Written by Joshua Ng
Edited by Angus Yip
(Ghose, "Magnetic Wormhole Created in Lab", 2015)
Wormholes are visualized as cosmic “tunnels” that connect two ends of separate points through spacetime. They are solutions to the field equations in Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Wormholes have attracted discussions related to time travel and space travel throughout the past. Despite its extensive research and study over the years, and the fact that it is deemed the valid solution to Einstein’s theory of relativity, there is no experimental evidence that wormholes exist, meaning that everything scientists know about wormholes is theoretical. (“FOLLOW-UP: What Exactly Is a ‘Wormhole’? Have Wormholes Been Proven to Exist or Are They Still Theoretical?”, 1997)
Even though wormholes are popularized in theoretical physics and science fiction, such as Star Trek, Interstellar, Stargate, etc., scientists in the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain managed to create the first ever magnetic wormhole back in 2015 (“Physicists Create a Magnetic Wormhole for the First Time”, n.d.). However, this isn’t the kind of gravitational wormhole you would see on television that allows people to travel rapidly across space. This would require a great amount of gravitational energy, which humans have yet to figure out a way to generate even with modern-day technology. What the scientists created was essentially a wormhole that allowed a magnetic field to travel from one point to another invisibly - magnetically undetectable. (“Physicists Create a Magnetic Wormhole in the Lab”, 2015)
The scientists utilized metamaterials (engineered materials with properties that cant be found in any natural materials) and metasurfaces (artificial sheet materials with sub-wavelength thickness) to create the wormhole tunnel. The wormhole allows the magnetic field of a source, such as an electromagnet, to travel through to the other end of the tunnel as a magnetic monopole, a magnet with only a pole. However, monopoles do not exist in real life, which leads researchers to believe that the magnetic field was traveling through a dimension outside of the conventional three. (“Physicists Create a Magnetic Wormhole for the First Time”, n.d.)
Sources:
“FOLLOW-UP: What Exactly Is a ‘Wormhole’? Have Wormholes Been Proven to Exist or Are They Still Theoretical?” Scientific American, 15 Sept. 1997, www.scientificamerican.com/article/follow-up-what-exactly-is/
MacDonald, Fiona. “A Magnetic ‘Wormhole’ That Connects Two Regions of Space Was Created in the Lab.” ScienceAlert, www.sciencealert.com/magnetic-wormhole-that-connects-two-regions-of-space-has-been-created.
“Physicists Create a Magnetic Wormhole in the Lab.” Physics World, 20 Aug. 2015, physicsworld.com/a/physicists-create-a-magnetic-wormhole-in-the-lab/
“Physicists Create a Magnetic Wormhole for the First Time.” Physicists Create a Magnetic Wormhole for the First Time, interfactsif.blogspot.com/2021/11/physicists-create-magnetic-wormhole-for.html.
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