Scientists simulated a wormhole by linking quantum particles together
In short: In 1935, Einstein and his colleagues proposed two ideas that seemed to contradict each other: the behavior of massive objects and the strange rules of subatomic particles. Recently, physicists bridged this gap by creating a functional holographic wormhole inside a quantum computer.
The experiment addresses a fundamental rift in physics between General Relativity (the study of the very large) and Quantum Mechanics (the study of the very small). To bridge these, researchers looked back at two landmark papers from 1935. This conflict stems from how gravity interacts with the smallest building blocks of reality. Scientists have long struggled to find a unified theory of quantum gravity that satisfies both frameworks simultaneously.
The first described Einstein-Rosen (ER) bridges—wormholes connecting black holes through spacetime tunnels. The second described EPR pairs—particles linked by quantum entanglement, where information appears to move faster than light, a phenomenon forbidden by relativity. These tunnels are described as tube-like structures connecting singularities in extreme spacetime. Conversely, entanglement was initially viewed by Einstein and Rosen as a sign that quantum mechanics might be an incomplete theory of the universe.
In 1997, Juan Maldacena proposed a revolutionary bridge: the ER = EPR conjecture. This theory suggests that entangled particles are mathematically equivalent to wormholes. If this is true, creating a specific configuration of entangled particles effectively creates a wormhole structure. To test this in a lab, Maria Spiropulu’s team at CalTech used a quantum computer to simulate these conditions, using 7 qubits to form the entrance and exit of the The CalTech team utilized two additional maximally entangled qubits to serve as a probe and a reference point. By swapping the probe with a particle at the entrance, they scattered information across the first set of particles. To prevent gravitational collapse, they manipulated electrical fields to simulate negative energy. Finally, they successfully moved the scrambled data to the exit where it emerged unscrambled.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: How Scientists Created a "Wormhole" in a LAB? Full Explanation
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