Researchers create the smallest, crummiest wormhole you can imagine’

Scientists used a quantum computer to explore the ultimate escape route from a black hole

- DENNIS OVERBYE

IN AN EXPERIMENT that ticks most of the mystery boxes in modern physics, a group of researchers announced on Wednesday that they had simulated a pair of black holes in a quantum computer and sent a message between them through a shortcut in space-time called a wormhole.

Physicists described the achievement as another small step in the effort to understand the relation between gravity, which shapes the universe, and quantum mechanics, which governs the subatomic realm of particles.

"This is important because what we have here in its construct and structure is a baby wormhole," said Maria Spiropulu, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and the leader of a consortium called Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics, which conducted the research. "And we hope that we can make adult wormholes and toddler wormholes step-by-step!" In their report, published Wednesday in Nature, the researchers described the result in measured words: "This work is a successful attempt at observing traversable wormhole dynamics in an experimental setting." The wormhole that Dr Spiropulu and her colleagues created and exploited is not a tunnel through real physical space but rather through an "emergent" two-dimensional space. The "black holes" were not real ones that could swallow the computer but lines of code in a quantum computer.

Strictly speaking, the results apply only to a simplified "toy model" of a universe - in particular, one that is akin to a hologram, with quantum fields on the edge of spacetime determining what happens within, sort of in the way that the label on a soup can describes the contents.

To be clear: The results of this experiment do not offer the prospect anytime soon, if ever, of a cosmic subway through which to roam the galaxy like Jodie Foster in the movie Contact or Matthew McConaughey in Interstellasr.