Scientists May Have Figured Out How To Find Wormholes (If They Exist) – SlashGear

Anything with mass warps and bends the space around it (technically spacetime, but let’s explore that particular wormhole-rabbit-hole another time). The more massive the object, the greater the warping effect. Now imagine a photon — a single packet of light — traveling through the universe. The thing about photons is they’re obsessively efficient (or lazy, take your pick). They only travel from point A to point B. They don’t care if there’s a diner on the way with excellent pie and clean restrooms; photons travel along the shortest route, no exceptions.

In astronomy and other related fields, this is extremely useful. Some objects out in space, like a galaxy, are very massive indeed and cause incredible warping of the space around them. This means that when distant objects on the other side of the galaxy emit beams of light, the photons in those beams use the warped space as a shortcut. Not only do covered up objects become visible, but the effect can make distant objects look bigger. This is called gravitational lensing.

Now, using the mathematical models they built, scientists have determined that wormholes may also cause gravitational lensing, magnifying the objects behind them up to 100,000 times. Better still, these early results suggest that lensing from wormholes could be distinguishable from lensing from other objects like black holes. Of course, their model assumes that wormholes have an electric charge and a negative mass — different and weirder than antimatter — and those are some big assumptions. Still, though, the James Webb Space Telescope has already photographed gravitational lensing, so this theory’s just one lucky snapshot away from being proven true.