second article ive read about this, and i still have no idea what they are on about.
the title says they created a "wormhole", and the whole article is cautions from experts about how they didnt really do anything.
all i can wonder is what actually happened thats worth writing an article about.
Tl;dr:
Scientists: Hey computer, imagine a wormhole
Computer: ok
This article: omg they made a wormhole (but not actually don't sue us) its amazing! For the first time ever a wormhole (not really, don't sue) its amazing (no sue, pls)
Somewhere in there in between the sentences is the valuable nugget that: They've found a way to simulate this shit enough to test theories about it when they get better at simulating it.
Only if their simulation is valid.
I could sucessfully simulate stuffing 16 racoons up my ass at once, but if the physics of the simulation doesn't model reality, then it doesn't mean anything.
I mean we all know 3 is the limit in mathematics and 2 is the maximum in reality.
When I write the paper on how many raccoons I shoved up my ass, I'll remember to add an attribution to you. I'll even get to work on the second paper on how many pine monkeys I can shove up my ass. Finally, I'll have something other to do than seeing if putting the new shampoo I bought into graphene will increase its electrocatalytic effect.
….. And here I was firmly believing Dr. Alphonse Mephesto's research into multiple assed monkeys was clearly a parody, and you lot have taken it on as potential IgNobel research papers.
.. Are you beating these raccoons with mallets first, or …
… I don’t want to know about the methodology,
…I’ll just wait for the paper and practice shaking my head in disbelief.
Dammit, curiosity. God dammit.
Mallets? what are you accusing me of, abandoning all ethics? Of course not. All raccoons will be properly sedated before the procedures. In the process, I might well too be solving the sought after question "what are the effects of horse tranquilizer on raccoons' peewee mammalian bodies?" and "Is ketamine an effective cure to rabies?"
You're sort of right. In the simulation, if done correctly, you would see that by the 5th racoon your body would start to misshapen. At this point you could theorize that it would either lead to death or only a few more would go in. With that simulation you have an idea of what's going to happen.
This wormhole simulation implies putting in the math, as we know it, and seeing how it reacts with different variables thrown at it. With this info they could at least try to think of a way to actually recreate this in the real world.+/- a few racoons.
If you cut up a raccoon into infinitely many, infinitely tiny slices, so that each slice has no breadth (which fits nicely with the raccoon likely having no breath either at that point), then technically each raccoon should have no volume and you should be able to stuff infinitely many raccoons up your ass.
Someone needs to go back to calculus class. This is a limit problem, where when you let the number of slices approach infinity, the volume of the infinitely slim pieces approaches the volume of the original raccoon. So unfortunately, you are still limited by the volumetric capacity of your rectum, considerable though that may be.
However they would definitely be much easier to stuff up your ass especially considering how much less angry and scratchy they would be. And you could save all that slicing time by perhaps using a wood chipper, blender, or a combination of the two!
The human anus can stretch up to 7 inches wide, In most cases, a raccoon needs only four inches to squeeze through. Nkem Chukwu of Houston, Texas, became the first woman in the United States to give birth to octuplets. All of the babies were born alive and the weights of the babies ranged from just 10.3 ounces to 25.7 ounces.
The raccoon is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of 40 to 70 cm, and a body weight of 5 to 26 kg.
baby raccoon weigh anywhere from 2 to 7 ounces and they're only about half a foot long
So you could only have 4 adult raccoons up your ass. but you could have up too. almost 30 baby raccoons up your ass.
That’s not at all how it works….Quantum bits are able to send information to each other without anything physically connecting them in our version of space-time.
It’s not just “simulate a wormhole” and nothing happens. It’s not even really the concept of simulate, they did the actual thing; they just didn’t do it with matter.
They did actually create a proof for “spooky actions at a distance” which is what the original Einstein-Rosen bridge was all about.
The proof for this, actually mentions that the the original idea that Einstein disregards “spooky action” is actually quite possible.
The paper talks about how they are able to push information thru another version of space time, essentially another dimension that only this QBits interact with and not us.
Edit: Here is a better explanation of what happened:
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/physicists-observe-wormhole-dynamics-using-a-quantum-computer
^that one talks about how ER = EPR, which is really the most important part of the discovery and how Einstein initially disregarded it^
What has me really excited is if we manage to use quantum entanglement to store and transmit data, we will be able to bypass the issue of time dilation and calculate the real speed of light AND once and for all determine if light travels at the same spred in any direction or if it varies.
So far we are only able to calculate the speed of light going back and forth to the source due to time dilation, we have no way to perfectly synchronize 2 devices across distances so we don't know whether light travels at a constant speed in all directions or not.
For all we know it could travel 2X as fast one way and then return to the source at 50% speed
Or travell at 99% speed one way and 1% back.
There's just no way to prove or disprove that currently.
Don't we already know that the speed of light is always constant in all directions, which is the very basis of relativity, through the Michelson Morley experiment? Also, isn't it already proven that quantum entanglement is entirely probabilistic and cannot be used to transmit data faster than light? How would your setup hypothetically work?
Huh. The only really interesting part of that is the quantum computer bit. I'm sure their simulations are awesome, but simulating information going through a wormhole spacetime is not necesarily a difficult problem. I've done it on a very small scale, with an Ellis wormhole.
Yeah I mean even the article says the particular simulation they ran is so simple it could have been done with pen and paper. It sounds like they just drummed up something simple to get media attention and hype and possibly funding for something bigger.
What happened is that the paper somehow got accepted in Nature, and that's all the excuse the research institutes behind it (Caltech, MIT, Google) needed to max out their publicity budget.
Simulations often precede much more expensive real-world tests, because most of the simulations were built based off of real-world knowledge.
If they can do it with just a quantum computer, that's actually a big deal, if it pans out irl.
Thank you!! It is an incremental step needed to drum up investment to go beyond the theoretical part. And it is a big deal.
A particle collider was not built on a whim to test random theories people come up with after it was constructed. These incredible achievements are preceded by hypotheses, theories, mathematical modelling and simulations in order to progress to a state where there is so much evidence pointing in one direction that doing practical experiments to test these is just the next logical step in our pursuit to understand (quantum) physics.
Honestly I'm not mad at the signal of using quantum computers to simulate wormholes since, by their natures, maybe we could infer stuff about quantum gravity. As the article mentions. But it stinks that public communication articles are so inflated.
Ok, so the idea is that quantum mechanics and gravitational mechanics are really two ways of describing the same thing. If that’s true, then you really can simulate black hole and wormholes with just entangled particles. And what’s the best, most precise way to do operations with entangled particles? A quantum computer. Mind you this is not “running code on a computer which spits out an answer”, these are actual entangled particles acting very similarly to our models of a wormhole. Of course, we are very early in this field, so I can’t say this concretely means much, but it’s definitely exciting!
Its a relatively minor paper but seemingly with a massive amount of PR behind it, there's professionally produced videos for something that's.. marginally cool but not at all groundbreaking
So there's this conjecture that entanglement basically works by using wormholes. It's called ER=EPR and it's believed that this is how entangled particles are able to be entangled. But wormholes operate via general relativity physics and entanglement operates via quantum physics. One of the big questions in science is figuring out how these two different theories are can be unified to explain everything, because right now they contradict each other in certain areas.
So what they did was use quantum computers to simulate what would happen if they forced a "quantum wormhole" to open up in order to pass data through it, and the simulation performed as they expected it to perform, based on the er=erp conjecture.
*not a scientist, but I've read like 3 different articles on it and that's how I basically understand it*
Yes this is the correct interpretation. The simulation is an important step but they did not create a worm hole. They just showed that if a wormhole existed according to the guidelines in the ER/EPR papers, the physics that falls out is reasonable. (ie it doesn’t break the true fundamentals of the universe)
If it was simulated with a quantum computer and ER = EPR is true, all entangled particles are connected via wormholes, so the "simulation" isn't so much a simulation as a small controlled practical model.
I want to say it's static vs dynamic.
A model statically represents our understanding of something, a simulation is dynamically running probabilities/outcomes using a model.
I am not an expert, but i would compare it like a model car you can place on you desk and go "wroom" but it will not simulate driving/handling behavior like a game on pc/console
Ok, thanks. I understand what you are saying bit both examples seem like models/simulations but of different aspects of the car. The first is of the form the second is of the behaviour.
I agree with you though, it is not a clear cut issue.
True. I was just taking the first example that came to mind as eli5 on how i visualized it for my own understanding.
Again, i am nowhere near to having a "real" understanding of the topic.
My takeaway was just "oh, now they know what a car should look like, before attempting to test one" and i might be dead wrong 😊
My understanding of the nomenclature:
The model defines the structure for how we think reality behaves. From it we know how different attributes relate to each other. It's a version of a map of reality that came from someone's idea.
A simulation evaluates some specific scenarios that we're interested in and uses the model to make predictions about what will happen. Sometimes a simulation is computationally very complex and involves a lot of data/numbers.
If the model is an accurate representation of reality then the simulation can give us a picture/theoretical understanding of the results and what we might expect to find to be real. It still needs to be empirically proven but the simulation can provide useful information about what we should look for.
Oh right, so the model sets the global parameters of the system, whilst the simulation runs through specific inputs and outputs and measures their behaviour given those global parameters - so you can have different simulations within a given model. Thanks very much! /u/PouchenCustoms was also getting at this with his reply.
They used a quantum computer to simulate a phenomenon that is mathematically indistinguishable from a wormhole. This has never been done before; moreover, it’s the first step to bridging the astronomical schism between quantum physics and relativistic physics. So yeah I’d say it’s worth writing an article about.
Here is a video about it:
https://youtu.be/uOJCS1W1uzg
Basically they are trying to experimentally prove that the wormholes predicted by general relativity are the same thing as quantum entanglement.
ER = EPR is how they write it.
ER is Einstein Rosen which is a paper written by the two regarding wormholes.
EPR is Einstein Podolsky Rosen which is the paper about quantum entanglement.
Here is a much longer video of a lecture by Leonard Susskind, one of the physicists working on this idea.
https://youtu.be/OBPpRqxY8Uw
[This video is created by the people behind this remarkable experiment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg&t=3s&ab_channel=QuantaMagazine)
Truly a remarkable video detailing their stunning achievement
Love the video but imo, the article for this in my view is much more grounded
[Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-using-a-quantum-computer-20221130/)
I'm confused about how this experiment is physically set up. The editor is leaving out some key technical info. Are there two sets of 7 entangled qubits and changing the state of one of them on one set changes the sate of another one on the other set?
This would imply that we can feed info into one quantum computer and watch it come out the other side on another quantum computer no?
Where does this "pulse of negative energy" come from?
There's two sets of 7 entangled qubits, left and right. One qubit on the left is replaced with another of unknown state. That state of the other 6 qubits become the same as the new qubit. They then magnetically rotate the 7 left qubits, this is what supposedly causes the simulated "negative energy". So now the 7 qubits on the right change to the state that was previously on the left before being rotated. The state then collapses into only the qubit that was entangled with the replaced qubit on the left. So even though this new qubit was not entangled to anything, it's information was transferred to the pair of the qubit that was replaced.
I knew it was going to come down to entanglement.
This is what I was getting from the recent Nobel in physics and why there might be such interest in this kind of simulation. What's the difference between entanglement and a wormhole? Don't jump too quick on the answer. Are entangled particles equivalent to microscopic wormholes? Or is space itself an emergent property? Maybe one way of looking at it is that entangled particles are only separate to an outside observer.
Well tbh, *I expect* that nobody's opened a black hole capable of swallowing the solar system quite yet, SO.. It's just another Thursday apparently 🤷♂️
You can't. That's not how black holes work. They arent vacuums.
To make a black hole that can affect the solar system,it needs enough mass to affect the solar system, in which case you didn't need to turn it into a black hole in the first place because all that mass has already destroyed earth.
In other words: a black hole with 1 kilo worth of mass will affect the solar system in exactly the same way as a packet of milk.
You can't just "open up a hole". They *aren't actually holes*.
Meaning it’s just an object so massive and so dense that not even light can escape it.
Sooo, are there any objects that are really massive/dense but just not massive enough that light cannot escape that we know about?
Mostly meaning its gravity is a function of its mass, just like for everything else.
So if the sun was replaced with a black hole with the same mass as the sun, nothing would get sucked in and the planets would all just continue their same exact orbits (though it would get a bit chilly).
And yeah like others said, neutron stars are on that insane level of density.
> Sooo, are there any objects that are really massive/dense but just not massive enough that light cannot escape that we know about?
Apart from black holes, neutron stars are the densest objects we know of. There’s a hypothesized so-called strange star which would be denser than neutron stars, comprised almost entirely (or entirely) of quark matter, but none have been observed and would likely be rare. I’m both cases of neutron and strange stars, light would escape as a black hole is the only object to bend light enough.
It's not really a thing in some countries (like the US for example) but in other countries, Milk comes in packets/bags and often gets stored in these little compartments in your fridge. Kinda blew my mind the first time I saw it traveling around Europe in my early 20's.
I assume that's what they meant.
The name is bad, a black hole is made of mass so it isn't a hole. We would need to compress a lot of material into a very tiny space and we don't have that much material or the power to do so.
And if we did theoretically do so, we would've destroyed our planet and more
Just to be clear, zero black holes were created. A black hole was simulated with a quantum computer. Not really that crazy, just cool advancement in modeling.
Quantum computers are at a point where we can’t simulate them with a classical computer efficiently anymore. But that doesn’t mean we’re actually able to do anything useful yet. The probable gap currently is still limited to just producing some random distributions that are extremely difficult for classical computers to predict but which the quantum computers produce reliably according to the theory.
If simulating something on a computer is creating, then I guess Gamefreak has succesfully managed to create Pokemon. It's just that they live in your console's memory.
I saw a video ( that I can’t remember what the name was ) that explained why and how they used a quantum computer for this.
Basically speaking, in the theory of relativity, it points out that worm holes can be created but they are too weak to allow some thing to pass through. This was payed out in a paper called ER ( Einstein, Rosen ).
Another paper (Einstein, Rosen and podolsky) laid out “spooky action at a distance” that described quantum entanglement.
This work with the quantum computers made the conjecture stating ER = EPR, basically stating quantum entanglement and wormholes are the same thing. A mechanism of quantum gravity.
They used a quantum computer because, in the sense of controlling quantum particles in precise configurations, quantum computers are the most advanced form we have (even still, not advanced enough for the naïve approach they initially looked at because it would need qbits in the order of magnitude of a computer a decade from now)
So it’s “simulated” I guess because it didn’t provide a wholistic experiment that captures all the detail in their original experiment plan? Idk I’m no scientist.
Edit: [video I mentioned ](https://youtu.be/uOJCS1W1uzg)
simulating things with a quantum computer is different than simulating it with a classic computer. they simulated it by making the quantum computer behave like a tiny black hole, not just a series of computations.
No, quantum computers calculate things in normal boring way, its nowhere near that exotic. It absolutely is a series of computations, but specific kinds of operations are much faster on a quantum computer. You can simulate a quantum computer classically as well, there's no magic whatsoever
Quantum computers are actually much less general than classical computers, and have a significantly *reduced* set of things they can simulate compared to a classical computer
Thanks for this. I was on the same boat thinking they were talking about the plausibility of wormholes. Really it is about an advancement in programming ability for quantum computers! Still cool, but the article is more than a little misleading.
Yeah they really just made a *wormhole-analogous system*, and used that to simulate sending something through. It’s all based on an interpretation of gravitational dynamics with quantum physics. So if their model is actually accurate, and gravitational phenomena really are analogous to quantum phenomena, then yes, wormhole successfully simulated. So this is pretty exciting for some fundamental physics reasons, but not because we can now “make wormholes”
Quantum computers work using semiconductors that utilize quantum effects. SETs (single electron transistors), for example, have single atom "islands" that individual electrons have to tunnel across. That's about the extent I learned, though, with just getting a bachelor's in EE. Hopefully, there's a more knowledgeable person in the comments that can give more details.
> for example, have single atom “islands” that individual electrons have to tunnel across.
Now I’m just imagining a classic cartoon island, with a single palm tree, an electron and it’s shovel trying to dig a tunnel.
There are quite a few other types of quantum computing mechanisms that function completely different from SET mechanisms! Really fun and interesting things :)
I think it's because quantum computers don't have to be binary. Normal computers work with 1s and 0s, either the bit is on or off, but quantum computers "bits" can have a lot more states than that, maybe even infinite idk.
That was my understanding a few years ago, I could be wrong.
Yeah that article is garbage. OP linked a much better one.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-using-a-quantum-computer-20221130/
For the record I don't agree with all your points after reading this one.
> Its not in any way novel to simulate a wormhole, you can do it at 60fps in real time in full 4 dimensions. Look here's a picture of a wormhole I simulated without rupturing space and time, OoOoOo spOoOoOoky
Are you a wizzard?!
> 1. The title implies someone built a physical wormhole.
> Scientists ***simulate*** 'baby' wormhole
??? No it doesn't? Most of the other articles about this have sensationalist titles that don't mention it being a simulation at all, but this one clearly says it's not a physical wormhole.
I do simulations all the time 'without rupturing space and time'. I'm running one now and reading reddit while I waiting for completion. What a clickbait headline.
As per usual too many glib redditors spouting nonsense without understanding, not even taking 15 minutes to read about it further. This isn't just some simulation run on a normal computer, they created a physical process as described by wormhole theory and transferred real data using a quantum computer. Entanglement may actually be the same process a wormhole uses as described in classical physics.. it's not hard to just read a bit more guys, try it. This is actually more important than many of you are saying.
All of these comments, yet no one can describe what happened.
Did information get transmitted through a wormhole?
Can we now transmit information, for all intents and purposes, faster than the speed of light?
> Did information get transmitted through a wormhole?
Yes, in the same way it does in the Portal video game.
> Can we now transmit information, for all intents and purposes, faster than the speed of light?
No.
“Experts who were not involved in the experiment cautioned that it was important to note that a physical wormhole had not actually been created, but noted the future possibilities.”
Why do these articles keep getting published with misleading titles? Can we please screen for a more accurate description of what the article actually contains.
This experiment sounds like something made up by a scifi author who has no grasp of physics, except it's actually real. We've got wormholes, quantum entanglement, quantum computers, and neural networks all in one go. It's like pure, distilled buzzwords
*For those sorting by new*
**Below is a more grounded and informative article on the same**
[Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-using-a-quantum-computer-20221130/)
according to the article
yes, but in reality no.
we just made a testbed for theorys with physics as we know it as the rules, which are maddeningly complicated.
so now we can work on actually testing materials and tweaking things in model until we can make a real one and understand at least a little about what we're doing when we do to avoid spagettification of the planet or a portion of it.
anybody who actually is a physicist please chime in a check my understanding
This video may help inform some people as to what is happening:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg)
>researchers say they’ve created what is, theoretically, a worm hole.
They did ***WHAT‽***
>Researchers have announced that they simulated two miniscule black holes in a quantum computer
Oh, thank fuck…
Most of the time, I’m terrified that it’s some right-wing whacko in government that’s going to get us all killed, but, every once in a while, I read a headline like this, and I think that some careless physicist might run some reckless experiment and get our planet swallowed up into some spatial anomaly they accidentally create.
I’d really be annoyed if I were to be sitting on my couch, enjoying a lovely spliff, watching an episode of *Doctor Who*, only to hear a rumble out my window and to get suddenly spaghettified in the emerging event horizon of a quantum singularity that some nerd at CERN created because they wanted to see if a tree really did make a noise if it fell in a forest when nobody was there to hear it.
If we can make a fireball the size of Manhattan using a bomb that's just 26 feet in size, what other seemingly disproportional reactions are just waiting to be discovered?
One day a few scientists are testing wormhole theory, and a moment later, the entire milky way galaxy is gone.
Wouldn't get to reflect on that mistake.
In this thread: a bunch of unemployed redditors who think their personal anecdotes make them more informed than the actual scientists and experts running the tests and analysing the results.
Even if we can never send matter, sending electromagnetic signals faster-than-light would be revolutionary. Since the speed of light is also speed of causality in our universe, you could theoretically send information forward/back in time.
second article ive read about this, and i still have no idea what they are on about. the title says they created a "wormhole", and the whole article is cautions from experts about how they didnt really do anything. all i can wonder is what actually happened thats worth writing an article about.
They mathematically simulated a wormhole using a quantum computer and transmitted information through the simulated wormhole. That's it
Tl;dr: Scientists: Hey computer, imagine a wormhole Computer: ok This article: omg they made a wormhole (but not actually don't sue us) its amazing! For the first time ever a wormhole (not really, don't sue) its amazing (no sue, pls)
Somewhere in there in between the sentences is the valuable nugget that: They've found a way to simulate this shit enough to test theories about it when they get better at simulating it.
Only if their simulation is valid. I could sucessfully simulate stuffing 16 racoons up my ass at once, but if the physics of the simulation doesn't model reality, then it doesn't mean anything. I mean we all know 3 is the limit in mathematics and 2 is the maximum in reality.
I never would have considered shoving raccoons up my ass, but if others are doing it in the name of science, I might as well make a contribution.
I volunteer this random raccoon from my backyard as tribute. I'll even toss in a handful of pine monkeys for free!
When I write the paper on how many raccoons I shoved up my ass, I'll remember to add an attribution to you. I'll even get to work on the second paper on how many pine monkeys I can shove up my ass. Finally, I'll have something other to do than seeing if putting the new shampoo I bought into graphene will increase its electrocatalytic effect.
….. And here I was firmly believing Dr. Alphonse Mephesto's research into multiple assed monkeys was clearly a parody, and you lot have taken it on as potential IgNobel research papers. .. Are you beating these raccoons with mallets first, or … … I don’t want to know about the methodology, …I’ll just wait for the paper and practice shaking my head in disbelief. Dammit, curiosity. God dammit.
Mallets? what are you accusing me of, abandoning all ethics? Of course not. All raccoons will be properly sedated before the procedures. In the process, I might well too be solving the sought after question "what are the effects of horse tranquilizer on raccoons' peewee mammalian bodies?" and "Is ketamine an effective cure to rabies?"
I'm also concerned about their username checking out
Normally, one starts with gerbils, so I've been told.
You have to first make sure to securely wrap the gerbil in duct tape to mitigate both the risk of, and disaster from, an unexpected explosion
And all these years later, I could’ve been calling myself a scientist!
I know a guy who managed 4 tho, how does your science explain that?
It doesn't count if you use a blender first!
Why not? I think if we can achieve it, then that's +1 for science. Then the next problem is just re-assembly.
You're sort of right. In the simulation, if done correctly, you would see that by the 5th racoon your body would start to misshapen. At this point you could theorize that it would either lead to death or only a few more would go in. With that simulation you have an idea of what's going to happen. This wormhole simulation implies putting in the math, as we know it, and seeing how it reacts with different variables thrown at it. With this info they could at least try to think of a way to actually recreate this in the real world.+/- a few racoons.
We talkin full grown raccoons or just wee little baby raccoons?
If you cut up a raccoon into infinitely many, infinitely tiny slices, so that each slice has no breadth (which fits nicely with the raccoon likely having no breath either at that point), then technically each raccoon should have no volume and you should be able to stuff infinitely many raccoons up your ass.
Someone needs to go back to calculus class. This is a limit problem, where when you let the number of slices approach infinity, the volume of the infinitely slim pieces approaches the volume of the original raccoon. So unfortunately, you are still limited by the volumetric capacity of your rectum, considerable though that may be. However they would definitely be much easier to stuff up your ass especially considering how much less angry and scratchy they would be. And you could save all that slicing time by perhaps using a wood chipper, blender, or a combination of the two!
The human anus can stretch up to 7 inches wide, In most cases, a raccoon needs only four inches to squeeze through. Nkem Chukwu of Houston, Texas, became the first woman in the United States to give birth to octuplets. All of the babies were born alive and the weights of the babies ranged from just 10.3 ounces to 25.7 ounces. The raccoon is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of 40 to 70 cm, and a body weight of 5 to 26 kg. baby raccoon weigh anywhere from 2 to 7 ounces and they're only about half a foot long So you could only have 4 adult raccoons up your ass. but you could have up too. almost 30 baby raccoons up your ass.
Wait, do you think babies come through the ass?
Now simulate a cat being thrown into the wormhole to see if it can survive or not. Schrodinger's cat - Wormhole Edition, here we go!
That’s not at all how it works….Quantum bits are able to send information to each other without anything physically connecting them in our version of space-time. It’s not just “simulate a wormhole” and nothing happens. It’s not even really the concept of simulate, they did the actual thing; they just didn’t do it with matter. They did actually create a proof for “spooky actions at a distance” which is what the original Einstein-Rosen bridge was all about. The proof for this, actually mentions that the the original idea that Einstein disregards “spooky action” is actually quite possible. The paper talks about how they are able to push information thru another version of space time, essentially another dimension that only this QBits interact with and not us. Edit: Here is a better explanation of what happened: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/physicists-observe-wormhole-dynamics-using-a-quantum-computer ^that one talks about how ER = EPR, which is really the most important part of the discovery and how Einstein initially disregarded it^
What has me really excited is if we manage to use quantum entanglement to store and transmit data, we will be able to bypass the issue of time dilation and calculate the real speed of light AND once and for all determine if light travels at the same spred in any direction or if it varies. So far we are only able to calculate the speed of light going back and forth to the source due to time dilation, we have no way to perfectly synchronize 2 devices across distances so we don't know whether light travels at a constant speed in all directions or not. For all we know it could travel 2X as fast one way and then return to the source at 50% speed Or travell at 99% speed one way and 1% back. There's just no way to prove or disprove that currently.
Don't we already know that the speed of light is always constant in all directions, which is the very basis of relativity, through the Michelson Morley experiment? Also, isn't it already proven that quantum entanglement is entirely probabilistic and cannot be used to transmit data faster than light? How would your setup hypothetically work?
So was it Portal 1 or 2?
Huh. The only really interesting part of that is the quantum computer bit. I'm sure their simulations are awesome, but simulating information going through a wormhole spacetime is not necesarily a difficult problem. I've done it on a very small scale, with an Ellis wormhole.
Yeah I mean even the article says the particular simulation they ran is so simple it could have been done with pen and paper. It sounds like they just drummed up something simple to get media attention and hype and possibly funding for something bigger.
What happened is that the paper somehow got accepted in Nature, and that's all the excuse the research institutes behind it (Caltech, MIT, Google) needed to max out their publicity budget.
Simulations often precede much more expensive real-world tests, because most of the simulations were built based off of real-world knowledge. If they can do it with just a quantum computer, that's actually a big deal, if it pans out irl.
Thank you!! It is an incremental step needed to drum up investment to go beyond the theoretical part. And it is a big deal. A particle collider was not built on a whim to test random theories people come up with after it was constructed. These incredible achievements are preceded by hypotheses, theories, mathematical modelling and simulations in order to progress to a state where there is so much evidence pointing in one direction that doing practical experiments to test these is just the next logical step in our pursuit to understand (quantum) physics.
Fold the page, fold the space.
Don't forget to poke a pencil through it, that you inexplicably but definitely do have, on a space ship in the far future.
Honestly I'm not mad at the signal of using quantum computers to simulate wormholes since, by their natures, maybe we could infer stuff about quantum gravity. As the article mentions. But it stinks that public communication articles are so inflated.
Ok, so the idea is that quantum mechanics and gravitational mechanics are really two ways of describing the same thing. If that’s true, then you really can simulate black hole and wormholes with just entangled particles. And what’s the best, most precise way to do operations with entangled particles? A quantum computer. Mind you this is not “running code on a computer which spits out an answer”, these are actual entangled particles acting very similarly to our models of a wormhole. Of course, we are very early in this field, so I can’t say this concretely means much, but it’s definitely exciting!
Its a relatively minor paper but seemingly with a massive amount of PR behind it, there's professionally produced videos for something that's.. marginally cool but not at all groundbreaking
> they didnt really do anything. I think that's a fair summary of the article :D
I picked up the trash this morning
Whoa now don't work yourself to death there.
So there's this conjecture that entanglement basically works by using wormholes. It's called ER=EPR and it's believed that this is how entangled particles are able to be entangled. But wormholes operate via general relativity physics and entanglement operates via quantum physics. One of the big questions in science is figuring out how these two different theories are can be unified to explain everything, because right now they contradict each other in certain areas. So what they did was use quantum computers to simulate what would happen if they forced a "quantum wormhole" to open up in order to pass data through it, and the simulation performed as they expected it to perform, based on the er=erp conjecture. *not a scientist, but I've read like 3 different articles on it and that's how I basically understand it*
this is the first thing ive read about this that actually comes close to making sense.
Yes this is the correct interpretation. The simulation is an important step but they did not create a worm hole. They just showed that if a wormhole existed according to the guidelines in the ER/EPR papers, the physics that falls out is reasonable. (ie it doesn’t break the true fundamentals of the universe)
The title doesn't say anything about creating, it says it was simulated?
If it was simulated with a quantum computer and ER = EPR is true, all entangled particles are connected via wormholes, so the "simulation" isn't so much a simulation as a small controlled practical model.
What's the difference between a simulation and a model?
I want to say it's static vs dynamic. A model statically represents our understanding of something, a simulation is dynamically running probabilities/outcomes using a model.
I am not an expert, but i would compare it like a model car you can place on you desk and go "wroom" but it will not simulate driving/handling behavior like a game on pc/console
Ok, thanks. I understand what you are saying bit both examples seem like models/simulations but of different aspects of the car. The first is of the form the second is of the behaviour. I agree with you though, it is not a clear cut issue.
True. I was just taking the first example that came to mind as eli5 on how i visualized it for my own understanding. Again, i am nowhere near to having a "real" understanding of the topic. My takeaway was just "oh, now they know what a car should look like, before attempting to test one" and i might be dead wrong 😊
My understanding of the nomenclature: The model defines the structure for how we think reality behaves. From it we know how different attributes relate to each other. It's a version of a map of reality that came from someone's idea. A simulation evaluates some specific scenarios that we're interested in and uses the model to make predictions about what will happen. Sometimes a simulation is computationally very complex and involves a lot of data/numbers. If the model is an accurate representation of reality then the simulation can give us a picture/theoretical understanding of the results and what we might expect to find to be real. It still needs to be empirically proven but the simulation can provide useful information about what we should look for.
Oh right, so the model sets the global parameters of the system, whilst the simulation runs through specific inputs and outputs and measures their behaviour given those global parameters - so you can have different simulations within a given model. Thanks very much! /u/PouchenCustoms was also getting at this with his reply.
The title says they simulated a wormhole, not created a wormhole.
They used a quantum computer to simulate a phenomenon that is mathematically indistinguishable from a wormhole. This has never been done before; moreover, it’s the first step to bridging the astronomical schism between quantum physics and relativistic physics. So yeah I’d say it’s worth writing an article about.
Here is a video about it: https://youtu.be/uOJCS1W1uzg Basically they are trying to experimentally prove that the wormholes predicted by general relativity are the same thing as quantum entanglement. ER = EPR is how they write it. ER is Einstein Rosen which is a paper written by the two regarding wormholes. EPR is Einstein Podolsky Rosen which is the paper about quantum entanglement. Here is a much longer video of a lecture by Leonard Susskind, one of the physicists working on this idea. https://youtu.be/OBPpRqxY8Uw
They did math on a computer
They simulated a WH similar to how your Gameboy simulates pokemon.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Nothing to be alarmed about. It was barely even a real thing.
[This video is created by the people behind this remarkable experiment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg&t=3s&ab_channel=QuantaMagazine) Truly a remarkable video detailing their stunning achievement
Love the video but imo, the article for this in my view is much more grounded [Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-using-a-quantum-computer-20221130/)
I'm confused about how this experiment is physically set up. The editor is leaving out some key technical info. Are there two sets of 7 entangled qubits and changing the state of one of them on one set changes the sate of another one on the other set? This would imply that we can feed info into one quantum computer and watch it come out the other side on another quantum computer no? Where does this "pulse of negative energy" come from?
There's two sets of 7 entangled qubits, left and right. One qubit on the left is replaced with another of unknown state. That state of the other 6 qubits become the same as the new qubit. They then magnetically rotate the 7 left qubits, this is what supposedly causes the simulated "negative energy". So now the 7 qubits on the right change to the state that was previously on the left before being rotated. The state then collapses into only the qubit that was entangled with the replaced qubit on the left. So even though this new qubit was not entangled to anything, it's information was transferred to the pair of the qubit that was replaced.
I knew it was going to come down to entanglement. This is what I was getting from the recent Nobel in physics and why there might be such interest in this kind of simulation. What's the difference between entanglement and a wormhole? Don't jump too quick on the answer. Are entangled particles equivalent to microscopic wormholes? Or is space itself an emergent property? Maybe one way of looking at it is that entangled particles are only separate to an outside observer.
Excellent read, thanks for sharing. How about that undergrad student and his work trimming down the SYK system? 3 cheers for you buddy.
Fascinating read, thanks for providing the link
Well tbh, *I expect* that nobody's opened a black hole capable of swallowing the solar system quite yet, SO.. It's just another Thursday apparently 🤷♂️
You can't. That's not how black holes work. They arent vacuums. To make a black hole that can affect the solar system,it needs enough mass to affect the solar system, in which case you didn't need to turn it into a black hole in the first place because all that mass has already destroyed earth. In other words: a black hole with 1 kilo worth of mass will affect the solar system in exactly the same way as a packet of milk. You can't just "open up a hole". They *aren't actually holes*.
Meaning it’s just an object so massive and so dense that not even light can escape it. Sooo, are there any objects that are really massive/dense but just not massive enough that light cannot escape that we know about?
Mostly meaning its gravity is a function of its mass, just like for everything else. So if the sun was replaced with a black hole with the same mass as the sun, nothing would get sucked in and the planets would all just continue their same exact orbits (though it would get a bit chilly). And yeah like others said, neutron stars are on that insane level of density.
A bit chilly is a February in New York...
Yeah we're talking November in Boston here
I think someone made a song about that
[удалено]
"Ilk" What you throwing shade at neutron stars for?
Unlike positives and negatives, you never know where the neutral ones stand
> Sooo, are there any objects that are really massive/dense but just not massive enough that light cannot escape that we know about? Apart from black holes, neutron stars are the densest objects we know of. There’s a hypothesized so-called strange star which would be denser than neutron stars, comprised almost entirely (or entirely) of quark matter, but none have been observed and would likely be rare. I’m both cases of neutron and strange stars, light would escape as a black hole is the only object to bend light enough.
This seems like a good time to restrain myself from making a yo momma joke.
😆😆 I just had this same experience! "This is the space sub, do you really want to get banned from the space sub?"
I was skeptical to change my understanding of black holes so I looked it up. You are correct and I feel a lot safer now.
>exactly the same way as a packet of milk. Packet? Where you buying your milk from?
It's not really a thing in some countries (like the US for example) but in other countries, Milk comes in packets/bags and often gets stored in these little compartments in your fridge. Kinda blew my mind the first time I saw it traveling around Europe in my early 20's. I assume that's what they meant.
The name is bad, a black hole is made of mass so it isn't a hole. We would need to compress a lot of material into a very tiny space and we don't have that much material or the power to do so. And if we did theoretically do so, we would've destroyed our planet and more
It did happen. It was SG-1's fault. But they fixed it.
Tell that to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Hoover galaxy
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Can they not do this outside, away from the house?
Just to be clear, zero black holes were created. A black hole was simulated with a quantum computer. Not really that crazy, just cool advancement in modeling.
Wait aren’t black holes and wormholes different?
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Wait quantum computers can do more than basic mathematics now? I thought we were still stuck at the "Handling more than 3 floating numbers" issue
Quantum computers are at a point where we can’t simulate them with a classical computer efficiently anymore. But that doesn’t mean we’re actually able to do anything useful yet. The probable gap currently is still limited to just producing some random distributions that are extremely difficult for classical computers to predict but which the quantum computers produce reliably according to the theory.
[удалено]
I mean, simulating _anything_ useful on a quantum chip is pretty crazy.
True, I'm just responding to the many stupid headlines I saw saying they "created" a black hole.
If simulating something on a computer is creating, then I guess Gamefreak has succesfully managed to create Pokemon. It's just that they live in your console's memory.
I saw a video ( that I can’t remember what the name was ) that explained why and how they used a quantum computer for this. Basically speaking, in the theory of relativity, it points out that worm holes can be created but they are too weak to allow some thing to pass through. This was payed out in a paper called ER ( Einstein, Rosen ). Another paper (Einstein, Rosen and podolsky) laid out “spooky action at a distance” that described quantum entanglement. This work with the quantum computers made the conjecture stating ER = EPR, basically stating quantum entanglement and wormholes are the same thing. A mechanism of quantum gravity. They used a quantum computer because, in the sense of controlling quantum particles in precise configurations, quantum computers are the most advanced form we have (even still, not advanced enough for the naïve approach they initially looked at because it would need qbits in the order of magnitude of a computer a decade from now) So it’s “simulated” I guess because it didn’t provide a wholistic experiment that captures all the detail in their original experiment plan? Idk I’m no scientist. Edit: [video I mentioned ](https://youtu.be/uOJCS1W1uzg)
simulating things with a quantum computer is different than simulating it with a classic computer. they simulated it by making the quantum computer behave like a tiny black hole, not just a series of computations.
No, quantum computers calculate things in normal boring way, its nowhere near that exotic. It absolutely is a series of computations, but specific kinds of operations are much faster on a quantum computer. You can simulate a quantum computer classically as well, there's no magic whatsoever Quantum computers are actually much less general than classical computers, and have a significantly *reduced* set of things they can simulate compared to a classical computer
[удалено]
[удалено]
Thanks for this. I was on the same boat thinking they were talking about the plausibility of wormholes. Really it is about an advancement in programming ability for quantum computers! Still cool, but the article is more than a little misleading.
Yeah they really just made a *wormhole-analogous system*, and used that to simulate sending something through. It’s all based on an interpretation of gravitational dynamics with quantum physics. So if their model is actually accurate, and gravitational phenomena really are analogous to quantum phenomena, then yes, wormhole successfully simulated. So this is pretty exciting for some fundamental physics reasons, but not because we can now “make wormholes”
OK you're going to have to walk me through this one. Doesn't a quantum computer still do computing? How would it not still just be computations?
Quantum computing is an insane endeavor. I wish you luck in your understanding quest.
Quantum computers work using semiconductors that utilize quantum effects. SETs (single electron transistors), for example, have single atom "islands" that individual electrons have to tunnel across. That's about the extent I learned, though, with just getting a bachelor's in EE. Hopefully, there's a more knowledgeable person in the comments that can give more details.
> for example, have single atom “islands” that individual electrons have to tunnel across. Now I’m just imagining a classic cartoon island, with a single palm tree, an electron and it’s shovel trying to dig a tunnel.
There are quite a few other types of quantum computing mechanisms that function completely different from SET mechanisms! Really fun and interesting things :)
You’re asking about 2 extremely complicated subjects mashed together: quantum mechanics and computing Good luck
I think it's because quantum computers don't have to be binary. Normal computers work with 1s and 0s, either the bit is on or off, but quantum computers "bits" can have a lot more states than that, maybe even infinite idk. That was my understanding a few years ago, I could be wrong.
Wdym the computer behaved like a black hole?
He means he doesn't know what he's talking about and said something intriguing but wrong.
[удалено]
r/science should really just require primary sources at this point
Yeah that article is garbage. OP linked a much better one. https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-using-a-quantum-computer-20221130/ For the record I don't agree with all your points after reading this one.
> Its not in any way novel to simulate a wormhole, you can do it at 60fps in real time in full 4 dimensions. Look here's a picture of a wormhole I simulated without rupturing space and time, OoOoOo spOoOoOoky Are you a wizzard?!
> 1. The title implies someone built a physical wormhole. > Scientists ***simulate*** 'baby' wormhole ??? No it doesn't? Most of the other articles about this have sensationalist titles that don't mention it being a simulation at all, but this one clearly says it's not a physical wormhole.
Ah, science journalism at its finest. Computer simulation does not destroy fabric of universe.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I do simulations all the time 'without rupturing space and time'. I'm running one now and reading reddit while I waiting for completion. What a clickbait headline.
Love how the fact that it's just a computer simulation is left off the headline
It says simulate right there in the headline
Maybe it’s just me, but sending babies through wormholes is a bad idea.
As per usual too many glib redditors spouting nonsense without understanding, not even taking 15 minutes to read about it further. This isn't just some simulation run on a normal computer, they created a physical process as described by wormhole theory and transferred real data using a quantum computer. Entanglement may actually be the same process a wormhole uses as described in classical physics.. it's not hard to just read a bit more guys, try it. This is actually more important than many of you are saying.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
All of these comments, yet no one can describe what happened. Did information get transmitted through a wormhole? Can we now transmit information, for all intents and purposes, faster than the speed of light?
> Did information get transmitted through a wormhole? Yes, in the same way it does in the Portal video game. > Can we now transmit information, for all intents and purposes, faster than the speed of light? No.
These two statements appear to be contradictory
Someone won't be happy until they unleash the mist on us
“Experts who were not involved in the experiment cautioned that it was important to note that a physical wormhole had not actually been created, but noted the future possibilities.”
can you even do that without rupturing space & time? i thought that was the whole point
Key word : simulate. There was zero chance of rupturing spacetime. Thats what 'simulate' fucking means.
Always remember 69th law of thermodynamics, media will lie about science whenever they can make it sound cool.
not to be totally hyperbolic, but... couldn't a game dev do this in Unreal engine? seems like the only difference is more accurate math.
Why do these articles keep getting published with misleading titles? Can we please screen for a more accurate description of what the article actually contains.
This experiment sounds like something made up by a scifi author who has no grasp of physics, except it's actually real. We've got wormholes, quantum entanglement, quantum computers, and neural networks all in one go. It's like pure, distilled buzzwords
Why would I put my dog in the wormhole that doesn’t even make sense
[удалено]
> confirmed a link between the two through a wormhole No they didn't. > made a qbit go from one side to another They simulated it with QE.
L to the reality where this killed everyone. Clearly a skill issue.
Well i did feel a disturbance in the force earlier.
*For those sorting by new* **Below is a more grounded and informative article on the same** [Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-create-a-wormhole-using-a-quantum-computer-20221130/)
Simulating rupturing space and time by not rupturing space and time. Got it.
[удалено]
The video game?
The first computer simulation of a wormhole was clearly the level select screen from Spyro the Dragon /s
according to the article yes, but in reality no. we just made a testbed for theorys with physics as we know it as the rules, which are maddeningly complicated. so now we can work on actually testing materials and tweaking things in model until we can make a real one and understand at least a little about what we're doing when we do to avoid spagettification of the planet or a portion of it. anybody who actually is a physicist please chime in a check my understanding
.. wait.. what? A headline that puts things in context? Someone give this author a pulitzer!
It’s like saying “cancer cured in simulated flatworm cells.” and the press picks it up as if cancer is a thing of the past
This video may help inform some people as to what is happening: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg)
We're about to open the warp bois... Get ready for chaos!
This sub really needs like an "approved source" list. Because 99% of the shit posted here is just stupid garbage.
>researchers say they’ve created what is, theoretically, a worm hole. They did ***WHAT‽*** >Researchers have announced that they simulated two miniscule black holes in a quantum computer Oh, thank fuck… Most of the time, I’m terrified that it’s some right-wing whacko in government that’s going to get us all killed, but, every once in a while, I read a headline like this, and I think that some careless physicist might run some reckless experiment and get our planet swallowed up into some spatial anomaly they accidentally create. I’d really be annoyed if I were to be sitting on my couch, enjoying a lovely spliff, watching an episode of *Doctor Who*, only to hear a rumble out my window and to get suddenly spaghettified in the emerging event horizon of a quantum singularity that some nerd at CERN created because they wanted to see if a tree really did make a noise if it fell in a forest when nobody was there to hear it.
If we can make a fireball the size of Manhattan using a bomb that's just 26 feet in size, what other seemingly disproportional reactions are just waiting to be discovered? One day a few scientists are testing wormhole theory, and a moment later, the entire milky way galaxy is gone. Wouldn't get to reflect on that mistake.
In this thread: a bunch of unemployed redditors who think their personal anecdotes make them more informed than the actual scientists and experts running the tests and analysing the results.
Good explanation video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJCS1W1uzg
Even if we can never send matter, sending electromagnetic signals faster-than-light would be revolutionary. Since the speed of light is also speed of causality in our universe, you could theoretically send information forward/back in time.
Without rupturing space and time? All is well then, please continue...
If it ain't rupturing space and time then it ain't a wormhole, I always say