Wormholes were first conceived of by Albert Einstein and his fellow physicist Nathan Rosen in 1935, who argued that general relativity allowed for a ‘bridge’ between two black holes. At the same time, Einstein and Rosen, working with their colleague Boris Podolsky, questioned the quantum mechanics view of reality via a paradox that later researchers dubbed ‘entanglement’. These two ideas were brought together in 2013, when Leonard Susskind at Stanford and Juan Malcadena at Princeton argued that wormholes and entanglement are, in fact, the same thing. Three years later, Daniel Jafferis at Harvard and his graduate student Ping Gao proposed a way to traverse a wormhole. This idea was validated this year when a team of physicists led by Maria Spiropulu of the California Institute of Technology built a small-scale wormhole inside a quantum computer. Their experiment was a major breakthrough – the culmination of creative experimentation, emerging quantum computing technology and more than a century of speculation and research. And, as this short documentary from Quanta Magazine explores, in strengthening a link between black holes and quantum entanglement, it may have marked a massive step forward in the quest to bridge the worlds of general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Video by Quanta Magazine
Director: Emily Buder
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Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
12 minutes
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Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
11 minutes
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Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
34 minutes
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Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
4 minutes
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Biography and memoir
Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act
13 minutes
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Engineering
A close-up look at electronic paper reveals its exquisite patterns – and limitations
9 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
What’s this buzz about bees having culture? Inside a groundbreaking experiment
8 minutes
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Earth science and climate
The only man permitted in Bhutan’s sacred mountains chronicles humanity’s impact
22 minutes
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Cosmology
The Indian astronomer whose innovative work on black holes was mocked at Cambridge
13 minutes