Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Some time ago, there was a physical news sensation all over the network: what happened when physicists created a wormhole in a quantum computer?

At present, physics has two pillars to describe all observable phenomena. One is quantum mechanics initiated by Planck, Schrodinger, Bohr and others, and the other is the general theory of relativity initiated by Einstein alone. These two theories are very effective in both of their areas, making verifiable predictions and passing almost all the tests we have put forward for them.

However, more than 100 years later, there is still a fundamental problem between the two theories, that is, the lack of compatibility between them. When we tried to incorporate general relativity into the quantum mechanical model, we got infinity. The holy grail of physics is to unify these two fields into something similar to the theory of quantum gravity, but we haven't done it yet. Einstein himself has been pursuing this holy grail, until the last few days of his life, he was still studying the idea of unity.

In fact, he and his collaborator Nathan Rosen tried to create this unified theory of quantum gravity and published a paper now known as "ER". Together, they developed the concept of a particular type of wormhole called the Einstein-Rosen Bridge: something that creates a hole in the structure of space-time because the theoretical singularity appears in the center of space-time. If there is the same structure in other parts of space, they can be connected so that there is no longer a singularity, but a tube that connects two spacetimes. This is the wormhole.

Now coincidentally, just before the publication of this paper, Einstein, Rosen and another collaborator, Boris Podolski, published the so-called EPR paper. In their paper, they argue that quantum mechanics is incomplete because there is something called quantum entanglement. In this phenomenon, a pair of particles can be produced in a way that their quantum states are related to each other, so measuring the spin behavior of a particle immediately determines the spin of its entangled pair, no matter how far apart they are. The EPR paper argues that this is impossible because it requires information to travel faster than the speed of light, thus breaking the causal relationship.

Now the interesting thing is, what if the wormhole in ER's paper and the entanglement in EPR's paper are theoretically related? What if two distant entangled particles are closely connected through a wormhole and information can be immediately transmitted in space-time through the wormhole? In 1997, physicist Juan Mardahina showed that a system containing two sets of entangled particles was mathematically equivalent to two black holes connected by wormholes. In 2013, Juan Maldasina and physicist Leonard Suskind proposed the ER= EPR conjecture.

Basically, they believe that the wormhole physics described in ER's paper is equivalent to the entanglement physics described in EPR's paper. In other words, the conjecture is that entangled particles are connected through wormholes. So, by creating a configuration of entangled particles, we also create something similar to a wormhole. This is the basis of the paper that claims to use quantum computers to create wormholes in the laboratory. This does not mean that the author creates a physical wormhole in space-time, but uses a quantum computer to manipulate quantum entangled particles in space-time to simulate the behavior of wormholes.

So now, let's see how this experiment is done. According to general relativity, when anything with mass or energy is introduced into a wormhole, its gravitational effect immediately shuts it off. In order to keep the wormhole open and traversable, some form of negative energy or negative mass is needed to provide a force against wormhole collapse to keep the wormhole open.

Negative energy or mass is impossible in classical mechanics, but this is not the case in our quantum systems. By manipulating the electric field to change the spin direction of the qubit, the negative energy can be simulated in the system. Therefore, the propagated electric field can keep the quantum wormhole between the entangled particles open and simulate the negative mass effect needed to keep the real wormhole open in the simulated space.

So all the team needs is a way to set up and manipulate entangled particles, which is an opportunity for quantum computers to use their talents. The researchers created an entangled state between the two sides of the quantum system, simulating a wormhole made up of particles. One group of particles acts as the entrance to the wormhole and the other group acts as the exit of the wormhole. Then let the information enter through the wormhole entrance, and measure that the information comes out from the exit, indicating that it simulates the physics that can pass through the wormhole.

So does this mean that we can one day go through the real wormhole in time and space, from one place to another? Remember, this is a quantum mechanical simulation of a wormhole, not a real wormhole in space-time. They are only mathematically equivalent, and today's real wormhole is still a fantasy.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Vientiane experience (ID:UR4351), author: Eugene Wang

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