Wormhole to another galaxy may exist in Milky Way

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A giant doorway to another galaxy may exist at the centre of the Milky Way, a study suggests.

Scientists believe that dark matter at the centre of our galaxy could sustain a wormhole that we could travel through.

Wormholes are areas where space and time are being bent so that distant points are now closer together.

Einstein predicted them in his theory of General Relativity but nobody knows how they could be held open so that someone could travel through. Most scientists believe that It is extremely unlikely they could exist naturally in the universe. It would take a huge mass, like a Neutron star, to create a bend in time which could bend space time enough to meet another tunnel on the other side. No natural examples have ever been detected.

"If we combine the map of the dark matter in the Milky Way with the most recent Big Bang model to explain the universe and we hypothesise the existence of space-time tunnels, what we get is that our galaxy could really contain one of these tunnels, and that the tunnel could even be the size of the galaxy itself," said Professor Paulo Salucci.

"But there's more. We could even travel through this tunnel, since, based on our calculations, it could be navigable. Just like the one we've all seen in the recent film 'Interstellar"'.

He said the research was surprisingly close to what was depicted in director Christopher Nolan's movie, for which theoretical physicist Kip Thorne provided technical assistance.

"What we tried to do in our study was to solve the very equation that the astrophysicist 'Murph' was working on," said Prof Salucci. "Clearly we did it long before the film came out."

 Wormholes bend space-time to allow distant regions to meet

Any wormholes existing in nature have previously been assumed to be microscopic pinpricks in the fabric of space-time.

But the one possibly lying at the centre of the Milky Way would be large enough to swallow up a spaceship and its crew.

Prof Salucci added: "Obviously we're not claiming that our galaxy is definitely a wormhole, but simply that, according to theoretical models, this hypothesis is a possibility."

Other "spiral" galaxies similar to the Milky Way - like its neighbour Andromeda - may also contain wormholes, the scientists believe.

Theoretically it might be possible to test the idea by comparing the Milky Way with a different type of nearby galaxy, such as one of the irregular Magellanic Clouds.

In their paper, the scientists write: "Our result is very important because it confirms the possible existence of wormholes in most of the spiral galaxies ..

"Dark matter may supply the fuel for constructing and sustaining a wormhole. Hence, wormholes could be found in nature and our study may encourage scientists to seek observational evidence for wormholes in the galactic halo region."

The theory was published in the journal Annals of Physics.

Source : Telegraph

Half of universe's stars are orphans with no galaxy

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Celestial orphans are relatively small, less massive, cooler than our sun, expert says

New observations from suborbital rocket launches and an orbiting observatory show that as many as half the stars in the universe may be orphans with no galaxy scientists said on Thursday. They found that the dim light these stars produce from the far reaches of the cosmos equals the amount coming from all the galaxies.

'The night sky on a planet around such a star would be profoundly boring and black to human eyes - no other stars, or at least very few, no Milky Way band, only distant galaxies.'                                        - Michael Zemcov, Caltech experimental astrophysicist

The phenomenon of the orphan star has been well known. Astronomers have witnessed tidal streams of stars being stripped away from colliding pairs of galaxies.

The data suggests orphan stars are probably relatively small, less massive and cooler than our Sun, but typical of most stars in the universe, said Caltech experimental astrophysicist Michael Zemcov.

The night sky as seen from Earth is brimming with starlight. But these orphans would be so distant from other stars that a view from one would offer almost complete nothingness.

"The night sky on a planet around such a star would be profoundly boring and black to human eyes - no other stars, or at least very few, no Milky Way band, only distant galaxies. You might be lucky and see your parent galaxy off in the distance like we see Andromeda," Zemcov said.

Zemcov said scientists have traced the origin of galaxies to about 13.2 billion years ago, 500 million years after the Big Bang that created the universe.

"Galaxies have been forming and interacting continuously since then, with a peak in the star formation rate about two billion years after the Big Bang," Zemcov said. "You have enough interactions over enough time, and you end up stripping out a lot of stars."

Source : cbc.ca