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Physics

It may be possible to traverse a wormhole and then send a signal home

When matter falls into a wormhole, the wormhole is expected to collapse – but a probe may be able to send a signal back through before it’s trapped on the other side

By Leah Crane

20 December 2022

Simulations show that a signal could pass through a certain type of wormhole

Rost9/Shutterstock

It may be possible to travel through a wormhole and send a signal back. Models of hypothetical wormholes – bridges that create a shortcut between two distant locations in space-time – have shown that they are extremely fragile and liable to implode if anything falls in, but a pulse of light may be able to outrace that collapse.

at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and two of his students simulated a traversable wormhole to examine what would happen when matter entered it.…

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