Gravitational memory makes wormholes more stable ⚡ экспресс
Quantum forces might power wormholes — tunnels in spacetime. Scientists added a 'gravitational memory' effect: just as a mattress remembers the imprint of a body, so the vacuum retains the imprint of past gravitational waves. This relaxes the need for exotic matter and changes the throat's shape. Could such memory make wormholes more stable?
Wormholes — tunnels through curved spacetime, allowed by general relativity. To be stable, they need repulsive energy — the kind that pushes apart rather than attracts. A source can be the Casimir effect, discovered by Hendrik Casimir: two plates in a vacuum are drawn together as if the space between them pushes them outward.
A gravitational wave passing through a wormhole leaves behind a strain — gravitational memory: a trace that doesn't fade away. Inside the tunnel, this trace adds ordinary energy to the repulsive kind, blending them. Near the throat, the repulsion is stronger, while along the sides the tunnel is held more gently — the wormhole becomes stable.
Recalculating the shape, the authors showed: such a wormhole casts a shadow like a black hole, precisely matching the silhouette of M87* measured by the Event Horizon Telescope. A surprise: if several waves have passed, the imprints stack up, and the shadow may quiver. Perhaps telescopes are already seeing these objects, not yet distinguishing them from black holes.
🎯 The Casimir effect was predicted by Hendrik Casimir in 1948 over a cup of coffee while discussing the properties of the vacuum.
🎬 The wormhole as a portal is familiar from the movie Interstellar, where the scientific basis was laid by [scientist:Kip Thorne]Kip Thorne[/scientist].