Scientists have devised a quantum experiment that allows them to study the dynamics of wormholes, theoretical spacetime entities that first emerged from Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of gravity, or general relativity.
Rather than creating an actual wormhole, a rip in time and space that is theorized to form a bridge between one distant region of space with another, the team built a wormhole model to run on a quantum processor. This allowed them to investigate the physics of wormholes and their potential connection to so-called 'quantum gravity.'
"We found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole yet is sufficiently small to implement on today's quantum hardware," U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science research program Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics (QCCFP) principal investigator Maria Spiropulu, said in a statement (opens in new tab). "This work constitutes a step toward a larger program of testing quantum gravity physics using a quantum computer."
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