Scientists in Bulgaria may have figured out how to detect wormholes –

A team of researchers at Sofia University in Bulgaria may have discovered A New Method for Detecting Wormholes – Assuming they exist, of course.

Wormholes are a theoretical shortcut to travel through time and space. Presumably, if you fly a spaceship into it, you can travel great distances in a relatively short amount of time. This is very different from a typical black hole – an object from which not even light can escape.

The problem with trying to detect wormholes is that they look a lot like black holes. Currently, we also do not have techniques for direct observation. We study gravitational waves and the cosmic background radiation to determine what lies beyond the visible range. This makes it difficult to distinguish between them, and the difficulty is greatly increased by the fact that we are not even sure whether wormholes actually exist.

To find black holes (and hopefully wormholes), scientists look at countless data points collected from special telescopes and deep-space sensors. This data consists of numbers and measurements of radiation intensity, density, location, direction, and any other measurable statistic we can derive. Scientists categorize data and try to compare indirectly observed phenomena with things we can observe directly.

It’s like watching a NASCAR race where all but one car is invisible. Mathematics is then used to figure out how many other cars are on the track and exactly where they are at any given moment.

It’s not impossible, but certainly challenging. And, in the case of wormholes, the challenge grows exponentially. The track would be infinitely large, the number of potential cars would be infinite, and we have a vantage point with a single-celled organism stuck inside the tire tread of one of the cars.

Fortunately, we have a set of mathematical ideas about how gravity works on a cosmic scale, and these are Einstein’s equations. Through certain solutions to these equations (using various postulated explanations), scientists have come up with all kinds of interesting ideas about how the universe works, including the theoretical existence of wormholes.

If we assume the existence of black holes, then mathematically, there is good reason to believe that wormholes exist. This raises several questions. Can matter travel safely through wormholes? Is it close enough for humans to visit? How many are there? How big or small can they be?

But before we can address any of these problems, we need evidence that they exist.For now, all we have are their theories Can or even should exist. Finding actual evidence for a person is another matter entirely.

To that end, researchers at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria have recently made some improvements to methods for detecting black holes that could help us distinguish singularities from wormholes.

The new method involves detecting an extremely specific mechanism of light — a certain polarization that theoretically occurs in the wormhole’s throat — to distinguish the worm’s specific gravitational radiationole there is an inevitable exit black hole.

If the researchers are right, that means it’s possible for us to glean the existence of any nearby wormholes from the data we already have. If they’re close enough that we’ve detected them using the new method, the chances of them masquerading as black holes in our current database are better than zero.

Nerves taken: It’s an astonishing piece of research that has the potential to lead to arguably the most exciting discovery in the history of science.

But (there’s always a but!) As far as we know, even if scientists knew what they were looking for now, they would have to be very lucky to detect a wormhole, even if it was right under our noses.

Scientists postulate a situation where a certain size object in a certain location would block a precise amount of radiation from the wormhole, allowing us to measure certain wavelengths more accurately than would otherwise be possible.

It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, by looking at its shadow and hoping hopelessly that, by some random event in the universe, light just hits the needle so that its shadow is visible separately from the speckled shadow of the needle in the haystack.

They set up another where the wormhole’s throat perfectly lines up with our viewing angle. In other words, of the infinite locations where we can indirectly observe wormhole radiation, there may be one or two that allow us to distinguish it from a black hole. And, with any luck, we might just happen to pass through a wormhole that exists at the exact location we need to detect it.

The fact that wormholes are still hard to find shouldn’t take away from how amazing this research is. Thanks to the work of these researchers, we are closer than ever to determining whether wormholes exist.

It’s exciting for many science fiction reasons, but it’s also a veritable eureka moment for physicists, because finding evidence of wormholes will fill in many missing pieces in the mysteries of our universe.You can view (paid) research papers here.