“Physics is often stranger than science fiction, and I think science fiction takes its cues from physics: higher dimensions, wormholes, the warping of space and time, stuff like that.”
—Dr. Michio Kaku
In a historic scientific breakthrough, researchers from the California Institute Of Technology (Caltech) and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have harnessed the power of a quantum computer and the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model—a framework originally designed to investigate black hole physics—to simulate a wormhole. This marks the first time scientists have observed the dynamics of a wormhole in a quantum system and successfully sent a packet of quantum information intact from one end of the simulated tunnel to the other.
The experiment, conducted on Google’s Sycamore quantum processor, was led by Maria Spiropulu of Caltech. The team implemented a streamlined version of the SYK model, which is renowned for its ability to mimic the complex, strongly interacting quantum systems found at the heart of black holes. By entangling two SYK models, the researchers simulated a traversable wormhole and demonstrated quantum teleportation across it.
“We showed that if the wormhole is propped open long enough by negative energy shockwaves, a causal path is established between the two quantum systems. The qubit inserted into one system is indeed the same that appears on the other system,” explains Maria Spiropulu, principal investigator of the project.
This research is deeply rooted in the holographic principle, a concept in quantum gravity that suggests the information within a volume of space can be encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary.
The Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence is the most famous example of this holographic duality. The SYK model, with its many-body interactions, provides a new laboratory realization of this duality.
To make the experiment feasible, the team used machine learning to simplify the SYK model, preserving its gravitational properties while reducing it to just a few key interactions. This allowed them to run the simulation on only nine qubits, proving that even a small quantum computer can offer valuable insights into quantum gravity.
The origins of this field trace back to the late 20th century, when physicists began tackling the challenge of unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics. The holographic principle was first proposed by Gerard ’t Hooft in 1993 and further developed by Leonard Susskind, who coined the term itself. The SYK model, developed by Subir Sachdev, Jinwu Ye, and Alexei Kitaev, has since become a cornerstone for studying quantum gravity and black hole physics.
While this experiment does not create physical wormholes, it offers a profound demonstration of how quantum entanglement might mimic the behavior of space-time tunnels. As quantum computers become more powerful and reliable, such simulations could help bridge the gap between Einstein’s general relativity and quantum mechanics, potentially leading to new technologies for secure communication and a deeper understanding of the universe.
The findings were published in two major peer-reviewed journals. The foundational experimental work appeared in Nature under the title “Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor.” Supporting theoretical developments and broader implications have been discussed in journals such as Physical Review Letters and Journal of High Energy Physics in articles like “Quantum Gravity in the Lab: Quantum Simulation of a Minimal AdS/CFT Model” and “Holographic Duality in Quantum Many-Body Systems.”
As noted in the team’s publication in Nature: “By interrogating a two-dimensional gravity dual system, our work represents a step towards a program for studying quantum gravity in the laboratory. Future developments will require improved hardware scalability and performance as well as theoretical developments including higher-dimensional quantum gravity duals.”
This work has been rigorously peer-reviewed and published in leading scientific journals, ensuring its credibility and impact. The experiment not only advances our understanding of quantum gravity but also highlights the potential of quantum computing to explore the fundamental questions at the heart of reality.
(Michael de la Force, LIKE® Magazine, 6.22.2025)
Source post: https://facebook.com/674873899/posts/pfbid02vhXq1CMFiaM3oZ4yKhDmHMYSPpiNDbmdbtQfEghYxD6bozyswEJPvmbRU11mjWdul/