Welcome back. Researchers are one step closer to making science fiction a reality. Space ships have traveled through wormholes in movies like Star Wars, Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Interstellar, but now scientists at Caltech say they have simulated a baby wormhole and even transmitted a message

through it. Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi joins me live now for more on this. Hakeem, I love our chats, uh, because I need your help here. Help us lay people out, okay? Pretend you're talking to a five-year-old and explain to me what is

a wormhole and why is this so important? Thank you for having me. I love talking to you as well. So it's all about space and time and our understanding of it. So Albert Einstein and his pal Rosen showed us that if I have two points in space,

say from here to here, and I want to travel from one to the other, I have to go this entire distance. But the thing that Albert Einstein taught us is that space is like a malleable fabric, right? And so if you can bend it under the right

conditions, then traveling from here to here means I don't have to go as far and I can go through a little hole and go boom, I made it, I'm there, right? And that's and that's what we see in our science fiction. So imagine you're in a

room and you're trying to get from one wall to the opposite wall, you could walk across the carpet or you could warp it, right? You could bring the carpet to you, step across the curved carpet, and then let it unfold behind you. That's how warp drive works, but what we're talking

about here is a wormhole so a wormhole in reality is something that the laws of physics allow and if you have enough stuff in space you can create a black hole and under certain conditions two black holes can combine to create this shortcut through space-time and so what

these researchers have done is attempted to build one inside of a computer but not just any computer a quantum computer doing this right I did I'm attempting to make my own here with a little piece of paper I don't think I don't think I've

known you quite correctly uh close enough it's the hole Hakeem the scientists say that they simulated a baby wormhole so how far is that from creating something that we could actually see used in the real world well so what they've done is a very very

basic simulation one of the problems that they have is that the quantum computers today just don't have enough power to simulate actual reality so what they did is what we call a holographic type of simulation so with a hologram you can take something that say

two-dimensional and make it appear three-dimensional so what they did is they took a very simplified universe one-dimensional and created this two-dimensional black hole so what do they mean by black hole so if I take some matter and throw it into a real life black hole all the information of

what that matter is gets scrambled up okay so what they have is one simulated black hole and the second simulated black hole they put information what they call a qubit into one it gets all scrambled up and all the information is destroyed but then it pops out of the

other wormhole in order in sequence just like they put it in, and the key thing about this I said they use a quantum computer is because real-life black holes are unstable. You throw any matter in, the thing closes on, and you can't traverse from one location to another. So what

they did for this is in the quantum realm, which quantum computers allow you to have negative energies. So in the black hole, when the wormhole attempts to close, you hit it with negative energy, it keeps it open, and then the information can pass. So I know it's a lot, but that's

what they did there. There's a lot, that part I got, that part I understood. It's definitely a lot. Hakima Lucia, I have so many more questions, but we are out of time. We will have to have you back. Thank you as always. Thank you. Hi everyone, George Stephanopoulos here.

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Scientists at Cal Tech develop 'baby wormhole' l ABCNL

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Introduction to Wormholes and Caltech's Simulation

Researchers simulated a wormhole and transmitted a message through it.

A wormhole is explained as a shortcut through space-time, bending space to shorten distances.

Einstein's theory of space as a malleable fabric is referenced.

The simulation was performed using a quantum computer.

Details of the Simulation and its Limitations

The simulation was a basic one, limited by the power of current quantum computers.

A holographic type of simulation was used, simplifying the universe to one dimension.

The simulation involved two simulated black holes, and information was transmitted between them.

Information was scrambled in one black hole and then reappeared in order in the other.

The Role of Quantum Computing and Negative Energy

Real-life black holes are unstable, but quantum computers allow for negative energy.

Negative energy keeps the wormhole open, allowing information to pass through.