Physicists Propose Method for Detecting Wormholes

By Isabelle Parker

(Image from ESO/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimetre); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray))

A team of researchers at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria has claimed to have found a method for detecting the difference between black holes and wormholes.

Wormholes are theoretical shortcuts through space and time, says Neural. If a spaceship were to fly through one, it would travel long distances in a relatively short amount of time. Wormholes can be pictured as a tunnel that connects two points of the galaxy.

The problem with detecting wormholes is that they look a lot like black holes, and we don't currently have the technology to observe these. In addition to this, scientists still aren't completely sure whether wormholes even exist.

According to The Debrief, the team of psychists compared images of space where wormholes are suspected to lie with indirect images of strong gravitational lensing and images of polarized radiation. These pictures were then compared with the simplest form of black hole, a Schwarzchild black hole, and, based on these findings, the physicists were able to create a new model of the 'throat' of a wormhole. This allowed them to hypothesise how matter would react differently to a wormhole than a blackhole.

Futurism says that the only way to be completely sure of this distinction is to scan the behemoths with an even higher resolution telescope.

Team Leader Petya Nedkova said,

"If you were nearby, you would find out too late. You’ll get to know the difference when you either die or you pass through."