Scientists Are Trying to Make a Traversable Quantum Wormhole

One of the biggest hurdles humanity has to overcome in the ever-expanding search of the cosmos is the time it takes to travel any meaningful distance in space. The closest planet to Earth on any given day is Venus, and it'd take humans roughly five months to get to the planet traveling at speeds safe to those on board. Should scientists find a way to effectively teleport across the galaxy, one would think it may be easier studying celestial events, bodies, and other such cosmological ideas. As it turns out, scientists not only think the idea of traversable wormholes is possible, but a select group of astronomers hope to create one.

The latest comes from a new study published by Hatim Salih, a quantum physicist who recently presented a roadmap to traveling long distances across space in the blink of an eye. "Imagine if someone's consciousness, like a strong AI, is copied into a quantum object," Salih told VICE about his studies. "If you counterport each one the qubits, transport them from one place to another—and if this thing has a subjective experience—then it possibly could tell you what it feels like to go through a wormhole."

Sounds like it's ripped straight out of a sci-fi movie, right? Believe it or not, Salih thinks building the technology required to create such a wormhole is already available. In fact, he hopes to build it sooner rather than later. "The key thing is it uses current technology and currently available components," Salid added. "The hope is that within the next three to four years, we will have built this thing.

Traveling the wormhole would effectively be like teleportation. Given quantum particles have been proven to entangle themselves with other particles across space, the goal would be to somehow project light into these particles that would allow scientists to reconstruct information to send between the two particles in question.

"Counterportation gives you the end goal of the object being reconstituted across space, but we can verify that nothing has passed," the physicist concluded. "This is key for other important considerations or consequences, because if we can strictly say nothing has passed, then we can examine some questions in physics, for example, afresh in a different light."

See you soon, Coruscant.

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