Are Colliding Wormholes the Real Producers of Gravitational Waves? (Study)

COUNCIL CHRONICLE – Probably the biggest scientific breakthrough in astronomy was the discovery of gravitational waves. These waves are ripples in space-time produced by colliding black holes.

However, a recent study suggests the origin of these waves might be a lot more interesting. They said the explanation could be a lot crazier than that, and gravitational waves might come from colliding wormholes.

 

Black Holes ‘Steal’ Information at Their Edge

 

Scientists managed to detect and then observe gravitational waves thanks to two observatories in US and Italy. These observatories, LIGO and VIRGO, offered the most widely accepted explanation regarding these waves. This explanation claims they are a direct result of colliding black holes or neutron stars.

However, it’s hard to establish a theory when it comes to black holes. So far, researchers couldn’t directly observe such formations. To predict their existence, researchers took other observations to build simulations of how black holes should behave. Once they discovered gravitational waves, they assumed they were related to black holes as well, but no one could confirm this.

 

Colliding Wormholes Might Produce Gravitational Wave Echoes

 

There’s one more problem with black holes in this equation. The theory says these formations have an edge that doesn’t allow anything to pass beyond it.

This is a bit conflicting with traditional quantum mechanics principles, as they claim no information can simply be lost. Therefore, researchers suggested colliding wormholes as an alternative explanation for gravitational waves.

These wormholes do not have an edge, so they would not extinguish a gravitational wave completely but produce echoes. Now, there’s one thing left to do to find out the real explanation. Researchers are going to look for gravitational echoes and see if they originate from colliding wormholes or black holes.

Researchers have tried to pick up such echoes, but their attempts haven’t been successful. Now, they came up with a new model to predict the actual origin of gravitational waves. By performing further observations with LIGO and VIRGO, they will offer the evidence we need to decode the existence of these waves.

The study on gravitational waves and colliding wormholes was published in the journal Physical Review D.

 

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