(Gizmodo) A team of physicists at Google, as well as CalTech, the University of Maryland, and the University of Amsterdam, think that studying extreme quantum behaviors might provide stronger evidence of string theory’s existence. Maybe quantum computers could produce string theory-probing behaviors—or wormhole-like phenomena.
These scientists think they can make a quantum computer act mathematically similar to information passing between two black holes via a wormhole. No wormholes will actually be created here on Earth. This is just a model, and like other analog systems, just because the mathematical description of a lab experiment looks like someone’s theory describing space doesn’t mean that the theory is automatically correct. Google physicists posits that a quantum state reproducible in the physics lab can be explained as information traveling through a wormhole between two black holes. These models are just a way to produce stronger mathematical evidence that a theory might be correct.
Quantum computers that can create these wormhole-mimicking “thermofield-double” qubit states are on the horizon, Christopher Monroe, a University of Maryland physics professor who consulted on this research, told Gizmodo. He hopes that the trapped-ion quantum computer that his group is working on could soon serve as a platform upon which to create the quantum states required to test these ideas.
Physicists Using Quantum Computers to Study Worm-Holes
