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SPACE
Do wormholes really exist? Scientists hatch a plan to find out.
New study suggests it may be possible to spot the space-time tunnels by observing nearby stars. Wormholes require extreme warping of space-time, which in turn depends on very powerful gravitational forces.coffeekai / Getty Images/NASA/iStockphoto
Weird star wiggles could betray the presence of wormholes, if these fabled space-time tunnels do indeed exist, a new study suggests. Wormholes are sci-fi staples; over the years, many stories, books and movies have sent their protagonists zipping between widely separated locales via these cosmic shortcuts. Wormholes are possible,
according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, but nobody has ever spotted one. The new study provides a possible way to make the first tentative detection: look for slight but strange movements of stars. Related: Physicists Reveal Step-by-Step Instructions for Building a Wormhole "If you have two stars,
one on each side of the wormhole, the star on our side should feel the gravitational influence of the star that's on the other side," study co-author Dejan Stojkovic, a cosmologist and professor of physics at the University at Buffalo in New York, said in a statement.
"The gravitational flux will go through the wormhole." Wormholes require extreme warping of space-time, which in turn depends on very powerful gravitational forces.
So, a good place to hunt for these theoretical tunnel is near the supermassive black holes that lurk at the cores of galaxies — such as Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), the four-million-solar-mass behemoth in our own Milky Way, Stojkovic said.
"So if you map the expected orbit of a star around Sagittarius A*, you should see deviations from that orbit if there is a wormhole there with a star on the other side," he said. Current observing techniques likely aren't sensitive enough to make such a detection at the moment,
he added. But it may be possible to do so in the next decade or two with advances in instrumentation as well as long-term monitoring of appropriate target stars, such as S2, which circles near Sagittarius A
New study suggests it may be possible to spot the space-time tunnels by observing nearby stars. Wormholes require extreme warping of space-time, which in turn depends on very powerful gravitational forces.coffeekai / Getty Images/NASA/iStockphoto
Weird star wiggles could betray the presence of wormholes, if these fabled space-time tunnels do indeed exist, a new study suggests. Wormholes are sci-fi staples; over the years, many stories, books and movies have sent their protagonists zipping between widely separated locales via these cosmic shortcuts. Wormholes are possible,
according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, but nobody has ever spotted one. The new study provides a possible way to make the first tentative detection: look for slight but strange movements of stars. Related: Physicists Reveal Step-by-Step Instructions for Building a Wormhole "If you have two stars,
one on each side of the wormhole, the star on our side should feel the gravitational influence of the star that's on the other side," study co-author Dejan Stojkovic, a cosmologist and professor of physics at the University at Buffalo in New York, said in a statement.
"The gravitational flux will go through the wormhole." Wormholes require extreme warping of space-time, which in turn depends on very powerful gravitational forces.
So, a good place to hunt for these theoretical tunnel is near the supermassive black holes that lurk at the cores of galaxies — such as Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), the four-million-solar-mass behemoth in our own Milky Way, Stojkovic said.
"So if you map the expected orbit of a star around Sagittarius A*, you should see deviations from that orbit if there is a wormhole there with a star on the other side," he said. Current observing techniques likely aren't sensitive enough to make such a detection at the moment,
he added. But it may be possible to do so in the next decade or two with advances in instrumentation as well as long-term monitoring of appropriate target stars, such as S2, which circles near Sagittarius A
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