How to detect wormholes

Wormholes serve as a tunnel connecting two different times or places within the universe, or another universe altogether. That's the theory, but they may not actually exist. Although they have a very prominent place in the world of science fiction and also in scientific research, they have not yet been confirmed.

According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, wormholes can exist.

What if they really existed? A team of astronomers from the University of Buffalo (USA) and the University of Yangzhou (China) have developed a way to detect wormholes in space; specifically, a way for us to see them.

Experts hope to detect a wormhole around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A*. 

"If you have two stars, one on either side of the wormhole, the star on our side should feel the gravitational influence of the star on the other side," explained Dejan Stojkovic, a cosmologist 

These cosmic shortcuts require extreme deformation of space-time, which in turn depends on very powerful gravitational forces. Therefore, Sagittarius A*, the giant of four million solar masses in our own Milky Way, maybe a good place to start looking.

"If you map the expected orbit of a star around Sagittarius A*, you should see deviations from that orbit if there is a wormhole there with a star on the other side," the expert said.

Can we then detect the presence of a wormhole?

According to Stojkovic, collecting data on the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way for some time or developing techniques to track its movement more precisely would make such a determination possible. He claims that these advances are not far off and could occur within a decade or two.

However, the expert warns that while the new method could be used to detect a wormhole, it will not strictly prove its presence.

"When we achieve the necessary accuracy in observations, we will be able to say that a wormhole is the most likely explanation if we detect disturbances in S2's orbit," explains Stojkovic. "But we cannot say, 'Yes, this is definitely a wormhole. There could be some other explanation, something else that disturbs the movement of the star.

Reference: Observing a wormhole. De-Chang Dai, Dejan Stojkovic. Physical Review D, Vol. 100, Iss. 8 - 15 October 2019. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.100.083513