Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseAre wormholes a real thing out in space somewhere?
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Leanalo Lano, Hey, Daniel, So we did an episode about teleportation, whether it's possible to go from one point in space to another point in space instantly, that's.
Right, without actually moving through space.
And the episode was very popular, but we've got a ton of comments on Twitter and the Facebook's about something we may have missed.
That's right. A lot of people commented that we didn't talk about one possible way, one important possible way to move to another part of the universe very rapidly.
Yeah, like there's a loophole in the laws of the universe.
Perhaps I don't think this counts as a loophole. I don't think it counts as teleportation, but we'll dig into it. Hi'm Jorge and I'm Daniel.
Welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe.
In which a physicist and a cartoonist try to take the universe apart, break it into pieces you can understand, and download them one at a time into your brain.
Today on the episode, we're going to talk about a possible loophole in the laws of physics.
Worm A lot of people commented when we talked about teleportation that wormholes might be another way to get from one place in space to another place in space without actually moving through space. Okay, and I'm gonna take issue with that that. Yeah, wormholes might let you move rapidly from one place in space to another, but it's not technically teleportation. But we'll dig into that in a moment.
So, yeah, wormholes there are kind of the basis of one of my favorite movies sci fi movies, which is.
Don't say Interstellar, okay, good?
Yeah?
Contact? Interesting? Why is Contact your favorite movie?
It's one of my favorite movies. Is such a great, well made movie. The storyline is great, and it's just kind of this great character portrait of Jody Foster's character kind of searching for answers out there in the universe.
Yeah, it's also one of my favorite movies because it touches on a bunch of really interesting themes. First of all, of course, it's fascinating to potentially get a message from outer space. That's like everybody's right. But the other thing I really like about that movie is that shows the process that a lot of the excitement of the plot is in unraveling the message. Right, you don't just get the message and boom you understand it. It's like in English and it makes perfect sense. It's a puzzle and they have to figure it out and think about it and then it clicks into place and all of a sudden, this gibberish turns into physics and math. And to me, that was really exciting to see that process played out.
Yeah, and I liked how you know, it was based on a book written by Carl Sagan.
I do know that, yes, Yeah, And so he.
Really thought about the whole process of like, if we had to build this giant machine from a message from aliens, how would that happen? You know, what sort of international cooperations or organizations, and how would the engineering be done? And he really thought through all these kind of interesting political details.
Yeah, I think Carl Segen probably spent a lot of time thinking about how to talk to aliens and how to respond if they talked to us, and all sorts of stuff. I bet that dude smoked a lot of bananappeals and had a lot of deep thoughts on the topic.
Ate a lot of banana, right, probably ate a lot.
Of bananas as well.
That's why.
I don't think that puts you in the same frame of mind as smoking the peels, but it's probably helpful.
Yeah, But anyways, in that movie, Jodie Foster's character goes to another galaxy through a wormhole. Like that's what. Sorry, I may have spoiled the plot, but they build a machine and it takes her through a wormhole and she travels to another part of the universe through it.
I think it's okay to spoil the plot of twenty year old movies at this point, or Hey, you don't need to never talk about that movie. I think it's all right. Yeah. Yeah. In that movie, they have like this intergalactic network. It's like a subway system where you can like zip from one place to the other in order to get around, and it's sort of a common trope. That's like the thinking of humans is new on the scene, and then maybe somebody else in the galaxy has already built this incredible infrastructure. Yeah, and it's a common way that science fiction writers approach this problem of we are so isolated, we're so far from everybody else. How can we possibly have either an interstellar civilization of just humans or interact with and live with and develop with and talk to communicate with aliens and other star systems when everything is so dang far apart.
Yeah, so wormholes is kind of one way you could do it, at least in science fiction, is have these tunnels through space that connect really far away points.
That's right. Typically you do either faster than light travel or warp speed or wormholes. Right, And so we've covered two of those already, and so it's time to dig into wormholes.
Try to jump into the hole. Let's worm our way into.
This holy topic.
Well, as usual, we were wondering how many of you out there and knew what a wormhole was, and whether or not they're real, that's right.
So I walked around and I asked a bunch of random people, one of whom was my wife, if they knew what wormholes were, and if they thought they were a real thing out there in space or just sort of an idea in the head of science fiction authors.
So those of you listening, think about it for a second. Do you think wormholes are real? And do you know what they are? Here's what people had to say.
And the question was if that would be possible it's a real thing, like if they exist out there, it's face somewhere. I don't think so. No, Yeah, that seems something like I would see like in a scientific or like a sci fi movie.
Okay, but yeah, I don't think they're a real thing.
Right I think so.
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, all right, I believe it's a distinct possibility.
I do.
I will not say for sure that it is or if it isn't, but I do believe the possibility remains open that there's ways to traverse through space.
No, why not? I don't know. They just have this sci fi gene about them.
Probably maybe I'm a chemical engineer, so it's not really my field, but it's possible.
Yeah. In this case, I think a lot of people seem to have heard about wormholes, Like almost nobody said, what what's a wormhole? And a lot of people believe that they exist, and a lot of people believe that scientists will be able to make them.
Yeah, a lot of people seem to know them from science fiction. Like, it's kind of a well known science fiction idea and used a lot in science fiction.
Yeah, it's a common trip to solve that problem with your plot having people spread all over the galaxy, and so it's definitely something we should talk about because it's something that's out there.
So I wonder if that's a thing, Like, if you show it enough in science fiction, eventually people will think it's just an engineering problem.
Oh, I thought you were going to say something else. It's an if it appears in science fiction often enough, does it become real? That would be pretty cool, right if things that we write into novels eventually turned out to be reality because they were written into novels, that would be a cool sci fi novel right there.
Yeah, well sort of in a way. I mean, it sort of becomes possible in the minds of people, and so engineers then go like, hey, what will we need to make this happen? And so then yeah, you kind of have to believe that it's possible before you can try to.
Do it right. That's right. It might seem like a bit of a stretch, but I definitely include science fiction authors in the sort of spectrum of intellectuals who are responsible for creating the future. You know, in my mind, he goes from science fiction authors who do whatever they need to do to get inspired and think of crazy ways that that technology might change our society to physicists who think, is that at all possible, like even technically that could even ever happen? And once physicists sign off on it, then yeah, it gets dumped on the engineers like make it so.
Yeah. But science fiction authors also have to know the science right. Like they can't just say like, hey, here's a pink unicorn that helps you travel through space.
Oh man, I don't know how much science fiction. I read a lot of science fiction, and a lot of it doesn't sound sciencey at all.
I just said they have to read science, not understand science. So what is a wormhole?
A wormhole is a connection between two parts of space that otherwise seem very distant. Okay, And it's not a teleportation. It's not like I'm here in Los Angeles and I want to go to New York and I disappear from Los Angeles and then I appear in New York. That's teleportation with you. You appear in another place in space without actually moving through space. A wormhole is a very different solution. A wormhole says, can we create a connection between LA and New York? And I'm not talking about elon Musk underground tunnels or anything crazy. I'm saying, can you bring those two parts of space close together? Can you connect them so that you are still moving through space but that the distance is very short?
Right? So what does it mean to connect two points that are distant to each other? Meaning like, I'm here in Pasadena and next to me is another point in space, so I can move to that point in space. But you're saying that my point in space that I'm in right now could also potentially be connected to another point far away from here.
That's right, And to stand this you need to relax a little bit your concept of what space is. Right, If you're thinking of space as like emptiness, like the backdrop they the stage on which the theater of the universe takes place. That's an old idea and it makes a lot of sense based on your experience, right, that's how it seems to work. But that's but we have a more modern idea of space. Now, space can do all sorts of weird things that nothingness or emptiness or backdrop can't do, right, and most importantly, space can bend. Space has a shape. Okay, Now, this is a very confusing topic for a lot of people to get their minds around.
Meaning that space is not rigid, you know, like a big empty warehouse. That it's there and it's fixed and it's square. You're saying space is more like I think the idea is more like space is like the ocean. You know, like it's like we're swimming in water and this thing can kind of squish and bend and flow and push you in different directions.
That's right. The ocean is a useful analogy because it tells you that this can do all sorts of interesting things, and that we're embedded in it, and it's not an emptiness, it's a thing. It's a physical thing with behaviors. Right, And a very common way to think about the bending of space is to think about the bending of space in a higher dimension, and typically people use a two dimensional analogy. Now, this analogy is flawed for one very important reason, which I'll tell you after we're done with the analogy, but it is still helpful in thinking about how space can move. So typically people think about space in two dimensions, so that then they can then they can think about the bending of space in three dimensions, because it's really hard to think in four dimensions, right, bending of three dimensional space and four dimensions is hard. So let's just start with two. So you imagine your typical notion of two dimensional space might be like a rubber sheet, okay, and then we think about the bending of that space. Is it bending in the third dimension, like you put a heavy ball in the rubber sheet. What happens, Well, the sheet bends right. Or you can imagine twisting a rubber sheet, or or folding a rubber sheet over right. If you fold a rubber sheet over then two parts which would be far apart if you moved along the sheet, could be very close to each other in that third dimension, right. Or if you roll it up right, imagine rolling up a two dimensional sheet of space, then you have like a toilet paper roll right, a toilet paper universe in which parts of the sheet are touching other parts of the sheet that are outside or inside on the roll, and then they're actually very close to each other.
Oh you mean, like I can walk forward for a long time and I think I'm going straight, but really I'm going around and around this toilet paper.
That's right. And a wormhole would be a connection that's not along the paper. It would be a more complex connection and be a connection from one roll around to the next roll, or to the inner roll, or to the more outer roll. Or if you imagine just a simple simple rubber sheet where you're folding it like a taco, it would be a connection between the two sides of the taco, and you could go the long way around by moving along the sheet. But a wormhole would be a more unusual connection, would be a connection of shortcuts. And space can do these things, right. We know that space is more complicated than just emptiness, and it has a shape, and that shape can be complicated. Right. It can bend, it can stretch, it can wiggle, it can ripple. They could also just have strange connections to it. Right, you can connect two parts of space that are distant along one path, and you can make them very close together on other paths.
Right, intead of a great analogy. You know how you when you're in a nice have to do with the banana almost it's yellow. You know, when you're in Ikea and you're walking along and you're, you know, watching all the furniture and stuff, and then suddenly you come upon like a here, here's a short cut to bedding, or here's a short cut to kitchen, and it's like, you're like, what what's going on. It's like the Ikea takes you in a path that curves around. Every once in a while you can cut through some of these folds of your path. That's sort of like what a wormhole is, right.
That's exactly right. And some hot times when I'm in Ikea, I really wish I had a wormhole to just get me out of here immediately and send me home. Oh my god.
Well, they really do kind of distort your space time in there so that.
You never leave. It's like a casino. There are no outside windows. You can tell if you've been there for ten minutes or ten hours. Yeah, it's a sort of a nightmare. No, that's a perfect analogy, and it shows you how there can be two paths to get to the same place. Right, A long one and a short one. And the thing that's tricky for people to understand is how this space can be bent. And the problem with the analogy we talked about earlier bending of two dimensional space in the third dimension. Right, it's that third dimension that helps you get from one place to the other because the bending is in that third dimension. So you have to be able to move in that third dimension or connect space in that third dimension. The problem with that analogy is that we don't think our three dimensional space is embedded in some four dimensional space. Right. The bending of space is not in some other higher fourth dimension. It's intrinsic, okay, rather than extrinsic. It's intrinsic. It's the relationship between points in space. It's not that the space itself is embedded in some four dimensional space that's twisting it like a three D rubber sheet. Right. It's all about the relationship between points in space. Right.
But I guess the weird thing is to think about these forks in the road. Right, Like in Ike, I'm walking around, I walking forward, and suddenly I have two options. I can keep going on the loopy path, or I can take the shortcut to the next loop.
Right, that's right.
And so what does it mean to connect something in space for us? You know, like, does that mean that I can either move to the side of myself or I can move a bazillion light years away if I move in a special direction. What does that mean to have two points connected that are actually far away?
It just means that there's two different paths with two different lengths to the same place. Right when you say that other point is a bazillion light year was away? Yeah, it's a bazillion light years away if you move through flat space, right, if you sort of like point yourself in that direction and go right. But there can be another path that's shorter, right.
Right, But how do I choose those paths? Like, how do I choose to take the shortcut or not the shortcut?
Well, there has to be a connection there, and that's what the wormhole is, right. A wormhole is that kind of connection. It's a connection between two parts of space which otherwise are far apart, to make them actually closer. And that's why earlier I was saying it's not teleportation, you're still just moving through space. If we define teleportation as moving to another location without moving through space, then a wormhole is not teleportation because you're still moving through space. You've just shrunk the distance you have to travel by bringing those two things closer together, by creating a path between them that's short. And the only way this is possible is if space can do these weird things, if space can twist and bend and have bizarre shapes to it.
Oh, I see you're saying. Teleportation is more like you disappear from here and you appear over there. But traveling through a wormhole is basically just you're still traveling. You're still moving. It just so happens to be a shortcut.
That's right. It's like, you know if you say, hey, can you teleport something from the fridge to the couch, and I like, you know, make a lasso when I drag the fridge over to the couch, And I'm like, hey, look, I don't have to get off the couch to get something out of the fridge anymore. That's not really teleportation, right, I've just brought the destination closer to me so that I can reach it without getting off the couch.
Right, Although for me either way, you did it for me, so I'm happy.
You're like, I don't care about the details. Just get me that drink, give me my next banana, right, I don't pay you to bother me with the details. Yeah, and so it's a semantic distinction only I don't really usually care about semantic distinctions. But a lot of people were curious about why we didn't talk about wormholes in the teleportation episode. And that's why, because in my mind, it's not really teleportation. I see also it's actually maybe possible, whereas teleportation is, like, you know, much more difficult.
See, you're being a physics lawyer.
Yes, I was being a physicist. That's sort of my job.
Before we keep going, let's take a short break.
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So, yeah, so that's a wormhole. It's a connected It's like when you short circuit two point in space.
That's right. Yeah, you bring them, you make you create a path between them, A short path between two points that are otherwise really far apart. That's where a wormhole is.
Yeah, so this seems to really fantastical. Is this real? Is this actually based on the laws of physics? That is as possible?
It's an amazing idea, right, And the craziest thing about it is that it does follow the laws of physics. If you brought this concept to the International or the Intergalactic or the Universal Court of Physics, they would say, yeah, that's allowed.
What does that mean? Yeah, how can the laws of physics aloud?
Is?
Well, you know, it violates our intuition and it seems really odd. But a lot of things in the universe violate our intuition and seem odd, and those are the most fun things, right, those are the things that make physics so interesting. But we say that it's theoretically allowed because we figured out some rules of the universe. Right. We watch the universe, We watch apples fall off trees, we see balls moving through the air, We watch planets go around suns, and we observe various things, and then we develop laws that describe them. Right. So in this case, we're talking about general relativity, right, Einstein's field equations that say, here are the rules of how space can be bent. Now, remember, general relativity describes gravity, and gravity is not a like other forces in that we have like a quantum mechanical description of little particles being sent back and forth to transmit the force. As far as we know, gravity is a bending of space. And so general relativity tells us what are the rules for bending space? And there's a list of rules. Right, space can do this, space can do that, space can do the other thing. So when we say is something theoretically allowed, what we mean is does it follow those rules? Right?
And so the rules say that you can bend space so much that it comes around and kind of touches itself.
Again, that's right, wormholes satisfy those equations. According to those equations, wormholes are allowed. Now that that doesn't mean that worms holes exist, right, It means that they are allowed. It's like saying, you know, before anybody had ever built a tesla, you might say, well, do the laws of physics prevent anyone from building this awesome car that can go two hundred miles an hour and look through the cool You might say, yeah, the laws of physics allow it, but nobody had ever built a tesla before. Right, in the same way, wormholes are allowed by the laws of physics, but that doesn't mean necessarily that there are any, right.
And black holes were also in this category for a long time, right, Like, we thought black holes were possible, but we had never absorbed one or seen evidence of one.
That's right. Black holes were just theoretical for a long time. And it came about exactly the same way. People were playing with the Einstein equations and saying, well, what's the weirdest thing we can get space to do?
Right?
Can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this other thing? And they found all these solutions to the equations, Right, a solution to the equation is a description of space that follows all those rules. And from the case of black holes, they figured out, oh, if you have a really, really dense object, then you get this bizarre thing in space called a black hole. And it was decades before anybody actually observed one. It was old for a long time, people didn't know is this just theoretical? I mean, is this right or is it something that's actually real? Or is it just you know, is it proof that the equations are wrong?
Right?
It sort of seems like a bizarre, nonsensical prediction of the equations. And that's the kind of thing we're always doing in physics. We're saying, let's take the equations we have, let's see what they predict, and let's go out and look to see if we can spot that. Because if we can spot it, it means probably more likely that the equations are right, and if we can't, then it means more likely the equations are wrong. And we keep finding these weird preditions of general relativity that turn out to be true. Black holes, gravitational waves.
So when you say it connects two points together in space like a shortcut, is it only a point or is it Could it be like a region of space is connected to another region of space, or does it only work for little, tiny points.
That's a great question. There's a few different varieties of wormholes. Most of them the opening is super dup or tiny, and so if anything could even go through it, it would have to be like a single particle or a single photon or something. But there are some theories of wormholes where it could be bigger, you know, big enough for you to pass through or drive your car through, so you wouldn't have to sit on the four or five in traffic.
Right.
Well, what's the difference between these two types of theories? Like how can one predict a whole big tunnel?
Well, and a lot of concepts. A wormhole is sort of like a hole in space. It's like a if you actually found one, it would be like a three D object, right, not a two D object. It'd be like a sphere, Okay, And if you went into that sphere, then you would appear in another place in space, right, you would Space is connected through that sphere, right, So it'd be like a really strange door, right, And you look at the sphere, you can see what's in that other part of space, and so it's more than just a point. That can be larger, and so in theory you could you know, go through them. But as we can talk about that in the moment, about the practicalities of making a wormhole and the limitations of them.
So wormholes are theoretically possible.
That's right, so there's nothing in the loss of physics to say wormholes cannot exist. Okay, and that's just because space can do these weird things, right. It can do all these It can twist, it can bend, it can be strangely connected.
You can only have a wormhole where space is kind of bent around and into itself, right, and then when these when the space kind of touched itself again, that's where the wormhole can happen. It's not like an actual tunnel that goes from one part of the toilet paper to another part of the toilet paper. It's like it's when space kind of touches itself again.
Right, that's right, you'd be traveling no distance. Right, one side of the wormhole is exactly the same as the other side of the wormhole.
You know.
There's not like a tunnel where like flashing lights and crazy stuff is happening. It would be as you pass through it, you're on one side of it and instantly you're on the other side. It's like zero length.
Well, boy, that sounds great.
So you don't have to pack any snacks, that is that? Is that the goal of your question.
You have to pack some works just in case you need to go fishing on the other side, that might be helpful. But yeah, they sound great. They sound like like it would cut down our travel time to other stars and like like you could just step through it and you wouldn't need to pack a lot or have a lot of protection to in a spacesuit or spaceship. Right, it sounds pretty good.
It does sound pretty good. And so for those folks out there who are now like googling how to travel to wormholes, or you know, looking on kayak to book your wormhole ticket, maybe we should bring them down on notch and talk about whether wormholes, how wormholes work in reality? All right, So, unfortunately I have a long list of reasons here why you will never go through worm wormhole.
Wait, me in particular, or you in particular.
I'm focusing on you. Everything I do is about you.
I'm just too I'm not skinny enough to fit through one. So you're trying to tell.
Me you've been eating too many bananas, I've noticed.
No.
Problem Number one is that nobody's ever found a wormhole, right, so we don't know if there are any out there. And problem number one A is that even if wormholes are theoretically possible. We don't know how to make one, right. I Option one is find a wormhole and go in and see where you end up. Right, that's sort of like just getting on a random plane at the airport and having no idea if you're going to Buenos Airis or you know Singapore.
Well, I guess the question is how would you find one? Like, what would what would you look for?
Yeah, so, well, how would you find a wormhole? It'd be pretty tough, right, You'd need to sort of spot it the way we spotted black holes. Right. We spotted black holes by noticing that there was this black spot in space where if something passed behind it, it would disappear and no light was coming out from it. So for a wormhole, you'd need to see things going into it, right, But then it might just look like a black hole. So you'd need to see the other side also, and you need to see something coming out of it. So you need to see like particle A going in and then that same particle coming out the other side. That'd be pretty tricky. You might find one edge of a wormhole and just think it's a black hole, oh, until you found the other side.
One side of the wormhole just looks like a black hole.
That's right. In fact, a lot of the theories of wormholes start from black holes. They say that, I because a wormhole and a black hole are very similar, right. They both suck things in and then they constrict space down to a very narrow spot. The space is very dense inside them, and so one side of a wormhole could just look like a black hole.
Oh, wormholes do the same thing as black holes. They look like a little like it. They pinch space around them, like they contract space leading up.
To the exactly, oh exactly. And you can think of a wormhole sort of like imagine whatever visualization you're using for a black hole in your head. Now, put two of those together with a little pinchy parts touch, and you had a sort of flares it like zooms in and then flares out again, right and sort of, and on one side you have a black hole, and the other side you have this thing called a white hole, which is sort of the opposite of a black hole. And we should do like a whole podcast episode on white holes. But what you should know about white holes is that you can't enter a white hole, but stuff can leave, So it's sort of the opposite of a black hole in that sense. Now, no white hole has ever been seen. It's just a theoretical concept. But if a wormhole really did exist, it would be a black hole paired of the white hole.
Oh, it's one direction all. You can't use a wormhole two ways.
Not that we're aware of, right, So that's that's. Problem Number two is that wormholes are a one way trip, and so you might go into it, come out in Alpha centauri and be like, wow, I forgot to pack my underwear, and now it's too late.
It's too late. You're going commander for the rest of your galactic existence.
That's right, But there are deeper problems with wormholes. Problem number three is that wormholes, as far as we theoretically understand them, are very short lived. So if a wormhole is created, the equations of general relativity tell us that that pinching point would last very very briefly, and then they would snap, and then you just end up with a black hole and a white hole separated. Wouldn't be connected. That general relativity doesn't like having. It's not a stable solution, right, It's not something which can exist and not change through time. The equations of general relativity, say that space space would doesn't like to be connected that way for very long. It's not the lowest energy configuration. So if a wormhole is created by whatever means, then a space would relax by separating back into a black hole and a white hole.
Wait, so wormholes are not permanent like this curvature. You're talking about a space and space looping on itself. It's constantly moving and changing.
That's right. It's like a gravitational wave.
Right.
It's not a permanent fixture in space. It's a wiggle. And so wormholes are like that. Wormholes can be created, though we don't know how, but they can be described by the equation of general relativity. But they don't last very long. They're very short lived. They're like, you know, momentarily existing. Oh boy, Yeah, that's a problem.
So we can't find them, and they don't last for very long.
That's right, But some clever physicists thought up away to maybe make wormholes last a little longer.
I have so many questions for you, but before we dive in, let's take a short break.
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First of all, can we make wormholes? Is that theoretically possible? Like, can we build something that would make one?
We have no idea. I mean, we know that the equations of general relativity allow them, but we don't know how to make a wormhole. But if we did find a wormhole before it collapsed, some physicists worked out a way to make it last longer. For it to be stable, all you need to do is stuff it filled with a huge amount of exotic matter, which is something we've never seen before, and don't know if it exists, but if you could create a huge amount of it and stuff it inside a wormhole, then theoretically you might be able to stabilize the wormhole. Now, exotic matter is this weird stuff that has negative mass, And you need something with negative mass because it would have sort of the opposite gravitational effect of normal mass. Normal mass pull stuff together. Negative mass would be pushing stuff apart. So you stuff that inside the wormhole, it would sort of hold it open.
So if you could find this special impossible mass, and you could also find a wormhole and you could throw it in there, it might keep the wormhole open for more.
Than that's that's right, But I wouldn't go in there with your kids. On the guessing of a bunch of.
Physicists, you could throw some bananas in there first, that's right.
And you know the other problem with wormholes is they might be super duper small. Right, Even these wormholes were talking about could be like plank length size, like ten to the minus thirty five meters wide.
Wait, do you mean like the size of something that would fit in a wormhole? Is that small?
That's right. We don't really know, but some theories say that wormholes would have to be super duperor tiny if they exist at all. Right, So that's another disappointing fact. And also the idea about stuffing it full of exotic matter that would hold the wormhole open, but it would also mean you can't go through it, because as soon as any sort of normal matter went through it, it would disrupt it and then the wormhole would collapse. So it might be that the wormholes exist, and it might be that you can hold them open with exotic matter, but then you couldn't go through them, which makes them sort of pointless.
Because as soon as you go in it would close.
Or yeah, exactly as soon as you go in then it would collapse.
Oh so like your toes might make it through, but then it'll collapse and then you don't have any toast.
That's right, And then we haven't even talked about like the dangers of approaching anything that looks like a black hole. I mean, the gravitational forces are tremendous. You get anywhere to a black hole, you're not going to get into it. You're going to get shredded by the tidal forces before you get very close. So there's a lot of practical problems with using a wormhole.
Wow, but so we are. Why are wormholes one directional? That's one thing I didn't quite get. How does the universe decide which ways in and which ways out?
Well, that's a good question. I don't know. We don't know how to make them, so we don't know what process determines their directionality. Yeah, it's a good question.
But the physics say, the mass says that they are one direction that's right.
And so let me add an important qualifier. We've been saying this whole time that they are theoretically possible. That's true according to general relativity. General relativity, as far as we know, it is true. But we also know that general relativity is not quantum mechanical, right, that it cannot describe microscopic things very well, things where the quantum description of the universe takes over, where particles have fixed amounts of energy and are divided up into concrete chunks. Right, general relativity thinks of the universe as continuous and infinitely divisible, But we know it's not that. Most of the time, that's not a big deal because we're dealing with macroscopic objects. But when you're talking about the inside of black holes or the inside of wormholes. We're pretty sure that quantum effects are going to be important, which means that if you're going to go inside a wormhole, you shouldn't just check with general relativity. You need to check with quantum gravity, which is the theory we don't even have. So I would be very wary of going inside a wormholes, even if you found one, even if you stabilized it, because we don't really know what the rules are of quantum gravity.
Right, And the hardest part seems to be to understand quantum physics.
It's pretty tricky. Yeah, you got to be pretty smart to understand quantum physics, I'll admit.
Okay, So to answer the question, can we use a wormhole to get to another star galaxy? The answer is maybe, probably not theoretically possible, but it seems practically impossible.
I would be super impressed with the next generation of engineers if we managed to build useful wormholes in the next one hundred years or so. I would be very, very deeply impressed. Good job, guys, I think you'd probably be dead. They'll probably send me as an experimental subject through the first wormhole just to prove them wrong. Yeah, so I would say the takeaway is wormholes theoretically possible but never been seen, and also very impractical.
But let's carry the fantasy a little bit longer here, because I heard I read that they wormholes might not just connect space, but they could also connect space and time.
That's right, space is part of this constructor called space time right, where time is sort of the fourth dimension. And people have crazy ideas with what you could do with wormholes if you found them. If you take one end to the wormhole, and you accelerated to really really high speeds, then you can take advantage of time dilation. Right. That's moving clocks run more slowly. But if you're connected, if you have a stationary point connected to the fast moving point, then you can play all sorts of tricks with special relativity and maybe even go back in time.
Wow.
But Stephen Hawking says that's impossible. He says that if you send anything through the wormhole, then the wormhole will collapse. And so they called this the chronological protection conjecture that the universe is like conspired to make the laws of physics impossible to do time travel. And I said, I took a stand on our time travel episode, I said time travel is impossible, and I stick by that because I think that this concept of using wormholes and travel back in time is absurd, not just impractical, but absurd and illogical. Okay, so sorry to rain on your parade to prick your fantasy there or he.
Let me throw out my idea for a sci fi novel right here. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna crush that out and throw it into the trash here.
No, No, science fiction is totally loud, totally you let in your universe. You can make up whatever rules you want as long as you follow them, so we can have that in your science fiction universe.
No problem, all right, I guess until then we have to sit in traffic until the ingenious figure out the wormhole.
That's right, and so we hope you enjoyed this episode of Daniel and Jorge and explain the universe.
And Daniel and Jorge shoot down your sci fi idea.
That's right. I'm sorry. Send me your sci fi idea through the wormhole of the Internet and I'll tell you why it's wrong, but in a very cheerful tone.
That's right. Warm your way into Daniels in Bogs.
All right, Thanks everyone, have a.
Good one, See you next time.
If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandjorge dot com. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. House US dairy Tackling greenhouse gases, Many farms use anaerobic digesters to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
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