Wormholes or tunnels through space

Wormholes or tunnels through space.

1. The introduction.

Question topology of the universe is one of the contemporary issues in theoretical physics. Today, there is a large number of works that offer one or another model to describe the evolution of our universe. Despite the fact that the global space of our universe is flat, but locally, according to the general theory of relativity, any matter, located in it, to a greater or lesser extent, distorts it. Especially strong this effect is shown in black holes. Wormhole is a "tunnel" between the two "inputs" - parts of the space where the curvature is maximal. Back in the mid-50s of the last century, American scientist John Wheeler hypothesized that our universe is at an early stage consisted entirely of such "topological handles" and "tunnels" which are nothing more than a wormhole. Since the "Big Bang" passed more than 14 billion years. Today, talking about the Big Bang, any modern man necessarily take an interest in "What came before the Big Bang?" or "What was in that place where there was no a big bang?" These questions lead to the assumption of the theory of so-called multicomponent Universe. According to this theory, our universe is composed of an infinite number of "large explosions" occurring independently of each other at different points in time. In this regard, the universe is infinite in space and time. In different parts of the universe may exist their own laws, particles, etc.

2. The literate review.
1.      A few words about wormholes.

Nowadays in the general theory of relativity, wormhole understands as the kind of "bridge" connecting the two areas of the same universe, or "tunnels" connecting different universes. The geometry of the spaces themselves can be absolutely arbitrary (pic. 1).  Figuratively speaking, wormholes are a certain kind of "portals", entrance to which is more studied objects - black holes. But not vice versa, that is, not every black hole keeps in his "bowels" of such a "portal".

 

Picture 1 (schematic representation of the wormhole)

The first prerequisite to the study of objects such as wormholes appeared in parallel with the development of the general theory of relativity. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, space-time is curved, and familiar to all gravity is a manifestation of the curvature. Matter "deflects" bends space around itself and what it is denser, the more it bends.

In 1916, that is one year after the foundation of the general theory of relativity, the Austrian physicist L. Flamm published a paper in which he was talking about the possibility of the existence of the spatial geometry of the type of hole, which would have connected the two worlds. After that Einstein, together with his disciples N. Rosen [ref 35] tried to use this solution as a model for the description of elementary particles. The idea is to present the electron in the form of "cross-linking" of two black holes. This would allow the general theory of relativity to solve the problems of the quantum world.

However, it was later shown that the Einstein-Rosen Bridge is none other than the already known at the time the decision Shvradshilda describing a black hole in a specially chosen coordinates.

The founder of the term «wormhole», which translated from English means "worm hole", is an American physicist John Wheeler [ref 143], who studied the space with such objects in the 50-ies of XX century. However, a literal translation of the term did not catch on in the modern science and today is common simply say "wormhole". According to Wheeler, the space before the Big Bang was a foam-like structure of superdense scalar field (super-dense vacuum with a very high energy density) with very high curvature and its fluctuation is very large. And all of these foam cells were connected. That is, at an early stage, all our space was crammed with "wormholes." And, accordingly, after the big bang, these cells can stay connected with each other. These considerations have led Wheeler to the idea of ​​ explained classical physics (electromagnetism and gravity) as a manifestation of a non-trivial topology, thus introducing concepts such as "charge without charge" and "mass without mass." Having in mind the fact that the topological properties of the space itself manifest themselves as charge and mass (since according to Einstein's equation does not only matter determines the geometry of space, but also vice versa).

2. Schwarzschild wormholes.

Lorentzian wormholes known as Schwarzschild wormholes or Einstein–Rosen bridges are connections between areas of space that can be modeled asvacuum solutions to the Einstein field equations, and which are now understood to be intrinsic parts of the maximally extended version of the Schwarzschild metric describing an eternal black hole with no charge and no rotation. The Einstein–Rosen bridge was discovered by Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen, who first published the result in 1935.

However, in 1962John A. Wheeler and Robert W. Fuller published a paper showing that this type of wormhole is unstable if it connects two parts of the same universe, and that it will pinch off too quickly for light (or any particle moving slower than light) that falls in from one exterior region to make it to the other exterior region. The motion through a Schwarzschild wormhole connecting two universes is possible in only one direction. The analysis of the radial geodesic motion of a massive particle into an Einstein–Rosen bridge shows that the proper time of the particle extends to infinity. Timeline and null geodesics in the gravitational field of a Schwarzschild wormhole are complete because the expansion scalar in the Raychaudhuri equation has a discontinuity at the event horizon, and because an Einstein–Rosen bridge is represented by the Kruskal diagram in which the two antipodal future event horizons are identified. Schwarzschild wormholes and Schwarzschild black holes are different, mathematical solutions of general relativity and Einstein–Cartan–Sciama–Kibble theory of gravity. Yet for distant observers, both solutions with the same mass are indistinguishable. These results suggest that all observed astrophysical black holes may be Einstein–Rosen bridges, each with a new universe inside that formed simultaneously with the black hole. Accordingly, our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing inside another universe.

According to general relativity, the gravitational collapse of a sufficiently compact mass forms a singular Schwarzschild black hole. In the Einstein–Cartan–Sciama–Kibble theory of gravity, however, it forms a regular Einstein–Rosen bridge.

Instead, the collapsing matter reaches an enormous but finite density and rebounds, forming the other side of the bridge.

Before the stability problems of Schwarzschild wormholes were apparent, it was proposed that quasars were white holes forming the ends of wormholes of this type.

 

While Schwarzschild wormholes are not traversable in both directions, their existence inspired Kip Thorne to imagine traversable wormholes created by holding the 'throat' of a Schwarzschild wormhole open with exotic matter (material that has negative mass/energy).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 2 (Schwarzschild wormholes)

 

3. Traversable wormholes.

Lorentzian traversable wormholes would allow travel in both directions from one part of the universe to another part of that same universe very quickly or would allow travel from one universe to another. The possibility of traversable wormholes in general relativity was first demonstrated by Kip Thorne and his graduate student Mike Morris in a 1988 paper. For this reason, the type of traversable wormhole they proposed, held open by a spherical shell ofexotic matter, is referred to as a Morris–Thorne wormhole.

 

Later, other types of traversable wormholes were discovered as allowable solutions to the equations of general relativity, including a variety analyzed in a 1989 paper by Matt Visser, in which a path through the wormhole can be made where the traversing path does not pass through a region of exotic matter. However, in the pure Gauss–Bonnet gravity (a modification to general relativity involving extra spatial dimensions which is sometimes studied in the context of brane cosmology) exotic matter is not needed in order for wormholes to exist—they can exist even with no matter. A type held open by negative mass cosmic strings was put forth by Visser in collaboration with Cramer et al., in which it was proposed that such wormholes could have been naturally created in the early universe.

Wormholes connect two points in spacetime, which means that they would in principle allow travel in time, as well as in space. In 1988, Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever worked out explicitly how to convert a wormhole traversing space into one traversing time. However, according to general relativity it would not be possible to use a wormhole to travel back to a time earlier than when the wormhole was first converted into a time machine by accelerating one of its two mouths.

 

Picture 3 (Traversable wormholes)

3. Experimental part.

In our research we’ll try to create a Traversable wormhole and explore its structure and properties. Professor Melnikov and I have access to laboratories equipped with the latest technology and therefore have a good chance of success. For our experiment, we need Hadron Collider, a copy of which is available to us in the lab and the atoms of specific elements that we have chosen by a long research. By using information about wormholes and knowledge of the chemistry, mathematics and physics, we calculated that to obtain sufficient energy for the formation of wormholes we need atoms with a molecular weight of about 231 that corresponds to the chemical element protactinium. By placing the atoms in the Collider and dispersed them to a certain speed, we managed to open two small worm holes.     In order to verify that they are indeed connected we threw a stick in one of them and to our delight she flew out of the other. Unfortunately our wormholes were unstable because they required constant supply of energy from the outside, and we did not have stocks of necessary element.

 

Picture 4 (Our Collider)

 

 

 

 

Picture 5 (Principe of our experiment)

4. Conclusions.

Thus, our experiment is still a success, despite the fact that we have not been able to fully explore all of the properties wormholes, which we had obtained. Next time, using more protactinium, we can investigate in detail all the properties of the object, and the possible ways to use it. Our work definitely would be a breakthrough in the study of wormholes, and as a result bring us one step further to intergalactic travel.