Can astronauts survive a journey through a space-time tunnel?

In the film Interstellar, already so favored by critics and spectators, astronauts in search of salvation for mankind are sent straight to a space-time tunnel (p-to tunnel), which appeared very mysteriously and in a timely manner in the vicinity of Saturn. The tunnel led the spacecraft to a distant galaxy , where the characters have the chance to find a planet suitable for colonization. In creating the wormhole , Nolan relied on the advice of Professor Kip Thorn (Kip Thorne), an astrophysicist, who helped Carl Sagan in his time to describe the “wormhole” for his story, Contact . This phenomenon in the film is beautifully visualized and has already been named by many as the most accurate depiction of the wormhole in cinema. But there is one aspect that is not covered in the film: how to survive on such a journey?

History reference

The hypothesis about the existence in the universe of entry points to the tunnels - wormholes - was first put forward by Albert Einstein and his assistant Nathan Rosen. They tried to solve the Einstein equations for the general theory of relativity in order to arrive at a purely mathematical model of the whole universe, including gravity and elementary particles. In the process of work, they described the space as two parallel planes connected by “bridges”, which we refer to particles.
')
Another physicist, Ludwig Flamm, regardless of them, suggested the existence of such jumpers in 1916 in his solution of the Einstein equations. Unfortunately, the “theory of everything” could not be created, since these supposed jumpers did not behave quite like real particles. But Einstein and Rosen in a publication from 1935 popularized the very idea of ​​the existence of tunnels through space-time, which made other scientists seriously think about this issue.

Black hole

The term “wormhole” itself was proposed in the 1960s by the physicist John Wheeler, when he studied the Einstein-Rosen model. He compared our three-dimensional space with the surface of an apple. In this apple, the worm gnaws the course, and you can either get to the opposite side on the surface of the apple, or do it much faster, but through the wormhole, through. So cosmic p-in tunnels, theoretically, can allow instantly to get into incredibly distant corners of the Universe, to which the light travels "in a straight line" for thousands and even millions of years.

Wheeler noted that the description of the entrances to the tunnel is well suited to the description of an object known as the Schwarzschild black hole - a “simplest” black hole that does not have an electric charge and does not rotate. Can a black hole be also an entrance to a tunnel? From the point of view of mathematics, maybe. But no one can survive at the entrance to such a wormhole.

According to the Schwarzschild model, a black hole is a singularity, a neutral, fixed sphere with infinite density. Wheeler figured out what could happen if a wormhole formed in the tissue of space-time, connecting two singularities in different parts of the universe. Such a tunnel is extremely unstable, after its formation it shrinks and breaks. The process of formation and compression occurs so quickly that even the light does not have time to pass from one end of the tunnel to the other. Therefore, a ship that tries to fly through such a n-in tunnel will be inside the singularity and instantly destroyed by immeasurable gravitational forces.

Alternative

According to another theory, the Kerr rotating black hole can be the entrance to a tunnel. The singularity inside such a black hole has the shape of a ring, not a sphere, and some models allow the hypothetical ship to survive if it passes exactly through the center of the ring. However, Thorn raised a number of objections to this. In 1987, he wrote that an extremely unstable region called the Cauchy horizon was present in the Kerr wormhole. Mathematicians say that as soon as anything, including the light, tries to cross this horizon, the tunnel will collapse. Even if somehow stabilizing the wormhole, then quantum theory tells us that everything inside will be filled with high-energy particles. In other words, the ship will instantly burn.

However, physicists are still carrying out the connection between the classical theory of gravity and the quantum world using rather vague mathematical calculations. From the point of view of physicists Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind from Stanford, wormholes can be something like a physical embodiment of entanglement when quantum objects are connected to each other regardless of the distance between them.

A large number of experiments tell us that quantum entanglement really exists, and it has even been used to protect network communications , for example, when conducting banking transactions. According to Maldasena and Susskind, a large amount of quantum entanglement changes the geometry of space-time and can become a catalyst for the formation of wormholes in the form of " entangled black holes ." But these are not interstellar tunnels. In such wormholes it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light.

So black holes may not be a suitable option for a wormhole. Maybe they don't exist at all. According to Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, there is no theory that would reliably unify the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. We do not know whether there are other structures that can be entrances to the n-in tunnels.

Ray of hope

In 1987, Thorne wrote that any wormhole, consistent with the general theory of relativity, would collapse, unless in the open state it was supported by the so-called “exotic matter” with negative energy. Thorne argued that the existence of this matter is confirmed by experiments showing how quantum fluctuations in a vacuum, apparently, create negative pressure between two mirrors located very close to each other. According to Avi Loeb, our search for dark matter can also lead to confirmation of the existence of exotic matter:

Over time, galaxies fly away at ever increasing speed, as if repulsive gravity is acting on them. This accelerating expansion of the Universe can be explained by the fact that our space is filled with a substance with negative pressure, just like the matter necessary for the existence of wormholes. "

However, this goal requires too much exotic matter, and only a very highly developed civilization could hope to implement such a project.

However, other physicists do not agree with the foregoing. Maldacena says:

I believe that a stable wormhole, through which you can travel, should be extremely tortuous and possibly inappropriate to the known physical laws.

Sabina Hossenfelder of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Sweden, more skeptical:

We have absolutely no evidence of the existence of wormholes. Probably, they can not exist, and even if it were not so, they would be extremely unstable.

Even if exotic matter existed, traveling through it would not be pleasant. Its impact on the ship and the astronauts would depend on the curvature of space-time around the wormhole, and the energy density inside it. It's like a black hole: too strong tidal forces will tear the ship apart into tiny particles.

Thorn believes it is unlikely in nature there are n-in tunnels through which we will be able to travel.

Even if they exist, I very much doubt that they are formed in the astrophysical Universe. "