WEBVTT - Can we build a wormhole? 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:10.520 Hey, orry, did you figure out how to build a 0:00:10.560 --> 0:00:13.720 wormhole yet? What you're expecting me to do it? I 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.479 was hoping you draw in your engineering background. Shouldn't it 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:20.120 be physicists trying to figure this out? Now we've already 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:22.360 done our part. What do you mean, Well, we proved 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:26.040 it's theoretically possible. Isn't that enough? That's all you have 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:29.360 to do, prove that it's not theoretically prohibited. Yeah, you know, 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.600 the rest is just engineering, actually, like making it happen, 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.120 just engineering. It seems like it's most of the work. 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:39.920 To be honest, that's probably true. We should, you know, 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.000 work on flying cars and feeding the world first. All right, 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:44.440 well you know, just let me know when I could 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:47.239 place an order from my wormhole. All right, you just 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:49.400 let me know when you've proven flying cart and feeding 0:00:49.400 --> 0:01:07.680 the world aren't possible. It's a deal him or hand me. 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:10.760 Cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.320 I'm a particle physicist and a professor of physics that 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.399 you see Irvine, and I'm a bunch of particles that 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:20.200 likes to think about particles. You're just a bunch of particles. 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:22.320 Is that what you're saying that's all there is, man, 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.000 just soul particles to it's particles all the way down. 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:29.160 If you ask me when you saying these particles like 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:31.680 to study particles, Yeah, I'm a bunch of particles that 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:34.479 likes to think about and talk about and study particles. Well, 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:37.720 it's gonna meta meta particles. It's particles really, all the 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.280 way down down to the philosophy of it. I'm particularly 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.399 interested in particle philosophy. But welcome to our podcast Daniel 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.200 and Jorge Explained the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:50.560 in which we take the entire universe and break it 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:54.000 into its fundamental particles. We take a part all of 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:56.960 the big ideas of physics, the age of the universe, 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.520 the reason the universe exists, how it got to look 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:01.800 the way the it does today, what it's made out of, 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.320 and we break all of these ideas down into tiny 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:08.120 little particles of understanding. We bounced them around, wrap them 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:10.240 up in some dad jokes, and send them along the 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:13.080 audio waves to you. That's right, because we are not 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:16.600 particular about the scale of the questions we have about 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:18.919 the universe. We wonder about the little, tiny things that 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:20.840 the universe is made out of and we also wonder 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:22.920 about the entire universe. How do we get to the 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.240 far corners of this cosmos and what are we going 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:27.320 to find there. We've sort of woken up as an 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.920 intelligent species and discovered that we are in this one 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:35.280 tiny little corner of an incredibly vast universe, and we're 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.240 now learning the rules of how that universe works, how 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:40.400 it's put together, how you can move around it, how 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.000 you can't move around it, And of course we wonder 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:46.120 are their loopoles in those rules? Is it possible to 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.639 get from here to there without spending millions of years 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:51.960 on a slow rocket ship? Make it sounds like we're 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:54.600 a little planet in a big universe. It sounds like 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:56.520 a premise for a movie or something, you know, the 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.880 little planet goes to the big city. It reminds me 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:02.280 of that great book we talked about once, Long Journey 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.280 to the Small Angry Planet. But we are a tiny, 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:09.000 little planet and it is an incredibly vast universe. And 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.880 some of the answers to the questions that we struggle with, 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.200 the ones that keep us up late at night. You know, 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:16.760 what's inside a black hole or what's at the center 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:19.560 of the galaxy? Or what's it the far reaches of 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:22.520 the universe? Or are there aliens? Some of these questions 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:25.720 could be rapidly answered if only we could get to 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.280 other parts of the universe to just look at the answers. Yeah, 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:31.640 because we can learn a lot just from here on Earth, 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:34.280 looking through our telescopes and our antennas, we can learn 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:36.360 a lot about the universe, but it's just not quite 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:39.040 the same as actually getting there or seeing it with 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.560 your own eyes, or being able to touch other planets 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:45.240 or shake the hands or tentacles or other aliens. Because 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.320 if there are, for example, aliens on other planets, then 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.960 photons leaving those planets are hitting us here on Earth. 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.280 It's possible that a photon that left some alien tentacle 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:58.440 flew through space and then landed on your eyeball. But 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.080 of course it's difficult to know that because it's mixed 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.040 in with so many other photons and it's basically impossible 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.720 to distinguish. So even with our most powerful telescopes, we 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.400 can't see what's going on on the surfaces of other 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:12.520 planets yet. So wouldn't it be great if instead we 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:15.560 could just pop on over. Yeah. Unfortunately, it is a 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.200 pretty big universe, and it takes a long long time 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:22.279 just to get to the nearest star. There are millions 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:24.920 of light years to other galaxies, tens of light years 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:27.280 to other planets, and so even if we were able 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:29.040 to go at the speed of light, it would still 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:31.080 take a long time and a spaceship to get their 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.800 Amazon Prime has not yet conquered free same day delivery 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:38.760 to Andromeda. You need Amazon Prime Prime. You haven't unlocked 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:41.040 that in your account now. I haven't paid the ten 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:46.720 billion dollar annual fee yet to get intergalactic deliveries. It's coming, though, 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:51.560 only for billionaires, billionaire podcasters faster than light drones. But yeah, 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:53.160 it would be great if we could get to other 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:56.120 stars and other galaxies to explore the universe, to see 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.120 what's out there, to get a closer look at things 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:01.000 like black holes and other planets and trump stars. But 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:03.160 you know, space is what it is. You can't move 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:05.400 through it faster than the speed of light. And that's 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:07.960 a pretty hard and fast rule. We know that no 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:10.479 matter who you are and how hard you push, how 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.359 big your rocket, you can't get going faster than the 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:15.360 speed of light. It's sort of strange to think about, 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:17.560 because you can add energy to things like at the 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.760 Large Hadron Collider, we can pour more and more energy 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:24.240 into particles. There's no limit on how energetic a proton 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:26.679 can get in an accelerator. But even though they get 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.880 more energetic, they just don't get going faster. They very 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.280 slowly approached the speed of light. So it's a hard 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:34.280 and a fast rule. And when the physics says just 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.080 cannot be broken. We've been looking all over the universe 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:41.400 and nothing has ever broken that rule. But there are loopholes. 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:45.360 There might be other ways to accomplish those goals without 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:48.320 breaking that rule. Not a way to move faster than light, 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.560 but to avoid having to go through as much space 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.799 in order to get to your destination. That's right. Physicists 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:56.839 have read the fine print of the universe, and it 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.800 seems there's a you know, a loophole, something that you 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:02.400 can and used to warm your way to other parts 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.800 of the universe. Because when physicists and lawyers get together, 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:08.560 oh boy, you never know what you're going to invent. 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:13.960 It's like matter and antimatter colliding. It's pure invention. Energy 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.880 is what comes out. Pure energy, no ethics exactly. And 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:20.799 it turns out that the rules of space and time 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:25.080 do allow for some crazy possibilities. We know that space 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.080 can do all sorts of things that our ancestors and 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:32.320 even genius physicists from the past never imagined. It can bend, 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:34.320 and it can twist, and it can be rearranged in 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:37.960 all sorts of complicated ways. Yeah, and this special loophole 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:41.320 is called a wormhole, a special tunnel through space and 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:43.720 time that maybe we can use to get to other 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:47.200 spaces or even other times. But the big question is 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:49.920 can we make one? Is it possible to make one? Yeah, 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:51.520 it's easy. All you do is you call up your 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:55.160 favorite cartoonists slash engineer and say, where's my wormhole? I 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.880 thought you just have to call some worms. My wife 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:01.080 is deep into the compost sting, so she's got a 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:03.880 big hole in our backyard filled with worms. So I 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.080 guess you could say she's already invented a wormhole. There 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:12.400 you go. Now, we just need a cosmic compost bin. Well, 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.440 our solar system is a cosmic compost because we are 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.520 the left over remnants of previous solar systems having been 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:23.760 spewed out into the cosmos to fertilize new systems. I 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:26.280 guess with the second lost thermodynamics. Everything is you know, 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.040 increasing in enterprise. So technically the whole universe is like 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:31.680 a compost bin. There you go. The universe was so 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:34.160 green and smelt so weird. Yeah, and so to the 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:41.360 on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question can we 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:45.400 build a wormhole? Interesting? I guess first of all, did 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:47.200 you build a wormhole? Or do you have to dig 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:51.280 a wormhole in space? Let's figure out the verb first, 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:55.880 then we'll deal with the other. Let's get the question right, like, 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.520 how do you build a whole? Maybe you spin a wormhole. 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:03.360 Maybe it's or like knitting or sewing. You know, it's 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:07.880 still I feel like the hole is an emptiness, right, 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:10.120 how do you build one? Or even a mid one? Yeah, 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:12.480 put one together? Yeah. Well, you know, we make light 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:14.640 of it, but it is a fascinating leap to say 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:17.640 something is allowed in the universe to figuring out how 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.680 to actually make it happen. You know, you might, for example, 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:24.120 know that su flas can be made. Maybe you had 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:26.120 one at a restaurant. That doesn't mean you know how 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:29.160 to go home and actually make that soufle in your kitchen. 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:31.800 Knowing it could exist in the universe and figuring out 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.160 how to make one happen from the current situation are 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.760 two very different things. Yep. So then we can put 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:43.200 this in the recipe book for the universe. Warmhole who flays? 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:46.800 Don't accidentally add too much chocolate and make it a 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.880 black hole, soufle, it's very dangerous. Or dark chocolate matter 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:55.640 dark chocolate matter? Wow? Is that a phrase anybody's ever 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:58.520 said before? Dark matter chocolate? I mean, technically you might 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:00.720 be able to make dark matter chocolate. Wow. You know, 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:02.720 I wonder if there's a chocolate brand out there called 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.400 dark matter. You might need a whole different recipe book 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:11.320 for that. I'd like to toss that one in my mouth. Hole. Well, 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:14.160 it is an interesting question because we know that wormholes 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:17.760 are technically theoretically possible, and this has been worked out 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:20.240 in the math of the laws of physics. But the 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:22.480 bigger question is how do you make one? And how 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:24.520 do you make one big enough for people to go 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:28.400 through it? Exactly. It's the next frontier in understanding wormholes, 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:30.800 and it's a crucial step in getting us to the 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.439 place where we can step through a portal and walk 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.040 on an alien planet. So, as usual, we were wondering 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:38.040 how many people add there have thought about this question 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:41.840 of how to build or dig or excavate a warmhole 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.079 out there in space, And so Daniel went out there 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:46.880 into the internet to ask people could we actually make 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.240 a wormhole? So thank you to everybody who answered these 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.880 crazy questions without any chance to prepare. If you'd like 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.600 to participate for a future episode of the podcast, I 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.080 can't encourage you enough and we'd love to hear some 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.840 new fresh boy is, so please write to us two 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:04.920 questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Think about it 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:07.320 for a second. How would you make a wormhole? Here's 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.240 what people had to say. We can make a wormhole. 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:14.960 We can do anything if we started flying too. Honestly, 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:20.040 I don't have anything else to add. I think this 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:23.840 is theoretically possible, and I give us a thousand years 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.200 until we achieve it. Sure, why not? If we can 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.280 understand it, we can conceive the technology to do it. 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:31.520 I doubt we have the technology right now, and I 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:34.000 don't even know what that technology would be, no idea 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:37.000 at all. Concentrate a bunch of matter into one place 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.520 and instead of becoming a black hole, it becomes a wormhole. 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:42.439 Maybe you spin a bunch of things in a spinnyway 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.880 to make a vortex that everybody gets sucked down and 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:49.559 through to another place. I would like to think we could, 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.440 and maybe not yet, but soon. And Daniel, I know 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.160 that you love Interstellar. I remember that you were talking 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:59.280 about it earlier one of the podcasts, and I could 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:02.920 imagine it's a thing like that, like bending space somewhere, 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.040 maybe even in our own solar system. And we really 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.680 don't know a lot about like Dark Meadow or what's 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:13.920 inside the black hole, or there's really still lots of 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.559 secrets around and in the universe, so I'm pretty sure 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.640 that we can find some surprises there as well, and 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:23.400 maybe with that information we get closer and closer to 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.719 actually be able to make a wormhole. I don't think 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:29.920 we have enough energy right now, but eventually we could. 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:32.640 I'm not even sure wormholes are real, nor we's ever 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:35.520 observed one or measured one or study one. I know 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:37.600 they're a mathematical thing, but I'm not even sure that real. 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:39.480 But if they were real, there's no way we could 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:41.640 deal with those types of energies. Because what's the most 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.040 proful thing humans have ever made, The large hard drunk collider, 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:46.600 nuclear weapons. I mean, if you take all the hard 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.400 drink collider, all the nuclear weapons ever exploded wherever there 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.080 ever are on Earth, there's energies don't compare anything to 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:53.839 the Sun. And when you're dealing with a wormhole, you're 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:56.520 dealing with black holes and and things that are a 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.559 thousands millions of times of more massive sun. So I 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:02.560 think it's impossible for humans to ever create or make 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:06.520 or benifest or manage or anything with the worm hole. Stupid. 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:11.600 Theoretically it's possible, but we don't have the technology. So 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:16.640 my answer is yes, but not at the moment. All right, 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:19.520 pretty good answers here. I feel like I'm not sure 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:21.560 they quite answered your question because I think you asked 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.000 the question, could we actually make a warm hole? But 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:27.080 and so people just said yes, why not sure, instead 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:29.559 of actually giving us ideas before how to make a 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:31.960 warm hoole. Oh. They didn't take it as a homework project, 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:34.880 like go and give me the recipe figured out right now, 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.280 I want the answer today. That's right. They read the 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.840 fine print in the question, and the question only asked 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.480 could we make a wormhole? Which is a the other 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:45.679 or no answer? Well, but again, knowing that something can 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:48.880 exist in the universe doesn't mean we know how to 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:51.720 make it right. It's not always easy to assemble something 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.400 even if you know that it can exist right. Right, 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.160 So I guess, let's dig into this topic and no 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:01.920 pun intended, And so let's start with the basics. I 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:05.000 guess what is a wormhole exactly? And what do we 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.800 know about it? So wormhole is a fascinating idea, and 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:11.040 it comes out of the basic realization from general relativity, 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:14.800 which tells us that space itself is not nothingness. It's 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:18.800 not like the background in which the universe actions happen, 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:20.960 which is sort of the way that Newton saw space. 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.319 He saw spaces like absolute and fundamental and sort of 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:26.960 like the stage of the universe on which things move 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:29.280 and shift. So he thought space and time where it's 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.080 just these sort of eternal basics to the universe. And 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:34.240 then Einstein showed is that that's not true at all, 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.800 that space and time are actually dynamic, that they change 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.600 in response to what's in them. So you put a 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.800 blob of mass in space, for example, a curve space, 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:47.319 and then that curvature tells those masses how to move. 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:50.360 So it's not like space is the background. It's instead 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.880 one of the players on the stage, and mass and 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.720 space interact with each other to create all the crazy dynamics, 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.480 the orbits, the black holes, everything that we see. And 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:03.600 Einstein gave us these equations to tell us what space 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:07.520 can do. As long as space follows those equations, everything 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.840 that the equations predicts should be possible to exist in 0:14:10.920 --> 0:14:13.559 the universe, and that includes really simple stuff like you 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.640 have an empty universe, okay, so space is just totally flat, 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.360 there's nothing interesting there. Or you have a singularity, a 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:22.720 point of infinite density mass with zero volume, in which 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.160 case you get crazy things like an event horizon. And 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:27.840 so general relativity tells us that space can do all 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:31.560 sorts of crazy things, and wormholes are just one of 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.640 those predictions. Yeah. People often make the analogy that we're 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:36.640 like fish swimming in water, and you know, we thought 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.160 we were like swimming and emptiness, but actually we're swimming 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:42.440 in something, and that something can sort of like banned 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.360 and pushes and compressed and make swirls and everything. I 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:48.320 guess maybe a difficult thing to think about though, is 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.080 like you can imagine space bending and distorting, but it's 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:53.680 it's kind of hard to imagine poking a hole in it, 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:55.600 Like it's hard to imagine poking a hole in water. 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:58.760 It is hard to imagine poking a hole in water. 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:01.320 But that's because if or a fish, all you can 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.200 think about are the basic things that you've seen water do. 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.240 But if you are a sort of water scientist, you 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:11.400 know that under different configurations, under different circumstances, water can 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.640 do other things. It can be crazy. You can form solids, right, 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:16.880 it can form drops and fall from the sky. You 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:19.480 can even form a gas and expand. And so we're 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:21.760 stretching the analogy a little bit, but the idea is 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.720 that under different circumstances, space can do other things. And 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.360 I think this is a real demonstration of the power 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.640 of theoretical physics, because this is a case where theoretical 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:34.320 physics really is leading the charge. You know, we take 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:38.680 these like abstract principles, these mathematical equations that Einstein came 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.280 up with to describe the things we had already seen 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:44.120 in the universe, and then we explored the predictions of them. 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.040 We said, well, if these are true, if these really 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:49.040 are the rules of the universe, what else can they do? 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:51.880 And for example, we discovered black holes. In this way, 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.440 we discover them theoretically as like a consequence of these laws, 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:57.360 and then went out in the universe and found them 0:15:57.400 --> 0:15:59.960 to be real. So it's a really powerful way to 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.080 do science. One is go out in the universe and 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:04.200 find crazy stuff and try to explain it. The other 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:06.840 is look at the crazy consequences of the rules you 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.800 have already gathered from your experiments and see if you 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:13.600 can predict interesting, fascinating things. So wormholes are that kind 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:16.800 of example where people have tried to find weird corners 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.400 of Einstein's equations to tell us that it's possible, right right, 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:22.760 Although to be fair and not everything theorists come up 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:25.760 with turns out to be true almost nothing in fact 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.440 that they think, Like, of all the theories out there 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:31.920 about what new particles might be, I bet none of 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:34.080 them are true. I don't think that the real theory 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:37.440 of nature in particles is in any human mind right now. 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:40.080 But that doesn't stop them from being creative and coming 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.280 up with lots of ideas. But wormholes are fascinating because 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:45.720 it's not just like one idea, it's more like a 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.400 category of ideas. The basic concept of wormhole is say 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:51.320 you have a patch of space from one spot, you 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:53.520 have a patch of space in another spot. Is it 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.120 possible to connect them? Is it possible to make it 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:58.640 so that this one patch of space A is like 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.560 next two hatch of space B, even though they're otherwise separated, 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.640 maybe by light years of distance or even by time. 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.120 Is it possible to build a tunnel so that one 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.959 patch of flat space is now connected to another? And 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.720 this is sort of like the overarching theme of a wormhole. 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:16.240 And people have explored this for decades now, and they've 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.040 come up with a few possible ways to connect patch 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:21.080 of space A and patch of space B. And there's 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:23.520 sort of very different ideas. You may have heard several 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:26.320 different ones which sound contradictory, And the reason is that 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.080 there are different ideas for what a wormhole might be. Like. 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:33.359 There are different flavors of this wormhole moves, you know, 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:35.960 this earthworms holes, and then this ring wormholes and all 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:39.000 sorts of different kind of worms. Oh boy, this is 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.920 getting a little uncomfortable. Yeah, so there's different flavors of wormholes, 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.040 and but I guess you know, it's sort of strange, 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:46.720 how it Like, what is it about the theory that 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:49.879 allows wormholes, like, you know, doesn't the theory sort of 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:53.240 treat spaces like the thing where other particles move around, 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:55.919 And how does it actually allow, you know, you to 0:17:56.200 --> 0:18:00.400 make discontinuities in this space? Well, singularities are in aparently 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.760 like a discontinuity. There are a very weird point in 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:06.240 the theory. And so the very first idea for a 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:11.199 wormhole was imagined two black holes which share a singularity, 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:13.639 you know, which have the same singularity. So you have 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:18.400 like a black hole with two exteriors and a common interior, 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.880 like it just overlaps because I guess if you have space, 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:25.399 you know, people usually imagine it as like a giant 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:28.280 rubber sheet, and you can have maybe a black hole, 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:31.399 something so heavy and intense that it kind of makes 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:34.480 this dip in the rubber sheet and it ends in 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:37.080 a singularity maybe. And so that's kind of where the 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:39.520 idea came from, Like what if this singularity down at 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:42.119 the bottom of the rubber sheet somehow connected to another 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.720 singularity from another black hole somewhere else in space and 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:48.440 the rubber sheet analogy is useful for getting you thinking 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:51.320 about how space bends, but it's a little bit misleading 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:54.400 sometimes because it suggests that space bends like into some 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:57.479 other direction, like in the rubber sheet analogy, the universe 0:18:57.600 --> 0:18:59.600 is a two dimensional rubber sheet and it's bending in 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:03.040 a third dimension. In our universe it is three dimensions 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:05.600 of space, but doesn't bend in some like other weird 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:09.200 fourth dimension. The bending is intrinsic, meaning it's all about 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.640 the changing of the relative distances of points in space. 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:16.000 And we don't know what it is that ties space together, 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.280 like why is this bit of space next to that 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:20.639 bit of space next to that bit of space. And 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.000 so what we're doing when we're making wormholes is we're 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:26.280 just like fundamentally reorganizing the arrangement of space. We're saying, 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:28.600 this bit of space is now next to that bit 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:31.520 of space. It's like you're sowing the universe together. You know, 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:33.320 you're knitting, and you just sort of like make a 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:35.320 stitch from the frontier sweater to the back of your 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:37.400 sweater and you say, these two things are now next 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:39.600 to each other on my sweater. Right. It's like you're 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.320 taking this singularity from one black hole, and then you're 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:44.800 taking another singularity from another black hole, and then you're 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:48.879 joining them together. But doesn't that seem sort of implausible, Like, 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:51.359 isn't the point of a singularity is that it's single, 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:54.480 you know what I mean, Like it's supposed to be 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.040 like unique and and and you know, a singular point, 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.800 Like how do you make two points? Need? Oh man, 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:03.000 I love that idea. You know, you're right, it's a 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:06.399 funny name because there's not just one singularity in the universe, right, 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:08.720 there's a singularity at the heart of every black hole, 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:11.080 and so we shouldn't be called them singularities. They should 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:14.879 be called like what multiple ularities or many ularities? Singularities 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:19.560 apparently is apparently they're not exclusive. But the idea of 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:24.040 a singularity just implies that something is becoming infinite. In 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:26.760