 1: Somebody's got to come up with the theory of blue
12:58
Speaker 1: holes and red holes. Should just go with that. You know,
13:01
Speaker 1: do it the other way around. Start with a cool
13:02
Speaker 1: name and then form a physics theory around it. What
13:05
Speaker 1: do you mean, start the other way around? That's how
13:07
Speaker 1: they usually start. Man people like supersymmetry. Is that a thing,
13:11
Speaker 1: Let's make that a thing that sounds cool. That sounds cool,
13:14
Speaker 1: Let's devote my life to it. And for example, Higgs
13:17
Speaker 1: obviously had a name before he had a particle, right,
13:19
Speaker 1: so he's like, I'm gonna invent the Higgs boson whatever
13:22
Speaker 1: it is. Interesting. He knew when he was little that
13:25
Speaker 1: he was going to discover that the story is totally bunk.
13:28
Speaker 1: He was not such an immodest person. He didn't name
13:30
Speaker 1: it the Higgs boson. Somebody else coined that phase later
13:33
Speaker 1: in the literature. So I do not mean to malign
13:35
Speaker 1: Peter Higgs. I see, well, in your case, you should
13:37
Speaker 1: just study white holes because your name is white Sun,
13:40
Speaker 1: so he could be the whites and white hole. No,
13:43
Speaker 1: I want to discover a particle and call it the
13:44
Speaker 1: white song. Oh there you go, So I already got
13:47
Speaker 1: my name picked out. I just haven't found any particles yet.
13:51
Speaker 1: But then you then you're gonna have anti white sons.
13:56
Speaker 1: Isn't that you aren't you an anti whit sun. I'm
14:00
Speaker 1: not an anti white sun. I'm a supersymmetry. Yeah, I'm
14:03
Speaker 1: a s white sun. There you go, a supersymmetric whit sun,
14:07
Speaker 1: like the other side of the coin. There you go. Together,
14:10
Speaker 1: we complete the universe. But I think we should recap
14:12
Speaker 1: today what a wormhole is because there might be people
14:15
Speaker 1: out there who didn't listen to that podcast episode. So
14:18
Speaker 1: I guess for our listeners, Daniel, how would you explain
14:21
Speaker 1: what a wormhole is? Yeah, and I agree it's important
14:24
Speaker 1: before we talk about how we find that we talk
14:26
Speaker 1: about what exactly it is, because understanding what it is
14:29
Speaker 1: and what it does is going to be crucial for
14:31
Speaker 1: figuring out how to see it. So the simplest way
14:34
Speaker 1: to think about a wormhole is just a connection between
14:37
Speaker 1: two points in space time. And you know, we're used
14:40
Speaker 1: to stuff being connected, but usually those connections are simple.
14:43
Speaker 1: Like you are in one point in space, you're connected
14:46
Speaker 1: to the points in space around you, meaning you can
14:49
Speaker 1: get to them from here. You can go forwards, you
14:51
Speaker 1: can go backwards, you can go up, you can go down.
14:53
Speaker 1: You're like connected to the nearby points in space time.
14:56
Speaker 1: And so now imagine if instead of just being connected
14:59
Speaker 1: to things that are around you, you're somehow also connected
15:03
Speaker 1: to something which otherwise is very very far away. These
15:06
Speaker 1: are like non trivial connections. Instead of spacetime just being
15:10
Speaker 1: like a nice mesh where everything is just connected to
15:13
Speaker 1: the things right next to it, Instead you have these
15:15
Speaker 1: weird shortcuts where one point in space is connected to
15:18
Speaker 1: something which is otherwise very very far away. Right. That's
15:21
Speaker 1: a pretty mind blowing concept, And a lot of people
15:24
Speaker 1: use this analogy of like living in the roll of
15:26
Speaker 1: toilet paper, right, Like, if our universe is sort of
15:29
Speaker 1: like if you imagine it to be like a sheet
15:31
Speaker 1: of paper, if you bring it down to two dimensions,
15:34
Speaker 1: like we're living on a sheet, and then what happens
15:36
Speaker 1: if you like bend the sheet and make two points
15:39
Speaker 1: touch each other that are on paper far away from
15:42
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, well, you just came up with another
15:44
Speaker 1: whole theory. This is Jorge's toilet whole theory of the universe. Yeah. No,
15:49
Speaker 1: I definitely have it on my bucket list to invent
15:51
Speaker 1: any toilet. And these are helpful analogies, but they can
15:55
Speaker 1: also be a little bit misleading. That analogy is helpful
15:58
Speaker 1: because it makes you think about how points in space
16:01
Speaker 1: that are far away can be close together. If you
16:03
Speaker 1: think in another dimension, like you have a sheet of
16:06
Speaker 1: paper and you have two points in space that are
16:08
Speaker 1: far apart. Now fold that paper, so those two points
16:11
Speaker 1: are close together. The thing that's misleading or confusing is
16:14
Speaker 1: that the connection is now in some third dimension. You're
16:17
Speaker 1: like folding this two D sheet of paper and a
16:18
Speaker 1: third dimension bringing it closer in that third dimension. The
16:22
Speaker 1: difference is that our space time doesn't fold in some
16:25
Speaker 1: higher dimension. These connections we're talking about are intrinsic, not
16:29
Speaker 1: external in some higher dimension. And so when we say
16:31
Speaker 1: this point in space is nearby another point in space,
16:34
Speaker 1: we really just mean that the distance between these two
16:36
Speaker 1: points is now small. It's just the same way that
16:38
Speaker 1: like the bending of space time is intrinsic. It's not external.
16:43
Speaker 1: You know, we have these analogies where somebody puts a
16:45
Speaker 1: bowling ball on a rubber sheet to show you like
16:48
Speaker 1: the bending of space, and again it shows you the
16:51
Speaker 1: rubber sheet bending, but it's bending in some external third dimension.
16:54
Speaker 1: Where really happens when you have a mass in spaces
16:58
Speaker 1: that space bends intrinsically. It just changes the relative distance
17:02
Speaker 1: between points. There's no like super space in which space
17:06
Speaker 1: is hanging out in and bending in that other dimension,
17:09
Speaker 1: and so here for wormholes. It's helpful, you know, maybe
17:13
Speaker 1: to practice thinking in a higher dimension, but really this
17:15
Speaker 1: bending happens just in our own dimensions. It's just it's
17:18
Speaker 1: an internal intrinsic bending, a changing of the relative distances
17:22
Speaker 1: between two points in space. Right, Well, I feel like
17:25
Speaker 1: these analogies with the toilet paper and the sheet of
17:27
Speaker 1: paper that bends, it just kind of helps you make
17:30
Speaker 1: sense of it, right, because otherwise it just kind of
17:32
Speaker 1: feels like magic, Like you're telling me, like space is
17:34
Speaker 1: the same and it's not been like a sheet of paper.
17:37
Speaker 1: It's just the way it is. But somehow, magically, my
17:39
Speaker 1: point you're on the right is somewhow connected to Alpha Centauri,
17:42
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like it feels like magic.
17:44
Speaker 1: It feels like magic, but that's because space is different
17:47
Speaker 1: from what you imagine. Space can do things like that,
17:49
Speaker 1: like he can change the distance between points, and that's
17:52
Speaker 1: what space bending is. Space can also ripple and it
17:56
Speaker 1: can expand. So it feels like magic because it's counterintuitive,
18:00
Speaker 1: but space can do things that are not intuitive, that
18:03
Speaker 1: are new and weird to us because we only recently
18:05
Speaker 1: have a sense for what space is. Are you saying
18:08
Speaker 1: then that, you know, maybe at this point on my
18:10
Speaker 1: right here is bend so much that it actually touches
18:13
Speaker 1: another point in alva centry. I'm saying that space can
18:16
Speaker 1: do things like bend, which changed the relative distance between points,
18:19
Speaker 1: sort of that photon, for example, appears to curve when
18:21
Speaker 1: it goes near a planet. But also space can be
18:24
Speaker 1: connected in non trivial ways. That the connection space can
18:28
Speaker 1: have are not just like a big mesh where everything
18:31
Speaker 1: is connected only to the things next to it, but
18:33
Speaker 1: these connections can be weird and non trivial. General relativity,
18:36
Speaker 1: which tells us the rules for how space works and
18:39
Speaker 1: what the curvature is, says that that kind of connection,
18:41
Speaker 1: that kind of shape, right, not just like the curvature,
18:44
Speaker 1: but the shape of space is allowed to have these
18:47
Speaker 1: weird connections. Interesting theoretically, I guess like there's nothing in
18:50
Speaker 1: the theories that says that they can't be connected in
18:54
Speaker 1: this way through warmholes. But it's not something we see
18:57
Speaker 1: every day, right exactly, It's not something we've ever seen.
18:59
Speaker 1: These are only theoretical, But you know, theoretical explorations of
19:03
Speaker 1: general relativity are really interesting and very fruitful. That's how
19:06
Speaker 1: we discovered the idea of a black holes. That people
19:09
Speaker 1: were looking at the equations and said, you know, if
19:12
Speaker 1: these equations are true, if these are the ones that
19:14
Speaker 1: tell us what space can do, then they allow space
19:16
Speaker 1: to do this really really weird thing, like accumulating a
19:19
Speaker 1: huge amount of mass and having an event horizon. So
19:22
Speaker 1: that's where the concept of a black hole came from,
19:24
Speaker 1: from these theoretical explorations of what can space do. So
19:28
Speaker 1: it's a very fruitful way to explore, like the physics
19:30
Speaker 1: of the possible universe. Right, except that on our last
19:33
Speaker 1: episode you kind of convinced me that black holes don't exist.
19:36
Speaker 1: So now I don't believe anything you say. I have.
19:40
Speaker 1: Black holes might not exist in our universe, but they
19:42
Speaker 1: definitely exist in the universe of general relativity. We just
19:45
Speaker 1: don't know if that actually is our universe. I see
19:48
Speaker 1: there's a loophole here, there's another hole, another hole within
19:53
Speaker 1: the hole. Is that loophole going to take you to
19:55
Speaker 1: the toilet hole or the white hole or the wormhole?
19:58
Speaker 1: Hopefully a whole we can out of I know, but
20:00
Speaker 1: you have to listen to the whole episode to find
20:02
Speaker 1: out the nice right. And also, wormholes are pretty interesting
20:07
Speaker 1: because they cannot just connect points in space that are
20:10
Speaker 1: far apart. They can also connect points in time. Yes, exactly,
20:13
Speaker 1: these are constructs in space time right where we're imagining
20:17
Speaker 1: space has three of the dimensions of a four dimensional
20:20
Speaker 1: object called space time, where time is the fourth dimension.
20:24
Speaker 1: And we know that relativity is this theory about how
20:26
Speaker 1: events in space time are connected. You know, how information
20:30
Speaker 1: propagates through space, it takes time to do so, and
20:33
Speaker 1: so wormholes connect points in space time, which technically means
20:36
Speaker 1: that one end of the wormhole might be at a
20:38
Speaker 1: different time than the other end of the wormhole. Wow,
20:42
Speaker 1: that's mind blowing. And that's sort of like one way
20:44
Speaker 1: you could make time travel possible, right without generating any
20:48
Speaker 1: paradox is Like, if you have a wormhole that takes
20:50
Speaker 1: you to another point in time, you could travel and
20:52
Speaker 1: time and go back and or or fourth. There are
20:54
Speaker 1: people out there who think that time traveling wormholes might
20:57
Speaker 1: actually be a possibility. Of worse, they do potentially lead
21:01
Speaker 1: to paradoxes, So it's confusing and it's sort of like
21:03
Speaker 1: this conflict in the theory itself, so it's not something
21:06
Speaker 1: we know exactly how to resolve. If you found a wormhole,
21:09
Speaker 1: and I'll let you go back in time, then we
21:11
Speaker 1: would have lots of questions about why there aren't paradoxes,
21:14
Speaker 1: or maybe we create paradoxes and destroy the universe. So hey,
21:17
Speaker 1: I think twice before jumping in. Right, it's a whole
21:19
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, and we won't get into that today. But
21:22
Speaker 1: I guess the big question is are they real? And
21:24
Speaker 1: if they are real, could we ever find them? So
21:27
Speaker 1: let's get into that, but first let's take a quick break.
21:42
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about wormholes and how to find
21:45
Speaker 1: a warmhole. We think they might exist, but the question, though,
21:49
Speaker 1: is will we ever find one or could we ever
21:51
Speaker 1: find one? Or how do you even look for a wormhole? So, Daniel,
21:54
Speaker 1: we talked about what they are. Generally that they're theoretical,
21:58
Speaker 1: they're theoretically allowed, but we haven't observed them. And the
22:02
Speaker 1: other interesting thing about them is that they're sort of
22:04
Speaker 1: related to something called a white hole. Yes, so there's
22:06
Speaker 1: a whole family of related topics here, and there's a
22:10
Speaker 1: few different ways to think about these things. You know,
22:12
Speaker 1: there are wormholes that are just wormholes just connections between
22:16
Speaker 1: points and space that in theory you might be able
22:19
Speaker 1: to go through in both directions. And then there are
22:21
Speaker 1: also separately other things where you have a black hole
22:24
Speaker 1: on one side and a white hole on the other side,
22:27
Speaker 1: and those two are connected by a wormhole, so the
22:30
Speaker 1: things that fall into the black hole might be emitted
22:32
Speaker 1: out the white hole on the other side. That would
22:35
Speaker 1: be one direction, because you can't go into a white
22:38
Speaker 1: hole the same way you can't escape a black hole.
22:40
Speaker 1: And then there are pairs of black holes where people
22:43
Speaker 1: think maybe the singularities at the hearts of these two
22:46
Speaker 1: black holes are connected by a wormhole also, So there's
22:49
Speaker 1: a whole variety of different kinds of wormholes that you
22:51
Speaker 1: can imagine in theoretical physics. So you can have a
22:54
Speaker 1: wormhole without a black hole or a white hole in theory,
22:58
Speaker 1: you can. It requires some things sort of special, like
23:01
Speaker 1: to make this connection between two points in space, you
23:04
Speaker 1: need some kind of weird matter. Like. Remember the way
23:07
Speaker 1: general relativity works is it says if you have a
23:10
Speaker 1: configuration of matter and energy, it will tell you how
23:14
Speaker 1: space bends. Now, if you want space to bend in
23:17
Speaker 1: a certain way, general relativity doesn't necessarily tell you like
23:20
Speaker 1: what mass and energy configuration you need to make in
23:23
Speaker 1: order for that to happen. But people have figured out
23:26
Speaker 1: a few solutions, and one solution for just a normal
23:29
Speaker 1: vanilla wormhole all by itself in space requires something that
23:32
Speaker 1: we don't know if it exists in the universe, or
23:34
Speaker 1: requires having something with negative mass, like particles that don't
23:39
Speaker 1: have mass like you and I, but have negative mass.
23:41
Speaker 1: This is called exotic matter, and you need those to
23:44
Speaker 1: create this connection and to keep it open to keep
23:46
Speaker 1: it from collapsing. M I see. So to make a wormhole,
23:50
Speaker 1: like it's not just like a magic reconnection of space
23:53
Speaker 1: or magic like I don't know, rewiring of space. It's
23:56
Speaker 1: like you really have to bend the space that we
23:58
Speaker 1: have in order for these two far away points to
24:01
Speaker 1: bend so much that they actually touch each other. Yeah,
24:03
Speaker 1: and you need some weird kind of matter to keep
24:05
Speaker 1: that connection there for space to not just like snap
24:08
Speaker 1: back to where it was before. You need some weird
24:10
Speaker 1: kind of matter that has a property we've never seen
24:13
Speaker 1: before that it's like repulsive gravity, you know, like everything
24:16
Speaker 1: that we've seen has mass, and gravity is always attractive.
24:19
Speaker 1: It pulls things towards itself. You never see gravity pushing
24:23
Speaker 1: things away, and so here you'd create this wormhole, and
24:26
Speaker 1: then you need to put something in it to keep
24:28
Speaker 1: the wormhole from collapsing, which normally would just like fall
24:31
Speaker 1: apart and snap back to where it was. Here. To
24:33
Speaker 1: keep that tunnel, to keep that tube that connects the
24:36
Speaker 1: two points in space open, you need to put something
24:39
Speaker 1: in there that like repels space, that pushes it away.
24:43
Speaker 1: So that would be like some sort of negative mass object,
24:46
Speaker 1: like a particle with negative mass. But I guess how
24:48
Speaker 1: would this even work? Like I'm here and I gather
24:51
Speaker 1: a bunch of this imaginary mass that we haven't discovered yet,
24:55
Speaker 1: and then I want to connect the wormhole to Alpha Centaur.
24:57
Speaker 1: Someone in Alpha Centaur need to also be doing that,
25:00
Speaker 1: and then somehow we connect somehow or do I, you know,
25:04
Speaker 1: build up this massive with negative mass and then somehow
25:08
Speaker 1: that opens a portal into two Alpha centry? Like, what's
25:12
Speaker 1: the instruction manual here, Daniel? As far as I know,
25:14
Speaker 1: there is no instruction manual. All we have is if
25:17
Speaker 1: there were a wormhole, how would you keep it open?
25:20
Speaker 1: There's no recipe for like how do you go from
25:22
Speaker 1: a universe without wormhole to a universe with a wormhole
25:25
Speaker 1: step by step instructions for your favorite cartoonist slash engineer
25:29
Speaker 1: that we do not have, you know, and that's a
25:32
Speaker 1: whole other question, you know, like you might discover, Okay,
25:35
Speaker 1: here's a solution that let's two black holes orbit each other. Cool.
25:38
Speaker 1: How do I make two black holes and get them
25:39
Speaker 1: into orbit is a totally separate problem. So what we've
25:42
Speaker 1: done is we figured out, you know, can this solution happen?
25:45
Speaker 1: Is it theoretically possible to do? We haven't figured out
25:49
Speaker 1: at all, like how to actually assemble that in our universe. Yeah,
25:52
Speaker 1: I guess that would be the trick, right, That would
25:55
Speaker 1: be the most interesting part is how do you control
25:57
Speaker 1: these wormholes exactly? And so you know, adding to our
26:00
Speaker 1: instruction manual for supervillains, we do not yet have a
26:03
Speaker 1: recipe for supervillains out there who want to create a
26:06
Speaker 1: portal between here and the sun, for example, and you know,
26:09
Speaker 1: channel super hot plasma as a weapon. I was you're
26:12
Speaker 1: saying for you physicists, But if you want to quite
26:14
Speaker 1: physicists to supervillains, go ahead. We are the lackeys of supervillains.
26:18
Speaker 1: You know, we are creating tools they used to destroy
26:20
Speaker 1: the world. Here the minions exactly, you were overalls also,
26:25
Speaker 1: and monocles, and only in the lab, only in the lab.
26:29
Speaker 1: I guess what you're saying is, we don't know how
26:30
Speaker 1: to make a wormhole. But the question I guess we're
26:32
Speaker 1: tackling today is that if there are wormholes out there,
26:35
Speaker 1: how would we even find them? All? Right? So then
26:37
Speaker 1: how do we detect the wormhole? It depends on the
26:40
Speaker 1: kind of wormhole we're talking about. Let's talk about first
26:42
Speaker 1: the simplest kind of wormhole, which is just like a
26:44
Speaker 1: connection between two points in space. These things would not
26:47
Speaker 1: be that easy to see because there's nothing like around
26:51
Speaker 1: them necessarily. They're just like a connection between here and there,
26:55
Speaker 1: So they're not like directly visible. They're just like this
26:57
Speaker 1: fold in space. So you would have to see them
27:00
Speaker 1: only because you see something like go in or something
27:02
Speaker 1: come out, or you see like the distortion they have
27:06
Speaker 1: on things behind them, right, sort of like can you
27:09
Speaker 1: see a transparent lens The material itself is invisible, but
27:14
Speaker 1: it has an effect on the light going through it.
27:16
Speaker 1: Then you can tell something is there without directly seeing it, right.
27:20
Speaker 1: And the other problem is that they might be super small. Right,
27:22
Speaker 1: the theory doesn't predict giant wormholes. It predicts tiny little wormholes.
27:26
Speaker 1: The theory allows for super tiny wormholes like ten to
27:29
Speaker 1: the minus thirty five, you know, plank scale size wormholes,
27:33
Speaker 1: but it also allows for larger wormholes that potentially you
27:36
Speaker 1: could even send a person through. Okay, right now, we're cooking,
27:39
Speaker 1: but you're saying they wouldn't be easy to see because
27:42
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, how do you see a hole
27:44
Speaker 1: in space? Right Like, it would just sort of look
27:46
Speaker 1: like it's sort of like if you put a TV
27:47
Speaker 1: out in space with a with a picture of more stars,
27:50
Speaker 1: it would be hard to tell it's there. Yeah, And
27:52
Speaker 1: so what you need to do is see some sort
27:54
Speaker 1: of inconsistency, right Like if you had a TV out
27:56
Speaker 1: in space but an image of stars on it and
27:59
Speaker 1: you changed your goal, then the image would no longer
28:01
Speaker 1: be appropriate, or if the stars behind it were moving
28:04
Speaker 1: and the image didn't catch up, and then you would
28:06
Speaker 1: see this like inconsistency between the image you're looking at
28:09
Speaker 1: and what's in the background. And that's what you need
28:11
Speaker 1: to spot a wormhole because wormhole would in theory, be
28:14
Speaker 1: sending you light and information from a different part of
28:17
Speaker 1: the universe. And so as you look at the wormhole,
28:19
Speaker 1: you're looking at stars whose light has come through the wormhole,
28:23
Speaker 1: So you're looking at another part of the universe. So
28:26
Speaker 1: you need to somehow identify the boundary, right to know
28:29
Speaker 1: that the stars you're looking at in the center are
28:31
Speaker 1: on the other part of the universe connected by the wormhole,
28:34
Speaker 1: and the stars outside this circle are you know, in
28:37
Speaker 1: your local neighborhood, and to see like a discontinuity. But
28:40
Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is that a wormhole wouldn't
28:42
Speaker 1: have any substance to it, right like they wouldn't you
28:45
Speaker 1: be bumping into things, or wouldn't be exerting gravity on
28:48
Speaker 1: the things around it. Would just have to look for,
28:51
Speaker 1: like you said, some kind of inconsistency or maybe see
28:54
Speaker 1: like a row of space tourists trying to get into it. Yeah,
28:57
Speaker 1: a pure wormhole that's not like part of a black hole,
28:59
Speaker 1: white whole system, or connected to black holes in any
29:02
Speaker 1: other way, would have no strong gravitational effects. So you know,
29:05
Speaker 1: like black holes also technically invisible. You can't see them directly,
29:09
Speaker 1: but you can spot them because they suck stuff up
29:11
Speaker 1: and they have these accretion discs of matter glowing red
29:14
Speaker 1: hot from the friction and the crazy intense gravity. Wormholes
29:17
Speaker 1: don't have that. They don't necessarily have any strong gravity
29:20
Speaker 1: around them. They're not slurping stuff up, and so there
29:22
Speaker 1: are new accretion disks to identify. So it's just sort
29:26
Speaker 1: of like seeing a very clear lens out in space
29:29
Speaker 1: distorting things or space tourists. That's another great way coming
29:33
Speaker 1: out of the subway. You can see all the space
29:35
Speaker 1: rats scurring in. Do you think space rats eat space pizza? Well,
29:42
Speaker 1: if there are no space worms, maybe would I guess,
29:44
Speaker 1: would a wormhole glow? You know and the movies that
29:47
Speaker 1: the wormholes always glow, they look like glowing you know,
29:50
Speaker 1: circles or something. Would wormhole because of this magic energy
29:55
Speaker 1: with negative mass, would somehow glow or mid radiation? We
29:59
Speaker 1: don't think so. We don't think the pure wormholes would
30:01
Speaker 1: emit any radiation. A wormhole that's part of a black
30:04
Speaker 1: hole white hole system, then yeah, it would look just
30:07
Speaker 1: like a black hole on one side, and so you
30:09
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily be able to tell it's a wormhole, but
30:12
Speaker 1: it would look just like a black hole, and black
30:14
Speaker 1: holes do emit a lot of radiation. Again because of
30:16
Speaker 1: the stuff that's around the black hole, the intensely high
30:19
Speaker 1: temperature gas that's emitting a lot of light. And so
30:22
Speaker 1: we see black holes throughout the universe. They are called
30:24
Speaker 1: quasars because they emit this crazy radiation. But the pure
30:28
Speaker 1: wormhole wouldn't emit any radiation necessarily. But a wormhole, it's
30:31
Speaker 1: part of a black hole system, might right, What about
30:34
Speaker 1: one that is part of a white hole? Black hole system?
30:37
Speaker 1: When don't we see stuff coming out of the white
30:40
Speaker 1: hole like constantly, Like that's the wonder where all this
30:43
Speaker 1: energy is coming from. Yeah, if you see a white hole,
30:45
Speaker 1: then you're basically already seeing a wormhole, because the white
30:48
Speaker 1: hole doesn't just like generate random stuff, It emits stuff
30:51
Speaker 1: that came through the black hole side. So it's a
30:54
Speaker 1: black hole wormhole white hole situation. So if you see
30:58
Speaker 1: a white hole, and you're also discovering a worm hole,
31:00
Speaker 1: because it's a connection between those two points in space,
31:02
Speaker 1: connected by the singularity at the heart of the black
31:04
Speaker 1: hole and this weird heart of the white hole. But remember,
31:07
Speaker 1: white holes, we don't even know if those actually exist.
31:09
Speaker 1: They're a very fuzzy theoretical object. People aren't even sure
31:13
Speaker 1: you know what to make of them in the theory,
31:16
Speaker 1: I see, so all white holes are wormholes, but not
31:19
Speaker 1: all wormholes are white holes. That's right, Yeah, exactly, the
31:22
Speaker 1: taxonomy of holes, wholenomy. It's the holy trinity there, or
31:26
Speaker 1: I guess we're doing holography. Yeah, and that's the whole truth,
31:29
Speaker 1: all right. So then what's another way that we could
31:31
Speaker 1: detect a warmhole? Do they like bend space time in
31:34
Speaker 1: a particular way that we could maybe see evidence of.
31:37
Speaker 1: People think that it might be possible, And I was
31:39
Speaker 1: reading this crazy paper where somebody was suggesting an experiment
31:43
Speaker 1: to detect wormholes, because you're right, the wormholes they do
31:47
Speaker 1: bend space, right in order to connect space here with
31:49
Speaker 1: space somewhere else. You're talking about space being banned, and
31:52
Speaker 1: space can never be discontinuous. You can't just have like
31:55
Speaker 1: a boundary where space is doing one thing here and
31:57
Speaker 1: then something totally different on the other side of its.
32:00
Speaker 1: Space is always smooth, right, So to have a connection
32:03
Speaker 1: between here and somewhere else, space has to be bending,
32:06
Speaker 1: which means it's going to be bending the most at
32:09
Speaker 1: the actual wormhole and then less and less as you
32:11
Speaker 1: go away. But it can't be like a kink there
32:14
Speaker 1: in space. And so people think that maybe you could
32:16
Speaker 1: detect wormholes by detecting this bending of space before you
32:20
Speaker 1: actually fall in. You don't have to go to the
32:22
Speaker 1: wormhole and throw something in. You could see that there's
32:25
Speaker 1: a wormhole nearby. It's like a nearby wormhole detector. By
32:29
Speaker 1: measuring this bending of space interest things. There are no
32:32
Speaker 1: kinky wormholes. Everything not in this podcast, that's right. Not
32:37
Speaker 1: this is the safer word. But you know everything out
32:39
Speaker 1: there that has mass also bend space, like the Sun
32:42
Speaker 1: bend space, and the Earth bend space, and you bend space.
32:45
Speaker 1: So in this paper they talk about how to tell
32:47
Speaker 1: if the bending of space you're measuring is due to
32:49
Speaker 1: wormholes or due to just like the normal bending of
32:53
Speaker 1: space from everyday objects, Because I guess every day objects
32:56
Speaker 1: would bend it due to gravity, but wormhole would be
33:00
Speaker 1: bending it because of something totally different. Yeah, it has
33:03
Speaker 1: negative repulsive gravity inside it to keep it open, and
33:07
Speaker 1: so the shape of the bending would be a little
33:09
Speaker 1: bit different, and specifically it would be different in a
33:12
Speaker 1: way that light passes through it a little bit differently.
33:15
Speaker 1: When light travels through space, it doesn't just wiggle it
33:17
Speaker 1: also spins right. Light is actually a vector for those
33:20
Speaker 1: of you into the math of the electromagnetic field. There's
33:23
Speaker 1: this phase it has and it can be like polarized
33:25
Speaker 1: in one way or polarized in another way, or linearly
33:28
Speaker 1: polarized or whatever. There's this extra bit of information that
33:31
Speaker 1: light is always carrying with it, and so in this experiment,
33:34
Speaker 1: they think that if a wormhole is nearby, it would
33:36
Speaker 1: change how light propagates through that space. So what you
33:39
Speaker 1: need are like two satellites flying through space shooting laser
33:43
Speaker 1: beams back and forth at each other and constantly measuring
33:46
Speaker 1: those laser beams to see if the phase of the
33:48
Speaker 1: light has changed in a way that suggests that there's
33:51
Speaker 1: a wormhole nearby. Whoa, And then these two satellites would
33:54
Speaker 1: have to scan the entire universe define a wormhole right, well,
33:58
Speaker 1: they would be sensitive to worm holes nearby. And so
34:01
Speaker 1: it's sort of like your nose, right, you can sniff
34:04
Speaker 1: and tell, like somebody's eating a cinnamon roll. You can't
34:07
Speaker 1: necessarily tell where it is, And if you walk around
34:10
Speaker 1: and the smell gets stronger, you can tell you're getting closer,
34:12
Speaker 1: And if the smell gets weaker, you can tell you're
34:14
Speaker 1: getting further, So this would operate the same way. They
34:17
Speaker 1: can sort of tell how close are you to a wormhole,
34:20
Speaker 1: and then as they drift around, they can tell if
34:22
Speaker 1: they're getting closer or further. So yeah, they have to
34:24
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, you have to send lots
34:26
Speaker 1: of these things out just floating out through space, hoping
34:29
Speaker 1: that one of them finds one, and then you can
34:30
Speaker 1: sort of like zoom in on it would bend space
34:33
Speaker 1: that much like with the radius, with the range of
34:37
Speaker 1: effect be so large that you could add this is
34:39
Speaker 1: actually feasible. Well, it depends on the size of the wormhole.
34:42
Speaker 1: Bigger wormholes easier to find, Smaller wormholes harder to find. Fortunately,
34:47
Speaker 1: we're interested in bigger wormholes. But then again we also
34:50
Speaker 1: think bigger wormholes probably rarer. So you know, this is
34:53
Speaker 1: a very exploratory idea, you know, concept, is it actually practical?
34:57
Speaker 1: Should somebody spend these billions of dollars building these saddle
35:00
Speaker 1: doesn't send them out of space? No, but it's sort
35:02
Speaker 1: of theoretically showing that it might be possible to detect
35:06
Speaker 1: a nearby wormhole. Interesting. Did you just say physics is
35:09
Speaker 1: not practical? I just said physics it's not practical exactly.
35:13
Speaker 1: If you were looking to explore the universe and maybe
35:15
Speaker 1: have no impact on humanity, come join us, all right,
35:19
Speaker 1: So that's maybe one way that we could see, uh,
35:23
Speaker 1: wormhole is through their effects on space, whether it's maybe
35:27
Speaker 1: many stuff stuff, or maybe we can send satellites to
35:30
Speaker 1: go look for them. So let's get into whether or
35:32
Speaker 1: not we have seen any out there in space. Maybe
35:34
Speaker 1: we have or not, But first let's take another quick break.
35:51
Speaker 1: All right. We're looking for wormholes, Daniel, because I guess
35:55
Speaker 1: we're eager to get to the other side of the
35:56
Speaker 1: galaxy somehow. And the question is how do we find them?
36:00
Speaker 1: Do you spot them? How do you know you found one?
36:01
Speaker 1: And we talked about a few ways that you could
36:03
Speaker 1: do that. Um, but have we found any? So far,
36:06
Speaker 1: we have not identified any wormholes. We have exactly zero
36:10
Speaker 1: positively identified wormholes on our list. And you know, we
36:14
Speaker 1: don't even necessarily know that we've seen any black holes.
36:17
Speaker 1: If you listen to the last episode about dark stars,
36:19
Speaker 1: we're not even about those. So it would be pretty
36:23
Speaker 1: amazing if we had any wormholes on our list. I
36:25
Speaker 1: guess the question is have we been looking for wormholes?
36:28
Speaker 1: I've been looking for wormholes. I thought you were looking. Also,
36:30
Speaker 1: are you telling me this whole time you've been doing nothing.
36:33
Speaker 1: I was looking for other kinds of holes, legal loop holes,
36:36
Speaker 1: and you know holes in logic. No, we have been,
36:41
Speaker 1: as a species collectively all been looking for wormholes. Not
36:45
Speaker 1: by sending out these crazy satellites, but by doing what
36:48
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, looking for distortions in space. Because
36:52
Speaker 1: we're good at this, we could actually tell if there
36:54
Speaker 1: are invisible things floating in space distorting the path of light.
36:59
Speaker 1: This is one For example, we know that dark matter
37:01
Speaker 1: is out there. Dark matter some invisible kind of matter
37:05
Speaker 1: that has gravity and so changes the curvature of space
37:08
Speaker 1: and bend's light as it passes through. So even though
37:11
Speaker 1: dark matter itself is invisible, we can see its effect
37:14
Speaker 1: on light by seeing this gravitational lensing. And so we've
37:18
Speaker 1: done something similar for looking for wormholes. We've asked if
37:22
Speaker 1: there was a wormhole between us and this very bright
37:25
Speaker 1: quais are out there, what impact would it have on
37:28
Speaker 1: that light? How would it look different? And then let's
37:30
Speaker 1: look to see if we can find any quasars that
37:33
Speaker 1: are distorted in just that way. Interesting, So there are
37:36
Speaker 1: physicists out there, like who's portfolio include looking for wormholes.
37:40
Speaker 1: It's not just like we're looking for weird things out there,
37:43
Speaker 1: it's like they're actually hunting them. They're actually hunting them.
37:45
Speaker 1: There's a fun paper from an astronomical survey, the LSST,
37:49
Speaker 1: that very specifically did this. You know, they have a
37:51
Speaker 1: huge data set of looking at big patches of the
37:54
Speaker 1: sky for a long time, and so they can look
37:56
Speaker 1: through that data set and ask like, are there any
37:59
Speaker 1: objects in here which look like they've been distorted by wormholes?
38:03
Speaker 1: And so that's very helpful. If you can come up
38:05
Speaker 1: with a specific prediction to say a wormhole would look
38:08
Speaker 1: like this, they would distort the life from this galaxy
38:10
Speaker 1: in this way, then you can hunt for that signature
38:13
Speaker 1: in the sky. Interesting, so you said that they do
38:17
Speaker 1: that by looking at quasars. They've looked at fifty thousand
38:20
Speaker 1: quasars and they looked at to see if the light
38:22
Speaker 1: from those quasars is somehow distorted in a special way
38:25
Speaker 1: that only a wormhole might distort it. Yeah, because remember
38:29
Speaker 1: wormholes have this negative mass, and so they have a
38:31
Speaker 1: different kind of curature of space than for example, dark
38:34
Speaker 1: matter or something else. So we see lots of distortion
38:37
Speaker 1: out there in the sky due to dark matter and
38:39
Speaker 1: other things, which distorts space in one way. But wormholes
38:42
Speaker 1: would have a very distinctive signature and how they've been space.
38:45
Speaker 1: And you're right, they look through this catalog of fifty
38:48
Speaker 1: thousand quasars, which is mind blowing already because that means
38:52
Speaker 1: that's fifty thousand galaxies, each with a supermassive black hole
38:57
Speaker 1: at its center, sending us an incredible beam of light
39:00
Speaker 1: across billions and billions of light years, right, Like, just
39:04
Speaker 1: imagine hold that picture in your mind for a moment
39:06
Speaker 1: of like the Earth being pinioned by these beams of
39:09
Speaker 1: light coming from all over the universe. And now we're
39:12
Speaker 1: asking whether those beams of light have been like tweaked
39:14
Speaker 1: in any tiny little way, so there might be a
39:16
Speaker 1: wormhole along that line between us and one of those
39:20
Speaker 1: distant quasars. Interesting, So I guess, how do we expect
39:23
Speaker 1: the light to be different if it had gone through
39:25
Speaker 1: or near a wormhole on its way here? Like, you know,
39:28
Speaker 1: if it goes through negative mass, does it get lighter?
39:31
Speaker 1: Does light get lighter? Well, you know, if it goes
39:33
Speaker 1: through dark matter, then it gets sort of like focused.
39:35
Speaker 1: Like dark matter acts like a lens, and it can
39:37
Speaker 1: make very specific distortions. And so we have these codes
39:40
Speaker 1: that allows to do calculations. It's not something we can
39:43
Speaker 1: write down with pencil and paper because general relativity is
39:45
Speaker 1: so complicated, but we have these computer codes that allows
39:47
Speaker 1: to do calculations and predict what pattern it would have.
39:50
Speaker 1: You know, just the same way you can say if
39:52
Speaker 1: I shine a light through a concave lens, it's gonna
39:55
Speaker 1: make one image. Well, if you shine a light through
39:57
Speaker 1: a convex lens, it's gonna make a totally different image.
40:00
Speaker 1: And so that's sort of the same relationship between what
40:03
Speaker 1: dark matter and a wormhole would do to a quasar,
40:05
Speaker 1: and we definitely have a different pattern. It doesn't just
40:08
Speaker 1: like bend the light out and spread it out. It
40:10
Speaker 1: also twists it in a weird way because, as we
40:12
Speaker 1: said before, it changes the electromagnetic phase of the light.
40:16
Speaker 1: So is that what we're looking forward looking for changes
40:18
Speaker 1: in the light itself, or also in addition to that,
40:21
Speaker 1: we're looking for this lensing effect. Yeah, we're looking for both,
40:24
Speaker 1: but this survey in particular was mostly looking for these
40:27
Speaker 1: lensing effects, all right, So then we haven't seen any wormholes,
40:31
Speaker 1: and even though we've looked at fifty quasars. But that
40:33
Speaker 1: I guess that doesn't mean that there aren't out there, right.
40:35
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean they're not out there. It means that
40:37
Speaker 1: we didn't see any, right, And you can't prove a
40:39
Speaker 1: negative because there could be just one and just didn't
40:42
Speaker 1: happen across this meme from a quasar to Earth. So
40:45
Speaker 1: it's certainly possible that they're still out there, or there
40:47
Speaker 1: could be lots of them and they just didn't cross
40:49
Speaker 1: these beams. What you can do when you don't see
40:52
Speaker 1: one is you can set a limit on how many
40:54
Speaker 1: there could be. You can say, well, if wormholes were everywhere,
40:57
Speaker 1: we would have seen them. So what we can do
40:59
Speaker 1: is rule out universe being like totally jam packed with wormholes.
41:02
Speaker 1: And that's not nothing, right, that is definitely information. It
41:05
Speaker 1: means that if there are wormholes out there, you have
41:07
Speaker 1: to explain why none of them have ever like tripped
41:10
Speaker 1: one of these like lasers between the quasar and us M.
41:13
Speaker 1: I guess if this light is coming from another galaxy,
41:16
Speaker 1: isn't it mostly empty space between here and other galaxies?
41:20
Speaker 1: Like did we expect to find wormholes in the middle
41:22
Speaker 1: of nowhere. We don't know where to expect to find wormholes,
41:25
Speaker 1: but yeah, it is mostly empty space between here and there,
41:28
Speaker 1: But it also passes through the galaxy, right, Like, our
41:30
Speaker 1: galaxy is fairly thick, and so for the light to
41:33
Speaker 1: get here from another galaxy, it has to pass a
41:35
Speaker 1: significant fraction of the way through our galaxy as well.
41:39
Speaker 1: So you really are exploring lots of different kinds of
41:41
Speaker 1: space when you look at quasars. All right, we haven't
41:44
Speaker 1: seen any, but there is sort of a theory, right
41:46
Speaker 1: you were telling me about a black hole that might
41:49
Speaker 1: be really close to us. Yeah, if you saw the
41:51
Speaker 1: movie Contact, then you know in that movie Contact, there's
41:54
Speaker 1: this like network of wormholes that connect galaxies. And I think,
41:59
Speaker 1: aren't they like at the center of the galaxy where
42:01
Speaker 1: the black hole the center of the galaxy is actually
42:03
Speaker 1: an opening into a wormhole network that lets you go
42:06
Speaker 1: all around the universe. I don't remember the details of
42:08
Speaker 1: that movie well enough, but there are people out there
42:10
Speaker 1: who are asking that question about the black hole at
42:13
Speaker 1: the center of our galaxy. They're wondering, it's a black hole,
42:16
Speaker 1: but is it also maybe a wormhole or at least
42:20
Speaker 1: the entrance to a wormhole, right, because if it's a
42:22
Speaker 1: black hole, it can be the exit of a wormhole. Yeah,
42:25
Speaker 1: this is one very particular kind of idea where it
42:28
Speaker 1: might be a pair of black holes that have their
42:31
Speaker 1: singularities overlapped, so they're connected by a wormhole, but the
42:34
Speaker 1: wormhole itself might be slightly bigger than the black holes,
42:38
Speaker 1: so the black holes are sort of like inside the wormhole,
42:41
Speaker 1: allowing some stuff to come out sort of sneaking around
42:44
Speaker 1: the black holes. This is the weird black hole wormhole
42:48
Speaker 1: combination idea. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think you just
42:51
Speaker 1: took a jump there. So you're saying that the black
42:53
Speaker 1: hole at the center of our galaxy might actually be
42:55
Speaker 1: two black holes. Yeah, the black hole the center of
42:58
Speaker 1: our galaxy might be connected to another their black holes
43:00
Speaker 1: somewhere else in the universe, and the two might be
43:03
Speaker 1: sort of like connected by this wormhole which is big
43:06
Speaker 1: enough to have the black holes connected, but also for
43:10
Speaker 1: other stuff to like get through the wormhole without falling
43:12
Speaker 1: into the black hole. Oh, I see what you're saying.
43:15
Speaker 1: So this is the regular type of wormhole that doesn't
43:18
Speaker 1: start in a black hole. You're just saying that there
43:20
Speaker 1: might be a or of a hole next to or
43:24
Speaker 1: sort of enveloping the black hole of the center work galaxy.
43:26
Speaker 1: This is like a mega wormhole. This would be a
43:28
Speaker 1: mega wormhole exactly. There's like a dune size worm and
43:32
Speaker 1: at its throat, right, it's throat is larger than this
43:35
Speaker 1: black hole at the center of the Milky Way. But
43:37
Speaker 1: the black holes like sitting at the mouth of the wormhole,
43:41
Speaker 1: but not completely blocking it, so that the wormhole is
43:44
Speaker 1: not totally inside the black hole. It's sort of like
43:47
Speaker 1: a basketball fits through a hoop, right, the basketball is
43:50
Speaker 1: smaller than the hoop. So now imagine, right, the black
43:53
Speaker 1: holes like the basketball and the wormholes like the basketball hoop. Interesting,
43:56
Speaker 1: And then just on the other side of the wormhole
43:59
Speaker 1: is maybe another black coal in in another galaxy or
44:02
Speaker 1: somewhere else. Yeah, another black hole in probably another galaxy
44:05
Speaker 1: because these supermassive black holes tend to only form at
44:08
Speaker 1: the hearts of galaxies. But we don't know until we
44:10
Speaker 1: send our favorite cartoonists in right, or our favorite physicists,
44:14
Speaker 1: or at least favorite cartoonists either one. Yeah, let's take
44:19
Speaker 1: a vote. But this is a crazy idea, Daniel, Why
44:22
Speaker 1: would people think this is what's happening. I don't know
44:24
Speaker 1: that anybody thinks it's what's happening. But some people wrote
44:27
Speaker 1: a paper asking if this was what's happening, how could
44:31
Speaker 1: we figure it out? And sort of like trying to
44:33
Speaker 1: work out the mathematics of if you could tell if
44:36
Speaker 1: there was a wormhole there, which I think it's really
44:38
Speaker 1: fun to think about, you know, like, what are we
44:40
Speaker 1: capable of discovering in the universe. If the universe was
44:43
Speaker 1: this way that way, how could we tell the difference.
44:46
Speaker 1: It's a really fun mental exercise. And so this paper
44:49
Speaker 1: is a little bit out there, but I enjoyed reading it.
44:51
Speaker 1: It's like, here's something that could be true because we
44:54
Speaker 1: just haven't seen that closely to the center of our galaxy.
44:57
Speaker 1: What if there's a giant Norma's wormhole connecting our black
45:02
Speaker 1: hole to another black hole in another galaxy? Yeah, and
45:05
Speaker 1: it could just be a bunch of physicists watch contact
45:07
Speaker 1: and they had an argument afterwards about whether that could
45:09
Speaker 1: actually be possible, and somebody came up with this idea.
45:12
Speaker 1: They're like, wait, what if there's a black hole inside
45:15
Speaker 1: a big wormhole? And somebody else said, you know what,
45:17
Speaker 1: that might be true. I bet I could write a
45:19
Speaker 1: paper about it. You know, that's how watching science fiction
45:21
Speaker 1: and smoking ban in appeals leads to real progress in science.
45:25
Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend that in general, smoking anything sounds kind
45:29
Speaker 1: of dangerous. But then what would the ramifications be, Like,
45:32
Speaker 1: what would be the consequences? Right, it means that our
45:35
Speaker 1: galaxy is connected to another galaxy, so we could maybe
45:38
Speaker 1: travel to that other galaxy. Yeah, absolutely, if you could
45:41
Speaker 1: get close enough to this black hole without getting shredded.
45:43
Speaker 1: Remember we talked about how big black holes are actually
45:46
Speaker 1: easier to get close to. People out there are aware
45:49
Speaker 1: that even if you're near a black hole without going
45:51
Speaker 1: inside it, there's very very strong gravity that could pull
45:54
Speaker 1: you apart because of the tidal forces spaghettification. That's actually
45:58
Speaker 1: less of a concern near very big black holes because
46:01
Speaker 1: their event horizons are so far from the core that
46:04
Speaker 1: the title forces actually aren't strong enough to tear you apart.
46:07
Speaker 1: So if it really is a wormhole surrounding these black holes,
46:11
Speaker 1: then yes, potentially we could send something through it and
46:14
Speaker 1: travel the galaxy. The question is, how could we figure
46:17
Speaker 1: out if there's a wormhole there without dropping somebody inside? Well,
46:21
Speaker 1: A physicists aren't somebody, so you know, But so, what's
46:24
Speaker 1: the theory that there's a whole bunch of negative mass
46:27
Speaker 1: at the center of our galaxy creating a wormhole near
46:30
Speaker 1: our black hole somehow? And they don't have a theory
46:32
Speaker 1: for how this wormhole got formed or even what's holding
46:35
Speaker 1: it open. They just presuming, like, if there's a wormhole there,
46:38
Speaker 1: how could we tell? And so they played this mental
46:41
Speaker 1: game and they realized, well, you know, if there's a
46:43
Speaker 1: wormhole here, that means that information can pass through from
46:48
Speaker 1: that galaxy to our galaxy. Like, yeah, I can jump
46:51
Speaker 1: in and go to the other galaxy. But also things
46:53
Speaker 1: information can pass through the wormhole because the throat is
46:57
Speaker 1: larger than the black holes, right, And so to go
46:59
Speaker 1: from the other galaxy to here, you just need to
47:01
Speaker 1: pass through the wormhole and like avoid the black holes.
47:04
Speaker 1: And that information is potentially including things like gravity. So
47:09
Speaker 1: if there's a black hole on the other side and
47:11
Speaker 1: there are stars orbiting that black hole, then as those
47:16
Speaker 1: stars orbit the black hole, we should be able to
47:18
Speaker 1: feel the gravitational poll of stars on the other side
47:22
Speaker 1: of the wormhole affecting things on this side. WHOA, yeah,
47:26
Speaker 1: I guess the worm of it just connecting space, it
47:29
Speaker 1: would transmit gravity to right. So if like you see
47:32
Speaker 1: the orbit of the stars around our black holes somehow
47:36
Speaker 1: being kind of wobbly or skewed, maybe there's something sucking
47:40
Speaker 1: and sucking them through the wormhole. Yeah, And we happen
47:43
Speaker 1: to have a great way to test this because there's
47:45
Speaker 1: a star that passes very very close to the black
47:49
Speaker 1: hole the center of our galaxy. It's called S two,
47:51
Speaker 1: and it whips around that black hole once every sixteen years,
47:54
Speaker 1: and we're able to calculate its orbit very very precisely.
47:57
Speaker 1: And so if it goes off orbit, if it's like
47:59
Speaker 1: skew us or jitters a little bit, that might be
48:02
Speaker 1: evidence that there's something tugging on it from the other
48:06
Speaker 1: side of the wormhole. That's wild. It sounds like a
48:08
Speaker 1: great scheme to get funding for sixteen years. It's wild.
48:12
Speaker 1: It's also, you know, a fun theoretical idea, but experimentally
48:16
Speaker 1: might not be practical because in order to conclude that
48:19
Speaker 1: the star is being wiggled by something on the other
48:22
Speaker 1: side of this hypothetical wormhole, you have to be able
48:25
Speaker 1: to account for everything else that might also be wiggling
48:28
Speaker 1: it on our side of the wormhole, which means you
48:30
Speaker 1: need to know the position and location velocity of every
48:33
Speaker 1: other gravitational object nearby. And that's a hard area to
48:37
Speaker 1: map out. It's very close to the center of the galaxy.
48:40
Speaker 1: There's a lot of gas and dust there, and so
48:42
Speaker 1: you need to like know everything else very very precisely
48:45
Speaker 1: to conclude that something invisible through a wormhole is also
48:48
Speaker 1: tugging on this star. And even if it does wiggle,
48:50
Speaker 1: it would be wiggle It's like a super tiny amount, right, yeah, exactly.
48:54
Speaker 1: We're talking like a millionth of a meter per second
48:56
Speaker 1: squared would be to change of the acceleration on a
49:00
Speaker 1: star from some stars on the other side of this wormhole.
49:03
Speaker 1: So you need very very precise measurements of this star
49:06
Speaker 1: and very precise measurements of everything else affecting this star.
49:09
Speaker 1: So it's not something we can do today, but and
49:11
Speaker 1: I could, but wouldn't I guess it costs that much.
49:13
Speaker 1: You just have to look at the stars to see
49:15
Speaker 1: if it wiggles a little bit. Yeah, exactly, And that's
49:17
Speaker 1: the kind of thing we want to do. Anyway, we're
49:18
Speaker 1: studying these black holes and measuring the trajectory of stars
49:21
Speaker 1: that go around it, and asking all sorts of questions
49:23
Speaker 1: about numerical general relativity. So it's definitely something we want anyways,
49:27
Speaker 1: detailed information about the path of stars around black holes.
49:31
Speaker 1: And even if there is a wormhole there, it's still
49:33
Speaker 1: pretty far away from here, right, Like, I probably would
49:36
Speaker 1: never be able to jump into it even if I
49:37
Speaker 1: wanted to, because it's still like tens of thousands of
49:40
Speaker 1: light years away, right, Yeah, the center of the galaxy
49:42
Speaker 1: is not that close, which we should be grateful for
49:44
Speaker 1: because the center of the galaxy is not a very
49:46
Speaker 1: hospitable place. This intense radiation from all the processes at
49:50
Speaker 1: the center of the galaxy, so we wouldn't be able
49:52
Speaker 1: to survive for very long even just because of that radiation.
49:55
Speaker 1: So yeah, not something to worry about. If aliens are
49:58
Speaker 1: passing through that wormhole, there's still really really far away
50:01
Speaker 1: and possibly getting shredded to right. I mean, it's sort
50:04
Speaker 1: of hard to like go around a black couple of
50:06
Speaker 1: black holes. Yeah, well, I'm not an expert on alien biology,
50:09
Speaker 1: but I imagine it's possible for them to survive nearby
50:12
Speaker 1: these big black holes because remember, big black holes are
50:15
Speaker 1: safer to be near than small black holes. All right, well,
50:19
Speaker 1: I guess that sort of answers a question. How do
50:22
Speaker 1: you spot a warm hole? You look close at the
50:24
Speaker 1: distortions it makes to the rest of the universe, because
50:27
Speaker 1: they would distort things in very specific ways. That's right.
50:30
Speaker 1: They're not going to jump out at you and advertise themselves,
50:32
Speaker 1: but if they are out there, they will have subtle
50:35
Speaker 1: effects on the way light travels, way particles moved through space,
50:38
Speaker 1: and you know, somebody might jump out of it and say, hey,
50:41
Speaker 1: help me out. I got questions about the Earth. Hopefully
50:44
Speaker 1: it's the cartoonists and alien cartoonists, because they're just more fun,
50:47
Speaker 1: you know, I see. So when we're sending people and
50:50
Speaker 1: you want to throw in physicists, but when aliens are
50:52
Speaker 1: sending people in, you're hoping they throw the cartoonists. Yes, yes,
50:55
Speaker 1: because they're aliens. You know, maybe in the alien planet,
50:58
Speaker 1: physicists are the most fun, right right, Yeah, But then
51:03
Speaker 1: you know that's theoretically impossible to ny. I'm gonna work
51:07
Speaker 1: on a theory to disapprosate. Why not we can look
51:11
Speaker 1: for impossible wormholes? Why not look for impossible physics? Humor?
51:15
Speaker 1: You gotta set your sides high in Science. You could
51:17
Speaker 1: win the Nobel Prize in Humor. All right, well, we
51:20
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that. And I guess the next time
51:23
Speaker 1: you look up at this guy, you have to wonder
51:25
Speaker 1: a little bit. Are we looking maybe at a wormhole?
51:28
Speaker 1: And is that star you're looking at maybe actually a star?
51:31
Speaker 1: And the whole other part of the universe. Thanks for
51:33
Speaker 1: joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening, and
51:43
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge explained the universe is a
51:46
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast For my
51:50
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
51:53
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. No