Echo in a Wormhole ⚡ экспресс
Scientists investigated how waves (scalar perturbations) behave inside a traversable wormhole—a tunnel in spacetime. It turned out that the tunnel walls act like mirrors, reflecting waves and creating echoes. The more complex the wave shape, the louder and longer the echo is heard. Imagine if you shouted into such a tunnel, what would you hear in response?
A wormhole is a tunnel that pierces through curved space and connects distant regions of the Universe. Recently, Juan Maldacena and his colleagues proposed a working model of such a hole based on a special combination of spatial curvature and quantum particles. Physicists wanted to find out what an observer would hear if they sent a signal into such a tunnel.
It turned out that the wormhole acts like an echo chamber: its throat is sandwiched between two near-black holes—regions with monstrous gravity. These regions act as mirrored walls. A wave that gets inside bounces between them, each bounce producing a new, weaker burst—an echo. The more twisted the wave (the greater its angular momentum), the higher the gravitational barriers become, and the longer the sequence of echoes rings out. A simple, untwisted wave slips through almost without an echo.
This echo pattern is unique: ordinary black holes swallow the signal immediately, without repetition. If astronomers ever detect similar series of gravitational waves or other pulses, it would be a strong hint of wormholes. Curiously, even gravitational tremors passing through the Earth right now could echo in the same way if there were a traversable tunnel nearby.
🎯 The echo from a wormhole resembles the famous 'whispering gallery' in St. Paul's Cathedral: sound, reflecting off curved walls, repeats many times at the other end.
🎬 In the movie 'Interstellar,' the wormhole is a bridge to another galaxy. Now scientists have shown that a real wormhole could reveal itself through a series of echo signals—like a cosmic sonar.