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DOE OSTI · 1835295

Sensitive searches for wormholes

Simonetti, John H.·Kavic, Michael J.·Minic, Djordje·Stojkovic, Dejan·Dai, De-Chang
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Abstract

A sensitive test for whether a black hole is a wormhole, using astronomical observations, would be to look for perturbations in the orbit of a pulsar around the black hole, caused by a perturbing object on the other side of the wormhole. By observing a pulsar in an orbit like that of S2 around the supermassive black hole at Sgr A* at the center of our Galaxy, the attainable mass limit on the perturber would be approximately 10 4 times better than derived from current observations of S2. For a nominal stellar-mass black hole–pulsar binary, observing for 1 year could set a mass limit on a perturber more than 6 orders of magnitude better than for a pulsar orbiting Sgr A*. Observations of a star in a stellar-mass binary containing a black hole could set limits similar to the case of a pulsar orbiting Sgr A*.

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Simonetti, John H., Kavic, Michael J., Minic, Djordje, Stojkovic, Dejan, Dai, De-Chang. 2021-10-06. Sensitive searches for wormholes. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.104.l081502

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