The Entire Milky Way Might Be a Huge Wormhole That’s Stable and Navigable

Thursday, January 22, 2015

The Entire Milky Way Might Be a Huge Wormhole That’s Stable and Navigable

The Entire Milky Way Might Be a Huge Wormhole That’s Stable and Navigable:

Artist rendering of a wormhole connecting two galaxies. Credit: Davide and Paolo Salucci.

Our very own Milky Way could be home to a giant tunnel in spacetime.

At least, that’s what the authors of a new study have proposed. According to the team, a collaboration between Indian, Italian, and North American researchers at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Italy, the central halo of our galaxy may harbor enough dark matter to support the creation and sustenance of a “stable and navigable” shortcut to a distant region of spacetime – a phenomenon known as a wormhole.

Wormholes were first conceptualized by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935. Far from being fodder for science fiction, the two scientists instead proposed their idea as a way to get around the idea of black hole singularities. Rather than creating a knot of infinite density, Einstein and Rosen thought, the hefty energy inherent in such a massive body would distort spacetime to such an extent that it bent over on itself, allowing a bridge to form between two distant areas of the Universe. Alas, these wormholes would be extremely unstable and would require enormous amounts of “negative energy” to remain open.

A graphic of the structure of a theorized wormhole (NASA)

But according to the team at SISSA, large amounts of dark matter could provide this fuel. Using a model of dark matter’s abundance that is based on the rotation curves of other spiral galaxies, the researchers found that the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way produced solutions in general relativity that would, theoretically, allow a stable wormhole to arise.

Paulo Salucci, an astrophysicist on the the team from SISSA, explained: “If we combine the map of the dark matter in the Milky Way with the most recent Big Bang model to explain the universe and we hypothesise the existence of space-time tunnels, what we get is that our galaxy could really contain one of these tunnels, and that the tunnel could even be the size of the galaxy itself.” He continued, “But there’s more. We could even travel through this tunnel, since, based on our calculations, it could be navigable. Just like the one we’ve all seen in the recent film Interstellar.”

Of course, Salucci and the other researchers were working on this project long before Interstellar was released, but their result does lend some theoretical support to the ideas in the film – ideas that were also fact-tested and revised by physics guru Kip Thorne of Caltech.

The authors believe that their result reinforces the importance of discerning the true nature of dark matter. According to Salucci, “Dark matter may be ‘another dimension’, perhaps even a major galactic transport system. In any case, we really need to start asking ourselves what it is”.

It is important to understand that this is purely a mathematical result. Indeed, such a wormhole may be theroretically possible… but that doesn’t mean it’s probable. Salucci ventured, “Obviously we’re not claiming that our galaxy is definitely a wormhole, but simply that, according to theoretical models, this hypothesis is a possibility.”

The researchers went on to explain that their idea could be tested experimentally by comparing our own Milky Way, a spiral galaxy, with a nearby galaxy of a different type. By comparing the dark matter distributions between the two galaxies, scientists would potentially be able to use general relativity to probe differences in their spacetime dynamics.

Realistically, the technology that would allow researchers to do that is a long way off. But never fear, science (and scifi) fans – you can still check out the team’s wormhole simulation in the animation below, watch the movie if you haven’t already, and/or get your hands on a copy of Kip Thorne’s book, The Science of Interstellar.

The team’s research was published in the November 2014 issue of Annals of Physics. A pre-print of the paper is available here.

About Vanessa Janek

Vanessa earned her bachelor's degree in Astronomy and Physics in 2009 from Wheaton College in Massachusetts. Her credits in astronomy include observing and analyzing eclipsing binary star systems and taking a walk on the theory side as a NSF REU intern, investigating the expansion of the Universe by analyzing its traces in observations of type 1a supernovae. In her spare time she enjoys writing about astrophysics, cosmology, biology, and medicine, making delicious vegetarian meals, taking adventures with her husband and/or Nikon D50, and saving the world.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Thursday, January 22, 2015