Moving faster than the speed of light might be one way to traverse the universe within a single human lifespan, but we might be able to do it in a single second — traversing unfathomable distances at once through a physical wormhole.
And, it turns out humans might actually survive the journey, according to several recent studies published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Most science-savvy people have a casual familiarity with wormholes thanks to science fiction — where wormholes connect distant corners of the galaxy through an interdimensional portal that bends the fabric of space-time. But, as you might guess, no one has actually seen one.
Worse still — the hypothetical phenomena face theoretical issues in physics like gravitational collapse. Put simply, if wormholes existed, conventional matter would plug the bottle-neck hole in space — blocking all transit from one aperture to another. Although some theorists think exotic matter could be used to pry such cosmic gates open.
However, according to Jose Blázquez-Salcedo of the Complutense University of Madrid (and colleagues), we might be able to do it without exotic matter. The team of researchers conceive of matter as composed of fermions — the consensus on which holds them as a fundamental unit of matter.
If we can change the charge and mass of fermions, we might create a traversable wormhole, argued Blázquez-Salcedo in his study. But this could only work if the ratio of total charge to total mass inside the wormhole is larger than another (and perhaps more haunting) theoretical limit https://interestingengineering.com/cosmic-explosion-revealed-black-hole-birth">determined by black holes.
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