Unexplained radiation

Scientists at the Institute of Physics in Opava have been evaluating the oscillations of X-rays around black holes over the past few years, which has helped determine the mass of one of the supermassive holes. A detailed analysis of this radiation shows that for the most massive objects observed, the observed frequencies of oscillations of this radiation differ significantly from what scientists assume based on models that correspond very well with the same type of radiation oscillations in observed black holes formed from massive stars.

"We observe binary oscillations that manifest themselves in disks of matter rotating around black holes. Radiation from these accretion disks escapes very close to the so-called event horizon, the no-return zone. Interestingly, the double oscillations take place at frequencies that have an integer ratio, most often 3:2," says Jaroslav Vrba from the Institute of Physics in Opava, co-author of one of the scientific papers, describing the very interesting properties of this radiation. He adds that such radiation can be explained well for small black holes, so-called microquasars, but for larger black holes this explanation is not entirely accurate. So alternative types of objects are being sought to which this physical model based on the motion of glowing hot matter around a black hole would be applicable, and one very likely explanation is the appearance of a wormhole.

Wormholes without the exotic substance?

The term "wormhole" refers to a hypothetical shortcut between two places in curved spacetime. It was first described by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Nathan Rosen (1909-1995) in a scientific paper in 1935. It is therefore also known professionally as the "Einstein-Rosen bridge". But is it at all possible that these so far only theoretically described shortcuts in the universe, or gateways to parallel universes, are real cosmic objects? Scientists from the University of Opava have already figured out how to detect them optically, and the newly studied mysterious radiation could be another clue to their detection. In collaboration with foreign scientists from Russia and Brazil, the Opava physicists (Konoplya, Churilova, Stuchlik and Zhidenko) also figured out that the existence of a stable wormhole does not require any exotic, as yet undiscovered substances.

"For many years, we thought that an exotic substance whose properties defy common experience - a substance with repulsive (negative) gravity - was needed to keep the wormhole's throat stable. But we thought of the wormhole as the result of the extremely strong gravitational effects described by alternative gravity. Our more recent studies, however, take into account that wormholes also have an electric charge and a magnetic field, and it is the consideration of a strong electromagnetic field that offers us the existence of stable wormholes in the presence of common forms of matter in the universe - that is, the stuff that stars, planets and even us are made of," says Prof. Zdeněk Stuchlík, co-author of a new scientific paper on wormholes. He adds that the new results are based on solutions found for the combination of Einstein's equations describing gravity with the equations describing electromagnetic fields and charged elementary particles, developed by legendary scientists James Maxwell (1831-1879) and Paul Dirac (1902-1984).

A shortcut in space or to a parallel universe?

Naturally, the question of what the wormhole actually connects is raised. Theoretically, a wormhole could be not only a shortcut connecting two distant places in one universe, but even a link between two different universes. "If we go purely by scientific modelling, it turns out that a wormhole can have a so-called symmetric or asymmetric geometry. In the case of the symmetric one, it is a link between two points in our universe. In the other, more interesting case, there may be a parallel universe at the other end of the bridge. Until now, we thought we couldn't observe a parallel universe for physical reasons, because information from it must travel at superluminal speeds - which we know are unattainable by default. The new models we are discussing, which take into account both gravity and electromagnetic fields, show that an asymmetric wormhole could be just the bridge to a universe with different properties, for example in the sense of string theories," explains Stuchlík. He adds, however, that in such a parallel universe we would not find our other selves living a different life (as described by the multiverse theory), it would be a completely independent universe with only slightly different physical properties of matter compared to our universe.

So the new studies raise the possibility of stable wormholes forming from building blocks that are commonly available in the Universe. Could such a wormhole be created artificially, for example in a laboratory? "Unfortunately, we do not yet have enough energy to create such a wormhole in the laboratory on Earth: the construction of such objects requires energies that are located in the centres of large galaxies. We're talking about energy about 100 billion times greater than that of our Sun," Stuchlik concludes.

Contact deails and additional information:

prof. RNDr. Zdenek Stuchlik, CSc.

Mgr. Jaroslav Vrba, Ph.D.

Mgr. Petr Horalek

doc. RNDr. Gabriel Török, Ph.D.

Scientifics papers: