Speaker 1: Hey, orry, did you figure out how to build a
Speaker 1: wormhole yet? What you're expecting me to do it? I
Speaker 1: was hoping you draw in your engineering background. Shouldn't it
Speaker 1: be physicists trying to figure this out? Now we've already
Speaker 1: done our part. What do you mean, Well, we proved
Speaker 1: it's theoretically possible. Isn't that enough? That's all you have
Speaker 1: to do, prove that it's not theoretically prohibited. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the rest is just engineering, actually, like making it happen,
Speaker 1: just engineering. It seems like it's most of the work.
Speaker 1: To be honest, that's probably true. We should, you know,
Speaker 1: work on flying cars and feeding the world first. All right,
Speaker 1: well you know, just let me know when I could
Speaker 1: place an order from my wormhole. All right, you just
Speaker 1: let me know when you've proven flying cart and feeding
Speaker 1: the world aren't possible. It's a deal him or hand me.
Speaker 1: Cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and a professor of physics that
Speaker 1: you see Irvine, and I'm a bunch of particles that
Speaker 1: likes to think about particles. You're just a bunch of particles.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying that's all there is, man,
Speaker 1: just soul particles to it's particles all the way down.
Speaker 1: If you ask me when you saying these particles like
Speaker 1: to study particles, Yeah, I'm a bunch of particles that
Speaker 1: likes to think about and talk about and study particles. Well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna meta meta particles. It's particles really, all the
Speaker 1: way down down to the philosophy of it. I'm particularly
Speaker 1: interested in particle philosophy. But welcome to our podcast Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explained the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: in which we take the entire universe and break it
Speaker 1: into its fundamental particles. We take a part all of
Speaker 1: the big ideas of physics, the age of the universe,
Speaker 1: the reason the universe exists, how it got to look
Speaker 1: the way the it does today, what it's made out of,
Speaker 1: and we break all of these ideas down into tiny
Speaker 1: little particles of understanding. We bounced them around, wrap them
Speaker 1: up in some dad jokes, and send them along the
Speaker 1: audio waves to you. That's right, because we are not
Speaker 1: particular about the scale of the questions we have about
Speaker 1: the universe. We wonder about the little, tiny things that
Speaker 1: the universe is made out of and we also wonder
Speaker 1: about the entire universe. How do we get to the
Speaker 1: far corners of this cosmos and what are we going
Speaker 1: to find there. We've sort of woken up as an
Speaker 1: intelligent species and discovered that we are in this one
Speaker 1: tiny little corner of an incredibly vast universe, and we're
Speaker 1: now learning the rules of how that universe works, how
Speaker 1: it's put together, how you can move around it, how
Speaker 1: you can't move around it, And of course we wonder
Speaker 1: are their loopoles in those rules? Is it possible to
Speaker 1: get from here to there without spending millions of years
Speaker 1: on a slow rocket ship? Make it sounds like we're
Speaker 1: a little planet in a big universe. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a premise for a movie or something, you know, the
Speaker 1: little planet goes to the big city. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of that great book we talked about once, Long Journey
Speaker 1: to the Small Angry Planet. But we are a tiny,
Speaker 1: little planet and it is an incredibly vast universe. And
Speaker 1: some of the answers to the questions that we struggle with,
Speaker 1: the ones that keep us up late at night. You know,
Speaker 1: what's inside a black hole or what's at the center
Speaker 1: of the galaxy? Or what's it the far reaches of
Speaker 1: the universe? Or are there aliens? Some of these questions
Speaker 1: could be rapidly answered if only we could get to
Speaker 1: other parts of the universe to just look at the answers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we can learn a lot just from here on Earth,
Speaker 1: looking through our telescopes and our antennas, we can learn
Speaker 1: a lot about the universe, but it's just not quite
Speaker 1: the same as actually getting there or seeing it with
Speaker 1: your own eyes, or being able to touch other planets
Speaker 1: or shake the hands or tentacles or other aliens. Because
Speaker 1: if there are, for example, aliens on other planets, then
Speaker 1: photons leaving those planets are hitting us here on Earth.
Speaker 1: It's possible that a photon that left some alien tentacle
Speaker 1: flew through space and then landed on your eyeball. But
Speaker 1: of course it's difficult to know that because it's mixed
Speaker 1: in with so many other photons and it's basically impossible
Speaker 1: to distinguish. So even with our most powerful telescopes, we
Speaker 1: can't see what's going on on the surfaces of other
Speaker 1: planets yet. So wouldn't it be great if instead we
Speaker 1: could just pop on over. Yeah. Unfortunately, it is a
Speaker 1: pretty big universe, and it takes a long long time
Speaker 1: just to get to the nearest star. There are millions
Speaker 1: of light years to other galaxies, tens of light years
Speaker 1: to other planets, and so even if we were able
Speaker 1: to go at the speed of light, it would still
Speaker 1: take a long time and a spaceship to get their
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime has not yet conquered free same day delivery
Speaker 1: to Andromeda. You need Amazon Prime Prime. You haven't unlocked
Speaker 1: that in your account now. I haven't paid the ten
Speaker 1: billion dollar annual fee yet to get intergalactic deliveries. It's coming, though,
Speaker 1: only for billionaires, billionaire podcasters faster than light drones. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be great if we could get to other
Speaker 1: stars and other galaxies to explore the universe, to see
Speaker 1: what's out there, to get a closer look at things
Speaker 1: like black holes and other planets and trump stars. But
Speaker 1: you know, space is what it is. You can't move
Speaker 1: through it faster than the speed of light. And that's
Speaker 1: a pretty hard and fast rule. We know that no
Speaker 1: matter who you are and how hard you push, how
Speaker 1: big your rocket, you can't get going faster than the
Speaker 1: speed of light. It's sort of strange to think about,
Speaker 1: because you can add energy to things like at the
Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider, we can pour more and more energy
Speaker 1: into particles. There's no limit on how energetic a proton
Speaker 1: can get in an accelerator. But even though they get
Speaker 1: more energetic, they just don't get going faster. They very
Speaker 1: slowly approached the speed of light. So it's a hard
Speaker 1: and a fast rule. And when the physics says just
Speaker 1: cannot be broken. We've been looking all over the universe
Speaker 1: and nothing has ever broken that rule. But there are loopholes.
Speaker 1: There might be other ways to accomplish those goals without
Speaker 1: breaking that rule. Not a way to move faster than light,
Speaker 1: but to avoid having to go through as much space
Speaker 1: in order to get to your destination. That's right. Physicists
Speaker 1: have read the fine print of the universe, and it
Speaker 1: seems there's a you know, a loophole, something that you
Speaker 1: can and used to warm your way to other parts
Speaker 1: of the universe. Because when physicists and lawyers get together,
Speaker 1: oh boy, you never know what you're going to invent.
Speaker 1: It's like matter and antimatter colliding. It's pure invention. Energy
Speaker 1: is what comes out. Pure energy, no ethics exactly. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that the rules of space and time
Speaker 1: do allow for some crazy possibilities. We know that space
Speaker 1: can do all sorts of things that our ancestors and
Speaker 1: even genius physicists from the past never imagined. It can bend,
Speaker 1: and it can twist, and it can be rearranged in
Speaker 1: all sorts of complicated ways. Yeah, and this special loophole
Speaker 1: is called a wormhole, a special tunnel through space and
Speaker 1: time that maybe we can use to get to other
Speaker 1: spaces or even other times. But the big question is
Speaker 1: can we make one? Is it possible to make one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's easy. All you do is you call up your
Speaker 1: favorite cartoonists slash engineer and say, where's my wormhole? I
Speaker 1: thought you just have to call some worms. My wife
Speaker 1: is deep into the compost sting, so she's got a
Speaker 1: big hole in our backyard filled with worms. So I
Speaker 1: guess you could say she's already invented a wormhole. There
Speaker 1: you go. Now, we just need a cosmic compost bin. Well,
Speaker 1: our solar system is a cosmic compost because we are
Speaker 1: the left over remnants of previous solar systems having been
Speaker 1: spewed out into the cosmos to fertilize new systems. I
Speaker 1: guess with the second lost thermodynamics. Everything is you know,
Speaker 1: increasing in enterprise. So technically the whole universe is like
Speaker 1: a compost bin. There you go. The universe was so
Speaker 1: green and smelt so weird. Yeah, and so to the
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question can we
Speaker 1: build a wormhole? Interesting? I guess first of all, did
Speaker 1: you build a wormhole? Or do you have to dig
Speaker 1: a wormhole in space? Let's figure out the verb first,
Speaker 1: then we'll deal with the other. Let's get the question right, like,
Speaker 1: how do you build a whole? Maybe you spin a wormhole.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's or like knitting or sewing. You know, it's
Speaker 1: still I feel like the hole is an emptiness, right,
Speaker 1: how do you build one? Or even a mid one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: put one together? Yeah. Well, you know, we make light
Speaker 1: of it, but it is a fascinating leap to say
Speaker 1: something is allowed in the universe to figuring out how
Speaker 1: to actually make it happen. You know, you might, for example,
Speaker 1: know that su flas can be made. Maybe you had
Speaker 1: one at a restaurant. That doesn't mean you know how
Speaker 1: to go home and actually make that soufle in your kitchen.
Speaker 1: Knowing it could exist in the universe and figuring out
Speaker 1: how to make one happen from the current situation are
Speaker 1: two very different things. Yep. So then we can put
Speaker 1: this in the recipe book for the universe. Warmhole who flays?
Speaker 1: Don't accidentally add too much chocolate and make it a
Speaker 1: black hole, soufle, it's very dangerous. Or dark chocolate matter
Speaker 1: dark chocolate matter? Wow? Is that a phrase anybody's ever
Speaker 1: said before? Dark matter chocolate? I mean, technically you might
Speaker 1: be able to make dark matter chocolate. Wow. You know,
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a chocolate brand out there called
Speaker 1: dark matter. You might need a whole different recipe book
Speaker 1: for that. I'd like to toss that one in my mouth. Hole. Well,
Speaker 1: it is an interesting question because we know that wormholes
Speaker 1: are technically theoretically possible, and this has been worked out
Speaker 1: in the math of the laws of physics. But the
Speaker 1: bigger question is how do you make one? And how
Speaker 1: do you make one big enough for people to go
Speaker 1: through it? Exactly. It's the next frontier in understanding wormholes,
Speaker 1: and it's a crucial step in getting us to the
Speaker 1: place where we can step through a portal and walk
Speaker 1: on an alien planet. So, as usual, we were wondering
Speaker 1: how many people add there have thought about this question
Speaker 1: of how to build or dig or excavate a warmhole
Speaker 1: out there in space, And so Daniel went out there
Speaker 1: into the internet to ask people could we actually make
Speaker 1: a wormhole? So thank you to everybody who answered these
Speaker 1: crazy questions without any chance to prepare. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to participate for a future episode of the podcast, I
Speaker 1: can't encourage you enough and we'd love to hear some
Speaker 1: new fresh boy is, so please write to us two
Speaker 1: questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Think about it
Speaker 1: for a second. How would you make a wormhole? Here's
Speaker 1: what people had to say. We can make a wormhole.
Speaker 1: We can do anything if we started flying too. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't have anything else to add. I think this
Speaker 1: is theoretically possible, and I give us a thousand years
Speaker 1: until we achieve it. Sure, why not? If we can
Speaker 1: understand it, we can conceive the technology to do it.
Speaker 1: I doubt we have the technology right now, and I
Speaker 1: don't even know what that technology would be, no idea
Speaker 1: at all. Concentrate a bunch of matter into one place
Speaker 1: and instead of becoming a black hole, it becomes a wormhole.
Speaker 1: Maybe you spin a bunch of things in a spinnyway
Speaker 1: to make a vortex that everybody gets sucked down and
Speaker 1: through to another place. I would like to think we could,
Speaker 1: and maybe not yet, but soon. And Daniel, I know
Speaker 1: that you love Interstellar. I remember that you were talking
Speaker 1: about it earlier one of the podcasts, and I could
Speaker 1: imagine it's a thing like that, like bending space somewhere,
Speaker 1: maybe even in our own solar system. And we really
Speaker 1: don't know a lot about like Dark Meadow or what's
Speaker 1: inside the black hole, or there's really still lots of
Speaker 1: secrets around and in the universe, so I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that we can find some surprises there as well, and
Speaker 1: maybe with that information we get closer and closer to
Speaker 1: actually be able to make a wormhole. I don't think
Speaker 1: we have enough energy right now, but eventually we could.
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure wormholes are real, nor we's ever
Speaker 1: observed one or measured one or study one. I know
Speaker 1: they're a mathematical thing, but I'm not even sure that real.
Speaker 1: But if they were real, there's no way we could
Speaker 1: deal with those types of energies. Because what's the most
Speaker 1: proful thing humans have ever made, The large hard drunk collider,
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. I mean, if you take all the hard
Speaker 1: drink collider, all the nuclear weapons ever exploded wherever there
Speaker 1: ever are on Earth, there's energies don't compare anything to
Speaker 1: the Sun. And when you're dealing with a wormhole, you're
Speaker 1: dealing with black holes and and things that are a
Speaker 1: thousands millions of times of more massive sun. So I
Speaker 1: think it's impossible for humans to ever create or make
Speaker 1: or benifest or manage or anything with the worm hole. Stupid.
Speaker 1: Theoretically it's possible, but we don't have the technology. So
Speaker 1: my answer is yes, but not at the moment. All right,
Speaker 1: pretty good answers here. I feel like I'm not sure
Speaker 1: they quite answered your question because I think you asked
Speaker 1: the question, could we actually make a warm hole? But
Speaker 1: and so people just said yes, why not sure, instead
Speaker 1: of actually giving us ideas before how to make a
Speaker 1: warm hoole. Oh. They didn't take it as a homework project,
Speaker 1: like go and give me the recipe figured out right now,
Speaker 1: I want the answer today. That's right. They read the
Speaker 1: fine print in the question, and the question only asked
Speaker 1: could we make a wormhole? Which is a the other
Speaker 1: or no answer? Well, but again, knowing that something can
Speaker 1: exist in the universe doesn't mean we know how to
Speaker 1: make it right. It's not always easy to assemble something
Speaker 1: even if you know that it can exist right. Right,
Speaker 1: So I guess, let's dig into this topic and no
Speaker 1: pun intended, And so let's start with the basics. I
Speaker 1: guess what is a wormhole exactly? And what do we
Speaker 1: know about it? So wormhole is a fascinating idea, and
Speaker 1: it comes out of the basic realization from general relativity,
Speaker 1: which tells us that space itself is not nothingness. It's
Speaker 1: not like the background in which the universe actions happen,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the way that Newton saw space.
Speaker 1: He saw spaces like absolute and fundamental and sort of
Speaker 1: like the stage of the universe on which things move
Speaker 1: and shift. So he thought space and time where it's
Speaker 1: just these sort of eternal basics to the universe. And
Speaker 1: then Einstein showed is that that's not true at all,
Speaker 1: that space and time are actually dynamic, that they change
Speaker 1: in response to what's in them. So you put a
Speaker 1: blob of mass in space, for example, a curve space,
Speaker 1: and then that curvature tells those masses how to move.
Speaker 1: So it's not like space is the background. It's instead
Speaker 1: one of the players on the stage, and mass and
Speaker 1: space interact with each other to create all the crazy dynamics,
Speaker 1: the orbits, the black holes, everything that we see. And
Speaker 1: Einstein gave us these equations to tell us what space
Speaker 1: can do. As long as space follows those equations, everything
Speaker 1: that the equations predicts should be possible to exist in
Speaker 1: the universe, and that includes really simple stuff like you
Speaker 1: have an empty universe, okay, so space is just totally flat,
Speaker 1: there's nothing interesting there. Or you have a singularity, a
Speaker 1: point of infinite density mass with zero volume, in which
Speaker 1: case you get crazy things like an event horizon. And
Speaker 1: so general relativity tells us that space can do all
Speaker 1: sorts of crazy things, and wormholes are just one of
Speaker 1: those predictions. Yeah. People often make the analogy that we're
Speaker 1: like fish swimming in water, and you know, we thought
Speaker 1: we were like swimming and emptiness, but actually we're swimming
Speaker 1: in something, and that something can sort of like banned
Speaker 1: and pushes and compressed and make swirls and everything. I
Speaker 1: guess maybe a difficult thing to think about though, is
Speaker 1: like you can imagine space bending and distorting, but it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to imagine poking a hole in it,
Speaker 1: Like it's hard to imagine poking a hole in water.
Speaker 1: It is hard to imagine poking a hole in water.
Speaker 1: But that's because if or a fish, all you can
Speaker 1: think about are the basic things that you've seen water do.
Speaker 1: But if you are a sort of water scientist, you
Speaker 1: know that under different configurations, under different circumstances, water can
Speaker 1: do other things. It can be crazy. You can form solids, right,
Speaker 1: it can form drops and fall from the sky. You
Speaker 1: can even form a gas and expand. And so we're
Speaker 1: stretching the analogy a little bit, but the idea is
Speaker 1: that under different circumstances, space can do other things. And
Speaker 1: I think this is a real demonstration of the power
Speaker 1: of theoretical physics, because this is a case where theoretical
Speaker 1: physics really is leading the charge. You know, we take
Speaker 1: these like abstract principles, these mathematical equations that Einstein came
Speaker 1: up with to describe the things we had already seen
Speaker 1: in the universe, and then we explored the predictions of them.
Speaker 1: We said, well, if these are true, if these really
Speaker 1: are the rules of the universe, what else can they do?
Speaker 1: And for example, we discovered black holes. In this way,
Speaker 1: we discover them theoretically as like a consequence of these laws,
Speaker 1: and then went out in the universe and found them
Speaker 1: to be real. So it's a really powerful way to
Speaker 1: do science. One is go out in the universe and
Speaker 1: find crazy stuff and try to explain it. The other
Speaker 1: is look at the crazy consequences of the rules you
Speaker 1: have already gathered from your experiments and see if you
Speaker 1: can predict interesting, fascinating things. So wormholes are that kind
Speaker 1: of example where people have tried to find weird corners
Speaker 1: of Einstein's equations to tell us that it's possible, right right,
Speaker 1: Although to be fair and not everything theorists come up
Speaker 1: with turns out to be true almost nothing in fact
Speaker 1: that they think, Like, of all the theories out there
Speaker 1: about what new particles might be, I bet none of
Speaker 1: them are true. I don't think that the real theory
Speaker 1: of nature in particles is in any human mind right now.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't stop them from being creative and coming
Speaker 1: up with lots of ideas. But wormholes are fascinating because
Speaker 1: it's not just like one idea, it's more like a
Speaker 1: category of ideas. The basic concept of wormhole is say
Speaker 1: you have a patch of space from one spot, you
Speaker 1: have a patch of space in another spot. Is it
Speaker 1: possible to connect them? Is it possible to make it
Speaker 1: so that this one patch of space A is like
Speaker 1: next two hatch of space B, even though they're otherwise separated,
Speaker 1: maybe by light years of distance or even by time.
Speaker 1: Is it possible to build a tunnel so that one
Speaker 1: patch of flat space is now connected to another? And
Speaker 1: this is sort of like the overarching theme of a wormhole.
Speaker 1: And people have explored this for decades now, and they've
Speaker 1: come up with a few possible ways to connect patch
Speaker 1: of space A and patch of space B. And there's
Speaker 1: sort of very different ideas. You may have heard several
Speaker 1: different ones which sound contradictory, And the reason is that
Speaker 1: there are different ideas for what a wormhole might be. Like.
Speaker 1: There are different flavors of this wormhole moves, you know,
Speaker 1: this earthworms holes, and then this ring wormholes and all
Speaker 1: sorts of different kind of worms. Oh boy, this is
Speaker 1: getting a little uncomfortable. Yeah, so there's different flavors of wormholes,
Speaker 1: and but I guess you know, it's sort of strange,
Speaker 1: how it Like, what is it about the theory that
Speaker 1: allows wormholes, like, you know, doesn't the theory sort of
Speaker 1: treat spaces like the thing where other particles move around,
Speaker 1: And how does it actually allow, you know, you to
Speaker 1: make discontinuities in this space? Well, singularities are in aparently
Speaker 1: like a discontinuity. There are a very weird point in
Speaker 1: the theory. And so the very first idea for a
Speaker 1: wormhole was imagined two black holes which share a singularity,
Speaker 1: you know, which have the same singularity. So you have
Speaker 1: like a black hole with two exteriors and a common interior,
Speaker 1: like it just overlaps because I guess if you have space,
Speaker 1: you know, people usually imagine it as like a giant
Speaker 1: rubber sheet, and you can have maybe a black hole,
Speaker 1: something so heavy and intense that it kind of makes
Speaker 1: this dip in the rubber sheet and it ends in
Speaker 1: a singularity maybe. And so that's kind of where the
Speaker 1: idea came from, Like what if this singularity down at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the rubber sheet somehow connected to another
Speaker 1: singularity from another black hole somewhere else in space and
Speaker 1: the rubber sheet analogy is useful for getting you thinking
Speaker 1: about how space bends, but it's a little bit misleading
Speaker 1: sometimes because it suggests that space bends like into some
Speaker 1: other direction, like in the rubber sheet analogy, the universe
Speaker 1: is a two dimensional rubber sheet and it's bending in
Speaker 1: a third dimension. In our universe it is three dimensions
Speaker 1: of space, but doesn't bend in some like other weird
Speaker 1: fourth dimension. The bending is intrinsic, meaning it's all about
Speaker 1: the changing of the relative distances of points in space.
Speaker 1: And we don't know what it is that ties space together,
Speaker 1: like why is this bit of space next to that
Speaker 1: bit of space next to that bit of space. And
Speaker 1: so what we're doing when we're making wormholes is we're
Speaker 1: just like fundamentally reorganizing the arrangement of space. We're saying,
Speaker 1: this bit of space is now next to that bit
Speaker 1: of space. It's like you're sowing the universe together. You know,
Speaker 1: you're knitting, and you just sort of like make a
Speaker 1: stitch from the frontier sweater to the back of your
Speaker 1: sweater and you say, these two things are now next
Speaker 1: to each other on my sweater. Right. It's like you're
Speaker 1: taking this singularity from one black hole, and then you're
Speaker 1: taking another singularity from another black hole, and then you're
Speaker 1: joining them together. But doesn't that seem sort of implausible, Like,
Speaker 1: isn't the point of a singularity is that it's single,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: like unique and and and you know, a singular point,
Speaker 1: Like how do you make two points? Need? Oh man,
Speaker 1: I love that idea. You know, you're right, it's a
Speaker 1: funny name because there's not just one singularity in the universe, right,
Speaker 1: there's a singularity at the heart of every black hole,
Speaker 1: and so we shouldn't be called them singularities. They should
Speaker 1: be called like what multiple ularities or many ularities? Singularities
Speaker 1: apparently is apparently they're not exclusive. But the idea of
Speaker 1: a singularity just implies that something is becoming infinite. In
Speaker 1: that case, the idea is the density. The density is
Speaker 1: becoming infinite, So it's a singularity in that sense, right,
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. It's like, how do you take
Speaker 1: an infinite dense point and connected to another infinite dense point, Like,
Speaker 1: what are the chances they're going to meet up together? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we don't know, but it's possible. Like if you
Speaker 1: plug that into Einstein's equation, that comes out with a
Speaker 1: check mark. Like if you shape space in that way,
Speaker 1: and you say, can space have this shape? Einstein's equation says, yes,
Speaker 1: you absolutely can. It's like can you mold a block
Speaker 1: of clay into a donut? The answer is yes, and
Speaker 1: so therefore donuts are possible. Just because that configuration satisfies
Speaker 1: Enstein's equations doesn't tell you how to actually make it real,
Speaker 1: because in order to make something, every step along the
Speaker 1: way also have to satisfy the laws of physics. Right.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like if you want to build an arch,
Speaker 1: like a Roman arch, where you have those bricks that
Speaker 1: suspend each other. Yeah, you know that works if you
Speaker 1: can get it up there. But you can't just like
Speaker 1: put one brick up there and have it levitate while
Speaker 1: you assemble the other bricks below it. Every step in
Speaker 1: between also has to satisfy the laws of physics. And
Speaker 1: that's the tricky part finding a recipe to go from
Speaker 1: you don't have a wormhole. Two, now you do have
Speaker 1: a wormhole. Even if you know the last step is allowed,
Speaker 1: every step in between also has to be allowed. Interesting.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into the different flavors of wormholes,
Speaker 1: and it's getting through the problems of making one. But first,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break right, Daniel. We are worming
Speaker 1: our way into the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about at wormholes maybe a possible way
Speaker 1: for us to get to other galaxies or other parts
Speaker 1: of the universe through a loophole in the spacetime fabric
Speaker 1: of the universe. And so you mentioned there are different
Speaker 1: flavors of wormholes, like you can order a vanilla wormhole
Speaker 1: and a chocolate wormhole. I recommend mint chip. Really it's
Speaker 1: the taste, not mint well exactly. And because people might
Speaker 1: be wondering, hey, if I want to get from here
Speaker 1: to Alpha Centauri, are you telling me I have to
Speaker 1: use a wormhole which has two black holes on it,
Speaker 1: Because if you fall into a black hole, you're not
Speaker 1: coming out the other side, right, And so that's why
Speaker 1: this wormhole is more like a category of ideas. And
Speaker 1: the kind we're looking for is a traversable wormhole, one
Speaker 1: that you can go into and actually come out the
Speaker 1: other side. Not every wormhole. You can imagine if physics
Speaker 1: satisfies that requirement. For example, when we have two black
Speaker 1: holes with a common singularity, definitely not a trip I
Speaker 1: would recommend. But there are other flavors of wormholes, when
Speaker 1: we've talked about in the podcast before, is a black
Speaker 1: hole with a singularity, and on the other side, instead
Speaker 1: of being another black hole, is now a white hole
Speaker 1: something which is like the inverse of a black hole.
Speaker 1: Instead of something that's impossible to escape, it's something that's
Speaker 1: impossible to fall into. So you fall into the black
Speaker 1: hole side of it, passed through somehow, and then come
Speaker 1: out the white hole side some other place in the universe.
Speaker 1: I see. So this is like the chocolate vanilla swirl
Speaker 1: flavor worm hole. Yeah, but they don't swirl, right, there's
Speaker 1: a singularity of the heart there that keeps them apart,
Speaker 1: which is the best time because if you order chocolate
Speaker 1: in vanilla swirl, you don't want them mixed together because
Speaker 1: then it's just like sort of you know, light chocolate.
Speaker 1: You want the contrast a right, maybe it's more like
Speaker 1: cookies and cream. Then, well, so you're saying that another
Speaker 1: type of worm hole is one that connects the black
Speaker 1: hole to a white hole. Now, our white holes are
Speaker 1: sort of like the inverse of a black hole, where
Speaker 1: it doesn't suck things in, it actually spews things out.
Speaker 1: And these are also theoretically possible, but unlike black holes.
Speaker 1: We've never observed any white holes. Right. That's right, black
Speaker 1: holes theoretically possible and observed. We're pretty sure they exist,
Speaker 1: So check out some of our episodes about like quantity
Speaker 1: stars and dark He knows about whether they actually are
Speaker 1: out there in the universe. But wormholes and white holes
Speaker 1: still purely theoretical. Nobody's ever seen one. We don't actually
Speaker 1: know if they can exist in the universe, although the
Speaker 1: math suggests that they are possible. I see, so you
Speaker 1: could maybe take the singularity from a white hole and
Speaker 1: connected to a singularity from a black hole. But wouldn't
Speaker 1: they be sort of different kinds of singularities or it's
Speaker 1: still allowed by the theory. No, it's a single singularity.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you look at like the Penrose diagram
Speaker 1: for a black hole, this is something that's pretty cool
Speaker 1: that lets you think about the shape of space in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of a black hole. This sort of a
Speaker 1: gap on the other side of the Penrose diagram. If
Speaker 1: the black hole in our universe, which is centered around
Speaker 1: the singularity and then the diagram has this gap, you
Speaker 1: like what's on the other side, And that's sort of
Speaker 1: the genesis of the idea of a white hole. It's
Speaker 1: like the other side of the singularity. And so it
Speaker 1: would be very natural for a black hole in a
Speaker 1: white hole to be connected by a singularity. And again,
Speaker 1: this wouldn't necessarily be a traversable wormhole, right because like
Speaker 1: you've got to pass through a singularity. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a pretty tight squeak. Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to really
Speaker 1: lose a lot of weight to be that single. And
Speaker 1: so that's also not a traversible wormhole one that you'd
Speaker 1: like to pass through. But there are other kinds of
Speaker 1: ideas about wormholes, and these are a little bit more exotic,
Speaker 1: but they're also maybe more promising because it turns out
Speaker 1: to have a connection between two points in space, you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily even need any mass. You might not even
Speaker 1: need a singularity at all. What do you mean, like,
Speaker 1: how can you have a wormhole without a singularity or
Speaker 1: without a hole. Well, it's just a question of having
Speaker 1: space be curved in the right way that this patch
Speaker 1: of space and that patch of space can connect to
Speaker 1: each other. And so people talk about whether that's possible. Obviously,
Speaker 1: singularities are incredibly dense sources of mass can curve space,
Speaker 1: but that's not the only way to get space to
Speaker 1: be curved. And it's possible to have curved space without
Speaker 1: necessarily having any mass. So, for example, in the vicinity
Speaker 1: of a black hole, where you don't actually have any mass,
Speaker 1: space is still curved. Right, there's like complex interest in
Speaker 1: geometry near a black hole, even though you're not actually
Speaker 1: in the massive part of it. And so it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a stretch. But if you might be able
Speaker 1: to come up with some solutions to the Einstein equations
Speaker 1: that connect two portions of space without actually having any
Speaker 1: huge amounts of mass, without any singularities at all, and
Speaker 1: so this is the kind of wormhole which might actually
Speaker 1: be traversable. I see you're saying, like, we know that
Speaker 1: space is kind of bendable and squishy, so why not,
Speaker 1: Like it's theoretically possible you could just squish it all
Speaker 1: the way into a tunnel without needing a black hole.
Speaker 1: But you have no idea how to do that. There,
Speaker 1: I have no idea how to do that. I mean
Speaker 1: I have some ideas how to do that, I have
Speaker 1: no plausible ideas for how to do that. I don't
Speaker 1: have a recipe that one can follow. And before you
Speaker 1: even get there. There are theoretical problems with these kinds
Speaker 1: of wormholes. One is that these kind of wormholes, when
Speaker 1: people play with them in the equations, they tend to
Speaker 1: try to like snap shut immediately. They're not stable. It's
Speaker 1: not like a black hole which you can sit there
Speaker 1: forever essentially sucking stuff up. These kind of wormholes when
Speaker 1: you set them up, they collapse that like pinch closed.
Speaker 1: These tubes don't like to just sort of like hang
Speaker 1: out connecting two parts of space. They pinch off almost immediately.
Speaker 1: I mean, like if I just take space and I
Speaker 1: dig a hole or connect to far away points together,
Speaker 1: your equations actually tell you that it's not stable, Like
Speaker 1: why wouldn't it be stable and in space just sit
Speaker 1: there and stay bent. It's a great question. And just
Speaker 1: to clarify, like we don't know how to dig this hole,
Speaker 1: but say you started with universe where that whole existed,
Speaker 1: we don't know how to go from. There's no hole too,
Speaker 1: there is a hole. But say you had the universe
Speaker 1: with this one of these wormholes in space already came
Speaker 1: built that way, then we can't play with it and
Speaker 1: say what would happen in this scenario? Just like I
Speaker 1: don't know how to make two black holes collide, but
Speaker 1: you know, if it's already happening in the universe, our
Speaker 1: calculations can tell you what to expect. I say, it's
Speaker 1: like you bought a house and you discovered has a
Speaker 1: secret tunnel in the middle of your house. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then we can ask, well, what would happen, And
Speaker 1: the calculations suggest that it would pinch closed immediately because
Speaker 1: like the pressure from the curving of space would immediately collapse.
Speaker 1: This interesting mean that space doesn't like to be bent.
Speaker 1: It's not stable, right, I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say what space likes. If it likes mint chip or
Speaker 1: if it likes vanilla, you know, but it doesn't stay
Speaker 1: that way. It's not stable unless you add something to
Speaker 1: your wormhole. Like, it's not stable. Like the equations tell
Speaker 1: you that in the next instant in time, curvature would
Speaker 1: snap back into flat space. Just like if you put
Speaker 1: a particle near a black hole, that's not a stable configuration.
Speaker 1: The particle will roll into the black hole eventually, right,
Speaker 1: You can't just have it hanging out there. The dynamics
Speaker 1: predict that things will change. You know. Some things are stable,
Speaker 1: like a particle can be an orbit around a black hole.
Speaker 1: That is a stable configuration. So there are some stable
Speaker 1: solutions to the Eis equations, but there are also some
Speaker 1: that are unstable. They won't just like hang out with
Speaker 1: the same solution forever. But Kip Thorne and some friends
Speaker 1: came up with the idea of how to keep that
Speaker 1: throat from collapsing. Interesting. Just get a bigger worm, they said,
Speaker 1: actually get a negative worm. What they discovered is that
Speaker 1: you need some sort of like repulsion. Right, gravity tends
Speaker 1: to be attractive. I'm a try acted by the Earth,
Speaker 1: and the Earth is attracted by the Sun, and the
Speaker 1: Sun is attracted by the rest of the Milky Way.
Speaker 1: We tend to see gravity as an attractive force in
Speaker 1: the universe. Here, what we need is like repulsion. We
Speaker 1: need something like pressing on the edges of the throat
Speaker 1: of the wormhole to keep it open. And to do
Speaker 1: that you need gravity to do the opposite of what
Speaker 1: it usually does. And so they thought, well, perhaps if
Speaker 1: you had like negative energy density, something with like negative
Speaker 1: mass instead of positive mass, you would apply some sort
Speaker 1: of like pressure on the edges of this wormhole and
Speaker 1: it would keep it open. It would keep it from
Speaker 1: collapsing gravitationally, wouldn't that be the same as sort of
Speaker 1: like a white hole, right, like something that's the opposite
Speaker 1: of super heavy. It's the opposite, but in another direction, right,
Speaker 1: a white hole is the opposite of a black hole.
Speaker 1: And then it's like the inverted shape of space time,
Speaker 1: but here it's the opposite of mass. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool though. In particle physics, we have lots of
Speaker 1: like opposites. You have matter and antimatter, you have positive
Speaker 1: mass and negative mass. You have you know, electrons and
Speaker 1: different flavors of electrons, mus and towns. There's so many
Speaker 1: different f actions physicists and engineers, engineers and mint chip engineers,
Speaker 1: you know, that's right, and lawyers exactly. And so the
Speaker 1: idea is if you have some kind of matter with
Speaker 1: negative energy density to it, you know, like a particle
Speaker 1: with negative mass, which is something we've never seen, and
Speaker 1: you threaded that through your wormhole, then that configuration is
Speaker 1: actually stable. They will keep the wormholes open. Interesting, so
Speaker 1: are we still talking about like a big tunnel in
Speaker 1: space or are we talking about a wormhole that only
Speaker 1: like a single particle can go through. That's the other
Speaker 1: problem is that in their calculations. This is like particle
Speaker 1: level wormholes. We're talking microscopic wormholes. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna send Jorge to Alpha Centauri, we would
Speaker 1: have to combine this with some machine that like disintegrated
Speaker 1: you into your particles or your information and then like
Speaker 1: beamed photons through it and reassembled you. On the other end.
Speaker 1: This is not something you could like pass a living
Speaker 1: object or a macroscopic object through. I see, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess paint paint a picture to me, Like, how
Speaker 1: do we keep it open? Then do you You have
Speaker 1: to keep feeding it this negative mass, this inverse negative
Speaker 1: energy matter through it, Like there has to be a
Speaker 1: stream of it or it's like it's like the scaffolding
Speaker 1: that holds it open, and it's there and then we
Speaker 1: passed kind of in the middle of it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: more like the scaffolding. As long as it hangs out
Speaker 1: inside the wormhole, it should keep it open. But again,
Speaker 1: we don't know that negative mass exists. So this was
Speaker 1: sort of the forefront of current thinking until a few
Speaker 1: years ago. People thought, well, wormholes, maybe they exist, but
Speaker 1: they need us to use this kind of exotic matter,
Speaker 1: which is theoretical which might not exist in the universe,
Speaker 1: but which is theoretically possible. It's theoretically possible. Yeah that
Speaker 1: we've never seen it and it would be really weird.
Speaker 1: And we actually have a whole podcast episode about exotic
Speaker 1: matter and how strange it might be to check that
Speaker 1: out if you like. But now people are thinking about
Speaker 1: other ways to maybe keep wormholes open and maybe to
Speaker 1: make them larger, to make the macroscopic so you can
Speaker 1: put like real people and objects and you know, your
Speaker 1: suitcase through it interesting. So we have some new ideas,
Speaker 1: and so this is something physicist actually work on. Like
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just science fiction authors and TV
Speaker 1: writers that think about these things like a field. There
Speaker 1: are warm, whole physicists. There are This is not like
Speaker 1: the lunatic fringe, like people at the very end of
Speaker 1: their careers noodling around with crazy ideas they daren't mention otherwise.
Speaker 1: These are prominent folks, you know. Kip Thorne is like
Speaker 1: mainstream physicist you want a Nobel Prize. There's guys like
Speaker 1: Juan Malda Senna, who was one of the smartest guys
Speaker 1: in the universe at the Institute for Advanced science. Cunning
Speaker 1: edge string theorist works on this kind of stuff. It's
Speaker 1: a really interesting area because it's not just like, hey,
Speaker 1: can we get to other places in the universe. It
Speaker 1: touches really deep questions about the nature of space and
Speaker 1: time itself and connects to questions in string theory and
Speaker 1: quantum information and black hole information paradoxes, and so wormholes
Speaker 1: have become like really core to a lot of these questions.
Speaker 1: You remember that episode we had recently about the potential
Speaker 1: solution to the black hole information paradox. One of those
Speaker 1: solutions implies that there's like a wormhole that connects the
Speaker 1: inside of the black hole to your simulation of a
Speaker 1: black hole on your computer, like informational wormhole. And so
Speaker 1: these wormholes are like popping up everywhere these days on
Speaker 1: the forefront of theoretical physics. Interesting, all right, So what
Speaker 1: are some of these new ideas about wormholes. So one
Speaker 1: of the new ideas about how to keep a wormhole
Speaker 1: open says, well, let's not try to use something that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist in the universe, like negative mass matter, because
Speaker 1: maybe that doesn't exist and so it's not practical. Instead,
Speaker 1: let's try to use some of the cool features of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics to maybe keep this wormhole open. So quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics has really fascinating properties, and one of the most
Speaker 1: interesting is something called entanglement. When you connect two particles
Speaker 1: which can be really far apart, but you have their
Speaker 1: fates intertwined. So, for example, maybe you have a photon
Speaker 1: which decays to two electrons, and those two electrons have
Speaker 1: to like satisfy one of the rules of the original photon.
Speaker 1: You know, if the photon had no spin, for example,
Speaker 1: then the two electrons together have to have no spin
Speaker 1: when you add them up, which means if one electron
Speaker 1: to spin up, the other one has to be spinned down.
Speaker 1: So you have these two elect stron's and maybe they're
Speaker 1: now like really far apart, they're a light year apart
Speaker 1: in the universe. As soon as you know one of
Speaker 1: them is spin up, the other one has to be
Speaker 1: spin down. Quantum mechanics tells you that both of them
Speaker 1: can be in either state, and until you measure electron A,
Speaker 1: you don't actually know what's going on with electron B.
Speaker 1: So these two particles are entangled. There's some like weird
Speaker 1: spooky connection between them because as soon as you ask
Speaker 1: about electron A and discover oh it's spin up or
Speaker 1: oh it's spin down. Now you know something about electron B.
Speaker 1: So this is like a way to connect two places
Speaker 1: in space somehow across vast distances, and this collapse, this
Speaker 1: coordination of their results seems to be instantaneous. So this
Speaker 1: is a starting place to think about, like how to
Speaker 1: maybe make connections between two points in space using quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics rather than general relativity. I see, all right, So
Speaker 1: these two electrons are tied together by some rule of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, and now how to use them to keep
Speaker 1: it a wormhole open? So this is gonna sound bonkers, right,
Speaker 1: even on top of all the bonker stuff we've been
Speaker 1: talking about today. The idea is if you can entangle
Speaker 1: the two edges of the wormhole. So take your wormhole,
Speaker 1: which otherwise would have collapsed, and somehow entangled the two boundaries,
Speaker 1: Like you have a boundary of the wormhole in this
Speaker 1: part of space and the edge of the wormhole in
Speaker 1: the other part of space. Somehow quantum entangled those two boundaries.
Speaker 1: So they're like linked by quantum mechanics, and there's going
Speaker 1: to be a connection between them that entanglement between them
Speaker 1: creates like a special field, which creates negative energy density
Speaker 1: inside the wormhole, which is equivalent to having negative mass
Speaker 1: in there. So it does the same job as negative
Speaker 1: mass matter, but without actually having to have any negative mass.
Speaker 1: Wait what all right, So you're saying that if I
Speaker 1: entangled two electrons, right like, I have two electrons entangle,
Speaker 1: and I have one here and I have one there
Speaker 1: where you are, you know, fifty miles away, you're saying,
Speaker 1: there's some kind of like energy linked to them, some energy,
Speaker 1: some negative energy linking them together, or there's some negative
Speaker 1: energy in between us. Yeah, there's a negative energy fee
Speaker 1: old in between these two objects, like a real tangible
Speaker 1: field or like a theoretical field. It's like a theoretical field.
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody really understands quantum entanglement. Frankly, it's a mystery.
Speaker 1: It's not something that we really understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: And in the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, there are
Speaker 1: different explanations for it, and there are even viable theories
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics that suggest that entanglement can be explained
Speaker 1: by like hidden variables, that there is no randomness anyway,
Speaker 1: a lot of this is still theoretical, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: involve invoking negative mass particles, just negative energy we don't
Speaker 1: know exists, but which in these calculations does come out
Speaker 1: of this special entanglement. If you entangle two sides of wormhole,
Speaker 1: the idea is that now they are connected in this
Speaker 1: special way and that keeps them from collapsing. Interesting, like
Speaker 1: there's actual like energy between them that is somehow keeping
Speaker 1: this warmhole open. Yeah, there's some way that these two
Speaker 1: are connected now, right, Because if you have two electrons
Speaker 1: that have their fates entangled, they are part of the
Speaker 1: same wave function, and that wave function and is a
Speaker 1: ripple in some quantum field, and so there's a field
Speaker 1: that it now goes through the wormhole, connecting these two
Speaker 1: electrons and basically keeps them from snapping shut. The way
Speaker 1: I think about it in my mind is like you
Speaker 1: have this wormhole which wants to close down, but there's
Speaker 1: a thread that's through it, and that threat is the
Speaker 1: entanglement of these two particles, and it keeps it from closing.
Speaker 1: Why why wouldn't it just close, cut the court and
Speaker 1: break the rules of quantum mechanics, sir? Why not? What
Speaker 1: are you talking about that's crazy, very inventing things left
Speaker 1: and right. Here, I'm gonna invent the quantum scissors that
Speaker 1: the universe has to do what it wants. Well, nobody
Speaker 1: knows that this is real. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: a calculation in a paper by one Maldacena, again one
Speaker 1: of the real smarty pants in the universe. And I
Speaker 1: took this paper to some theoretical physicists I know, and
Speaker 1: frankly a lot of them said, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: understand this paper. But one Mondasna is a really smart guy,
Speaker 1: so I believe it's true. I see he's like, he's
Speaker 1: like negative energy. He's gonna assume he exists in his right.
Speaker 1: He's never made a mistake before, so people trust his calculations.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand the details of the paper theoretical this
Speaker 1: is I talked to also admitted not understanding how the
Speaker 1: calculations work. But this is a prediction of those calculations. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's one way to keep a warm hole open,
Speaker 1: and so there are other ways, including using dark matter.
Speaker 1: So let's get into those other ways to make warmholes.
Speaker 1: But for us, let's take another quick break. Al Right,
Speaker 1: we are struggling to keep wormholes open because the universe
Speaker 1: wants to shut them down. If there is a path
Speaker 1: between two distant points in space, some kind of tunnel,
Speaker 1: the universe actually wants to close them. It wants to
Speaker 1: zip up that hole. And so the big problem with
Speaker 1: making warmholes is how to keep them open. So we
Speaker 1: talked about maybe using quantum entanglement, which is very theoretical,
Speaker 1: but there might be a way to do it with
Speaker 1: dark matter. Daniel, right, Well, we talked about how to
Speaker 1: maybe keep them open using quantum entanglement, which is super fun.
Speaker 1: And before we move on to how to make them
Speaker 1: large and macroscopic using ar matter, I just want to
Speaker 1: talk about one more advantage of that solution, which is
Speaker 1: that it might solve this time travel paradox we've talked
Speaker 1: about sometimes how wormholes might be a way to travel
Speaker 1: through time because one edge of the wormhole might be
Speaker 1: in the present and the other edge might be in
Speaker 1: the past. Somehow, if you like boost the edge of
Speaker 1: the wormhole so it's going at relativistic speeds, you can
Speaker 1: take advantage of special relativity and the two sides of
Speaker 1: the wormhole could be at different times. The cool thing
Speaker 1: about quantum entanglement as a way to keep the wormhole
Speaker 1: open is that it prevents any of those paradoxes from happening,
Speaker 1: because now you've made like a direct link, a connection
Speaker 1: between the two boundaries of the wormhole and actually prevents
Speaker 1: any time travel paradoxes from happening. So it's sort of
Speaker 1: cool in that way, sort of neat when you see
Speaker 1: a solution to a problem also prevent other problems from
Speaker 1: cropping up. It's sometimes a hint that maybe you're going
Speaker 1: in the right direction. M I didn't know that paradoxes
Speaker 1: were possible with wormholes. I thought that, you know, they
Speaker 1: might connect spacetime, which means you can travel back in time,
Speaker 1: but since you're all part of the same universe, you
Speaker 1: can sort of change the past. Well, that's true in
Speaker 1: some other configurations of general relativity, like closed timelike curves,
Speaker 1: which put you in like a forever loop where you're
Speaker 1: repeating yourself. Wormholes, however, do potentially open the door to paradoxes,
Speaker 1: because if you can travel into the past and you're
Speaker 1: not in that past limited to repeating what you did
Speaker 1: last time. So it's not something people understand how to
Speaker 1: reconcile wormholes with paradoxes and constality. But this solution to
Speaker 1: keeping wormholes open does actually rectify that because by directly
Speaker 1: connecting the two edges of the wormhole using quantum entanglement,
Speaker 1: you prevent any of these paradoxes from happening. M that's
Speaker 1: good news, I guess. We don't want to crash the universe.
Speaker 1: It's good news for your grandfather because you can no
Speaker 1: longer go back in time and kill him or your grandkids.
Speaker 1: Exactly for you, because your grangkids might come back to
Speaker 1: that's right, exactly. You ate all the mid chip, you
Speaker 1: jerk to capital offense. The other problem we're trying to
Speaker 1: solve with wormholes is not just to keep them open,
Speaker 1: but to make them big enough for us to go inside.
Speaker 1: We talked about how they are just like particle sized.
Speaker 1: These kind of wormholes we're talking about are like big
Speaker 1: enough just in one particle through. So other thing people
Speaker 1: are working on is like, how do you make a
Speaker 1: wormhole whose throat is macroscopic, is like you know, two
Speaker 1: meters wide, so that like a person or a spaceship
Speaker 1: or a rocket could go through them. And that's the
Speaker 1: solution we tried to address by adding dark matter to
Speaker 1: the equation, right, because all of the ones that we've
Speaker 1: talked about before, you can only send like literally one
Speaker 1: particle at a time. You can't send two particles next
Speaker 1: to each other, only one behind the other. And so
Speaker 1: how do you make one big enough to like fit
Speaker 1: a spaceship through, Well, nobody knows. But in the same
Speaker 1: paper one Mile de Center worked on this problem and
Speaker 1: he thought, well, let's try to come up with a
Speaker 1: way to make them larger. And let's again not use
Speaker 1: like a crazy invented exotic matter that we don't know exists.
Speaker 1: Let's think about the things that do exist in the universe.
Speaker 1: So he explored what would happen if you use dark matter,
Speaker 1: but again not just like normal, everyday dark matter. He
Speaker 1: was considering dark matter in combination with another idea of
Speaker 1: additional spatial dimensions. We've talked on this podcast about how
Speaker 1: the universe seems to have three directions you can go
Speaker 1: in space, but there's some parts of physics that suggests
Speaker 1: there should be other directions you should move. In string theory,
Speaker 1: for example, you know like eleven or twenty six dimensions,
Speaker 1: which would mean that they're like you know, not just
Speaker 1: up and down, left and right and forward and backwards,
Speaker 1: but other weird little dimensions that some particles can move through.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be able to notice them or see them
Speaker 1: or move in them, but there would be features of space.
Speaker 1: So he explored the idea that if there are these
Speaker 1: other features of space, it would change sort of how
Speaker 1: particles move through that space, and it would change how
Speaker 1: gravity works, which means it would change how spaces bent.
Speaker 1: So if you combine dark matter with these weird extra dimensions,
Speaker 1: then you can use them to build a wormhole which
Speaker 1: is really really wide, big enough that you could actually
Speaker 1: pass a person through. Well, how does it work? Well,
Speaker 1: what's the theory prescribed? What are the instructions in this
Speaker 1: paper to make it warmhole wide? So you need a
Speaker 1: lot of dark matter, and they go through the calculation
Speaker 1: in order to have a wormhole whose mouth is wide
Speaker 1: enough for a human to fit, but not just that
Speaker 1: for a human to pass through without being torn apart
Speaker 1: by the tidal forces. You know, these incredible forces of
Speaker 1: gravity that tug on you more strongly at your feet
Speaker 1: than on your head, and would tear you apart if
Speaker 1: you got close to a black hole. If you want
Speaker 1: a wormhole that's big enough for a human to go
Speaker 1: through and wouldn't tear you apart, then the mouth of
Speaker 1: it needs to be three thousand light years wide, which
Speaker 1: means constructing something out of dark matter. It's three thousand
Speaker 1: light years in diameter. That's like much bigger than our galaxy, right,
Speaker 1: you mean, like, you know, take up like a corner
Speaker 1: of the known universe. Well, our galaxy is something like
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand light years across, but it's definitely much
Speaker 1: bigger than our solar system. So we're talking about a
Speaker 1: massive engineering project, you know. But hey, this is like
Speaker 1: the first paper on it. The next one it will
Speaker 1: only be a thousand light years wide, and eventually somebody
Speaker 1: figure out how to make it one light year wide,
Speaker 1: and then you know, the engineers will take over and
Speaker 1: they'll figure out how to actually build this thing. It
Speaker 1: will be as wide as your phone. Well, but I
Speaker 1: guess what's the actual recipe? Like you have to take
Speaker 1: dark matter and shape it somehow, or just put it
Speaker 1: on in one place, or be lucky that it's somehow
Speaker 1: Just this with this wormhole with dark matter in it, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you have to do to make this warmhole work.
Speaker 1: So again, he doesn't sketch out a recipe for building
Speaker 1: this thing, just that if you have a wormhole and
Speaker 1: space has these extra dimensions, and you have dark matter
Speaker 1: inside this wormhole, and you have the two edges of
Speaker 1: the wormholes quantum mechanically entangled, then that solution is stable
Speaker 1: and would allow for people to pass through it. So
Speaker 1: there's no recipe for like, here's how you put this
Speaker 1: thing together, or here's the configuration of dark matter you
Speaker 1: need in order to make this happen. It's just like
Speaker 1: this configuration would satisfy the equations and meet all of
Speaker 1: these constraints of being large enough and being stable. I see,
Speaker 1: But what's the dark matter doing? Like, is it just
Speaker 1: sitting in the middle of it? Is it shaped like
Speaker 1: a tube? Is it just hanging out at the ends
Speaker 1: of it? Is there any sort of specifications about this
Speaker 1: or it's just a very abstract idea. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of an abstract idea. The dark matter is there in
Speaker 1: order to explain why you have these extra dimensions of
Speaker 1: space and time, and to reconcile all that together with
Speaker 1: all the other astronomical observations we have about the nature
Speaker 1: of the universe, and so the game I think Juan
Speaker 1: Milison was playing was like, can I use things that
Speaker 1: we already know exists in the universe and features of
Speaker 1: those theories to try to construct a wormhole which works.
Speaker 1: There's no description in this paper of like what shape
Speaker 1: the dark Man has to be in, or where the
Speaker 1: dark matter needs to go, or what this wormhole would
Speaker 1: look like. I think. In fact, here's a quote from
Speaker 1: the paper. He says, quote, another problem seems to be
Speaker 1: producing the wormhole in the first place. This seems difficult.
Speaker 1: When one of the smartest guys in the universe says
Speaker 1: this seems difficult, you know, it's not an easy problem.
Speaker 1: I see. I feel like he's giving us a recipe
Speaker 1: for a suffle. But he's just saying, hey, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: if he's throwing some flour, maybe in some cream and
Speaker 1: maybe some you know, some sugar, maybe you can make
Speaker 1: a sufle. But good luck with that. You know. The
Speaker 1: cutting edge soufle a theorists, that's how they get started.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, what are the ingredients of a soufla?
Speaker 1: We don't even know is it possible theoretically? And you know,
Speaker 1: eventually a hundred years later, we have a recipe for
Speaker 1: a su FLA interesting all right, So another way to
Speaker 1: make a wormhole and maybe keep it open and make
Speaker 1: it big enough for us to fit through. So where
Speaker 1: are some of the problems with that? Well, one problem
Speaker 1: is we don't know how to build that thing, right.
Speaker 1: We're talking again about a solution that we know might
Speaker 1: satisfy the equations, but we don't know how to go
Speaker 1: from here to there. Another issue is if you have
Speaker 1: these kind of entrances to the wormhole. We're talking about
Speaker 1: space being really really curved, and when space is curved,
Speaker 1: it doesn't just affect where you go, it also affects
Speaker 1: how time passes. We talked on the podcast once about
Speaker 1: gravitational time dilation. Anytime you're in a place where space
Speaker 1: is curved, your clock moves more slowly, and so, for example,
Speaker 1: if you go through this wormhole, it might be that
Speaker 1: your clock slows down. And so even though you can
Speaker 1: pass through the wormhole in what feels to you like
Speaker 1: an instant, to someone on the outside, you would slow
Speaker 1: down and almost freeze as you pass through the wormhole,
Speaker 1: and then when you come at the other side, you'd
Speaker 1: be moving super slow in time. Also, according to their calculations.
Speaker 1: You can't actually get from one place to another faster
Speaker 1: than light would have gone because of these time dilation
Speaker 1: effects I see. So, like, if I have the opening
Speaker 1: of a wormhole in front of me, and you go
Speaker 1: through it, and I should have flashlight to the other end,
Speaker 1: which is like maybe a couple of miles away, you're saying,
Speaker 1: my light, my flashlight would actually get there, like I
Speaker 1: could have gone there faster without going through the wormhole exactly.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, they're theoretically awesome, but totally useless.
Speaker 1: The time dilation effect, which is really a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: You know, that's like a very important piece of fine print. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: so I would I would flash my flashlight and I
Speaker 1: would see you go in, but then I would see
Speaker 1: you sort of freeze at the mouth of it, kind
Speaker 1: of right, sort of like you freeze when you fall
Speaker 1: into a black hole. At least to the people outside
Speaker 1: of the black hole, I would see you just get
Speaker 1: stuck in the hole. Yeah. Wow, that is the least
Speaker 1: useful wormhole ever. Yeah, exactly. It's like a Star Trek teleporter,
Speaker 1: but they just freeze you into a block of ice
Speaker 1: and then put you on a carrier ship. And like
Speaker 1: you know, ship you over there and thaw you out.
Speaker 1: So it's not very useful at all. No, No, I
Speaker 1: mean I would never see you go through, right, is
Speaker 1: that what you're saying that? Or would just be super slow,
Speaker 1: but time we actually freeze, it would just be super slow.
Speaker 1: The time doesn't actually freeze actually stop, but it would
Speaker 1: take you longer to go through the wormhole than if
Speaker 1: you went around the wormhole. What if I just make
Speaker 1: it bigger. Well, the time dialation effect gets stronger as
Speaker 1: the wormhole gets more powerful because the curvature increases. I see,
Speaker 1: all right, So that's another problem, is that it's not
Speaker 1: useful at all. But I guess the point is that,
Speaker 1: you know, time doesn't slow down for the person going
Speaker 1: through the tunnel, So like the person going through the
Speaker 1: tunnel to another galaxy, it would just be like a breeze,
Speaker 1: except you wouldn't have to be asleep or cryogenic sleep
Speaker 1: for like thousands or millions of years. Yeah. Just like
Speaker 1: if you somehow got up to the speed of light
Speaker 1: traveling across the galaxy would seem to you like it
Speaker 1: didn't take very much time because for you the galaxy
Speaker 1: would be low Renz contracted it would be like shortened,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't seem like you're going as far. So
Speaker 1: for you you could survive travel to really really distant
Speaker 1: parts of the galaxy. It's just that if you walk
Speaker 1: through the wormhole and then you came back, you know,
Speaker 1: millions of years might have passed. So you know, say
Speaker 1: goodbye to your family before you step in. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: say hello to your great great great great great great
Speaker 1: great great grandchildren when you come out the other end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're so lucky. So what are some of the
Speaker 1: other problems. Well, another problem is the temperature. You know,
Speaker 1: as you fall into this wormhole, you're accelerated by the
Speaker 1: curvature of space. So they did this calculation in this paper,
Speaker 1: and you get like an energy boost of a factor
Speaker 1: of two trillion, So a particle gets like really sped
Speaker 1: up as it enters. So one has this other quote newspaper,
Speaker 1: which I found hilarious. He says, so one would have
Speaker 1: to put the huge black hole inside a refrigerator in
Speaker 1: order to prevent this. So not only is he speculating
Speaker 1: about a three thousand light year wide wormhole, but a
Speaker 1: refrigerator that you could put that entire wormhole into. I
Speaker 1: feel like, my freezer is a black hole in my
Speaker 1: kitchen right now. But you're saying like that it does
Speaker 1: sort of act like a black hole, and that like
Speaker 1: if you're near the mouth of the wormhole, it would
Speaker 1: suck you in kind of that's what you're saying, and
Speaker 1: accelerate you to fast speeds, and you'll be fast in
Speaker 1: your frame of reference. Right from the outside, you would
Speaker 1: still be time slowed down, so you wouldn't be moving
Speaker 1: that fast from some but else's point of view, But
Speaker 1: from your point of view, you would be moving quickly
Speaker 1: towards the mouth of the wormhole, which would be very exciting.
Speaker 1: Like that would make it fun, right, you'd be like, wow,
Speaker 1: makes for a better ride. But you're saying the problem
Speaker 1: is that that danger is somehow to be moving that
Speaker 1: fast or are you saying like we would heat up somehow.
Speaker 1: You're basically giving a high temperature to these objects, and
Speaker 1: you might not worry about that because you know, like
Speaker 1: energy is frame dependent. I'm not moving at any speed
Speaker 1: in my reference frame. Somebody flying by me near the
Speaker 1: speed of light sees me moving at almost a speed
Speaker 1: of light, So you could argue that I have like
Speaker 1: a very high temperature in that frame of reference. Doesn't
Speaker 1: bother me at all in my frame because I see
Speaker 1: myself as moving at zero velocity, So temperature and energy
Speaker 1: are sort of frame dependent and so not necessarily something
Speaker 1: I think you should worry about. I just enjoy thinking
Speaker 1: about a three thousand light year wide refrigerator. He's not
Speaker 1: just the smartest man on Earth. He's also pretty funny,
Speaker 1: I guess. But wouldn't you slow down when you come
Speaker 1: out the other end, like as you come out with
Speaker 1: this blinding speed, would in the other mouth of the
Speaker 1: wormhole slow you down, like try to suck you back in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of like rolling down a hill on a roller coaster,
Speaker 1: and then you roll up the other side, so you
Speaker 1: gain speed as you fall in, and then you lose
Speaker 1: the speed as you come out. And so in theory,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of like jumping through a hole in
Speaker 1: the earth, you should come out the other side with
Speaker 1: no velocity, right right, And so then they would have
Speaker 1: to make the black hole big enough not just to
Speaker 1: fit you, but also for you to raise your hands
Speaker 1: right like in a roller coaster for the thrill exactly,
Speaker 1: And they have to put a camera somewhere to capture
Speaker 1: and as you go in and then sell it to
Speaker 1: you for fifty dollars on the other side. All right, well,
Speaker 1: so warmos are possible, and it might be possible to
Speaker 1: make one and keep one open and make one big
Speaker 1: enough for us to fit in, but it requires some
Speaker 1: of these sort of extreme theories and some of these
Speaker 1: sort of extreme theoretical concepts to be true. So, Daniel,
Speaker 1: what does it all mean? What does it mean about
Speaker 1: our understanding about how space works? It's a really exciting
Speaker 1: feel to try to keep up with because people are
Speaker 1: really like playing with what space can do, and every
Speaker 1: time they develop one of these theories, they get like
Speaker 1: more insight into like what space is and how it works,
Speaker 1: and sort of sort of like space engineering, you know,
Speaker 1: or spacetime engineering. I think it's pretty fun stuff. And
Speaker 1: there's an idea like around the edges of this which
Speaker 1: has been bubbling around in theoretical physics for a long time,
Speaker 1: which I think is really deep and it's connected to this,
Speaker 1: and that's the idea that space itself might be built
Speaker 1: using wormholes, like we talked earlier about how space is
Speaker 1: connected and this piece is connected to that piece, and
Speaker 1: you know you are in a part of space you
Speaker 1: can go to the part of space that's next to you.
Speaker 1: You can't just jump from here to Alpha Centauri. There's
Speaker 1: this connectedness in space. People don't really understand what that
Speaker 1: is or how it works. One idea of what space
Speaker 1: is is that maybe it's these like little space pixels
Speaker 1: that are somehow woven together to make this fabric of space.
Speaker 1: And the thing that does that weaving, perhaps is quantum entanglement.
Speaker 1: Like maybe this bit of space is entangled with that
Speaker 1: bit of space, And it might just be that at
Speaker 1: the fundamental level that entanglement is accomplished by wormholes. Like
Speaker 1: maybe the idea is keep a wormhole open by quantum
Speaker 1: entangling its edges. Maybe that's the way wormholes are. Maybe
Speaker 1: all of the universe, every bit of space, is just
Speaker 1: like a bunch of wormholes connected together. Every pixel wormhold
Speaker 1: together with all of its neighboring pixels. Well, it's crazy
Speaker 1: you're saying, Like, instead of space being this giant blob
Speaker 1: or something, maybe it's just a whole bunch of little
Speaker 1: blobs that are pixel size, which is the smallest unit
Speaker 1: of space, and they're all sort of a threat together
Speaker 1: by wormholes. Yeah, otherwise they would all just be disconnected,
Speaker 1: and maybe the whole idea of space as this like
Speaker 1: a thing you can move through, comes out of weaving
Speaker 1: space together into this fabric. And it might be the
Speaker 1: wormholes are the things that weave it together, that connect
Speaker 1: various pieces of space, and so that if we try
Speaker 1: to build a wormhole between like our space and some
Speaker 1: space somewhere in Alpha Centauri, it could be a very
Speaker 1: natural thing to do, because what we're doing is like
Speaker 1: just sort of like engineering the fundamental structure of space
Speaker 1: time itself interesting. You just need like a special quantum
Speaker 1: needle exactly, and and entangled threats exactly, weaving singularities so
Speaker 1: it space might be all wormholes basically, right like when
Speaker 1: I move from here to my house or here to
Speaker 1: the bathroom, actually sort of like weaving through tiny little
Speaker 1: wormholes all the time. It certainly could be all right. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess these are all pretty exciting ideas and and
Speaker 1: makes me think that maybe it is possible to get
Speaker 1: to other parts of the universe using wormholes. It sounds
Speaker 1: like it's theoretically possible, and there are some pretty smart
Speaker 1: people thinking about how to make one and keep one
Speaker 1: open exactly. It's a really fun area and I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that in a hundred years people look back at
Speaker 1: these ideas and think, oh, those were foolish, naive ideas.
Speaker 1: But these are the ideas along the path to figuring
Speaker 1: it out. You can't just go from here to a
Speaker 1: deep understanding of the universe. You've got to somehow assemble
Speaker 1: that understanding. You gotta go step by step. And so
Speaker 1: we're on step one of an unknown number of steps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and all we need is three thousand light year y
Speaker 1: hole using dark matter, which we we don't understand yet.
Speaker 1: Inside refrigerator. All right, Well, thanks for joining us. We
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that. See you next time. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain the
Speaker 1: Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcast for my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.