Microscopic wormholes, constantly being born from the vacuum of space due to subtle quantum effects, may be causing the accelerated expansion of the universe, scientists say.
If the findings are confirmed by experiments and observations, wormholes could become a valuable source of information about quantum gravity. Quantum gravity is a unifying theory of the fundamental forces of the universe, often considered an unattainable dream of theoretical physics.
Numerous astronomical observations show that our universe is expanding at an increasing rate. Although Einstein’s theory of general relativity states that if the universe only has particles and radiation that we know, such a behavior of the fabric of space is impossible.
To reconcile observations of the universe’s expansion with Einstein’s theory, scientists have proposed that space is full of mysterious entities that cannot be detected by ground-based or space-based experiments. This mysterious substance, called dark energy, interacts very weakly with other types of matter and fields, and there is currently no reliable information about its structure or origin.
In a study published in April in the journal Physical Review D, researchers proposed a new candidate for dark energy: “subatomic-sized wormholes, or tiny tunnels that connect different parts of space.”
According to the authors, microscopic types of wormholes continuously appear and disappear in the vacuum of space due to quantum effects. This phenomenon is similar to how particles are produced near the event horizon of black holes (which leads to Hawking radiation) or how electron-positron pairs are produced by a strong magnetic field (known as the Schwinger effect). However, the creation of these wormholes is somewhat different from the aforementioned phenomena, because their mathematical description requires the consideration of quantum effects in gravity; A very complex task that is not fully understood.
The existence of the aforementioned problems in calculating the phenomena of quantum gravity made the authors unable to accurately obtain the birth rate of wormholes. Although they used an approach known as Euclidean quantum gravity They showed that if about 10 billion wormholes formed spontaneously every second per cubic centimeter, the resulting energy would be enough to explain the observed rate of expansion of the universe at the present time.
The researchers’ analysis showed that their model of dark energy is observationally better than the well-known theory of the Standard Model of Cosmology, which states that dark energy has a time-independent energy density.
According to the authors, their model shows that dark energy can change over time, which is a big advantage because recent observations show that the rate of expansion of the universe in recent times is different from the rate of expansion of the universe in the early universe.
Regardless of the success rate of the researchers’ new model in explaining the general characteristics of dark energy, the validity of any physical theory must be tested with experimental data, and currently this theory cannot be tested.
In the future, more accurate space experiments and observations could help astronomers determine the universe’s expansion rate with greater precision and measure other observable manifestations of dark energy. This could enable researchers to test whether the proposed new model of dark energy is correct. Meanwhile, the authors of the paper intend to improve their theoretical analysis and are working on a model that calculates the rate of wormhole formation.
