In an experiment that ticks most of the mystery boxes in modern physics, researchers announced they had simulated a pair of black holes in a quantum computer and sent a message between them through a "baby wormhole." https://t.co/9wfYq2I2EB pic.twitter.com/S5Y7R12OZW
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 30, 2022
As part of a collaboration with researchers at Caltech, Harvard, MIT, and Fermilab, learn how we simulated a quantum theory on the Google Sycamore processor to probe the dynamics of a quantum system equivalent to a wormhole in a model of gravity → https://t.co/8PwYMfDHj9 pic.twitter.com/3GR4HMNzoJ
— Google AI (@GoogleAI) November 30, 2022
This is very obviously fake and it’s goofy that people think it’s real.
In science fiction – think films and TV like “Interstellar” and “Star Trek” – wormholes in the cosmos serve as portals through space and time for spacecraft to traverse unimaginable distances with ease. If only it were that simple.
Scientists have long pursued a deeper understanding of wormholes and now appear to be making progress. Researchers announced on Wednesday that they forged two miniscule simulated black holes – those extraordinarily dense celestial objects with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape – in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time.
It was a “baby wormhole,” according to Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, a co-author of the research published in the journal Nature. But scientists are a long way from being able to send people or other living beings through such a portal, she said.
“Experimentally, for me, I will tell you that it’s very, very far away. People come to me and they ask me, ‘Can you put your dog in the wormhole?’ So, no,” Spiropulu told reporters during a video briefing. “…That’s a huge leap.”
“There’s a difference between something being possible in principle and possible in reality,” added physicist and study co-author Joseph Lykken of Fermilab, America’s particle physics and accelerator laboratory. “So don’t hold your breath about sending your dog through the wormhole. But you have to start somewhere. And I think to me it’s just exciting that we’re able to get our hands on this at all.”
The researchers observed the wormhole dynamics on a quantum device at Alphabet’s Google called the Sycamore quantum processor.
A wormhole – a rupture in space and time – is considered a bridge between two remote regions in the universe. Scientists refer to them as Einstein–Rosen bridges after the two physicists who described them – Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen.
Such wormholes are consistent with Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which focuses on gravity, one of the fundamental forces in the universe. The term “wormhole” was coined by physicist John Wheeler in the 1950s.
Spiropulu said the researchers found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole but was small enough to implement on existing quantum hardware.
“It looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck. So that’s what we can say at this point – that we have something that in terms of the properties we look at, it looks like a wormhole,” Lykken said.
The researchers said no rupture of space and time was created in physical space in the experiment, though a traversable wormhole appeared to have emerged based on quantum information teleported using quantum codes on the quantum processor.
Black holes are not even real. Well, some of them are. But not the ones in space.
If they were real, you’d have to wonder why people were trying to create them. But they are not real, so it doesn’t matter, unless you’re some kind of moron who just believes anything anyone says.
Semantics q.: Shouldn't we be calling this an _analog_ wormhole in much the same way that we discuss "analog black holes"? Loll's comment about 2D toy models seems to get at that.
— Dan Garisto (@dangaristo) November 30, 2022
Per the authors, it's a "simulation" of "traversable wormhole dynamics" using entangled qubits. The dynamics may be equivalent (as Hawking radiation in Steinhauer's experiments is to that of a BH) but it strikes me that its relationship to a "real" wormhole is that of an analog.
— Dan Garisto (@dangaristo) November 30, 2022
I think we need a new word for what quantum computers do in these physics experiments — they're not the kinds of simulations that classical computers do, with programmed laws; the system evolves according to the actual laws of nature. 2/2
— Natalie Wolchover (@nattyover) November 30, 2022