This article was originally published at The conversation (opens in new tab). The publication contributed the article to Space.com Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Carolyn Devereux (opens in new tab) is Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire.
What is exotic matter and could we use it to make wormholes? – Julia, 14 years old, London
Matter is “stuff”. It’s anything made up of particles occupying space. Everything we can feel and see on Earth is matter, and it usually comes in one of three types: solid, liquid, or gas. This can be the chair you are sitting on, sea water or the helium in a balloon.
There are other types of matter that don’t behave like the gases, liquids, or solids we normally encounter on Earth. Those that behave in the strangest ways are known as exotic matter.
We can create exotic matter in laboratories by cooling some materials to very low temperatures. Extremely cold helium is an example. It’s called super-liquid helium (opens in new tab)and is a liquid that can climb walls.
Related: What are wormholes? An astrophysicist explains these shortcuts through space-time
It’s possible that exotic matter could someday explain some of the mysteries of space. It could be a key ingredient in creating a wormhole (opens in new tab).
warping space and time
A wormhole is something that connects two places in the universe by bending space. A wormhole has never been found, but if it did exist, it might obey our laws of gravity.
In 1687, scientist Isaac Newton said that gravity comes from the mass of an object. The mass of an object is the amount of matter in it. This means that the more matter there is in the object, the greater the gravitational pull on that object.
In 1915, physicist Albert Einstein changed our view of what creates gravity. Einstein said that matter curves space. He said that moving objects follow the curvature of this curved space and this creates the effect of gravity.
CURIOUS CHILDREN
curious kids (opens in new tab) is a series of The Conversation (opens in new tab) gives children the opportunity to have their questions about the world answered by experts.
If you have a question you want an expert to answer, send it to curious [email protected] and make sure to include the asker’s first name, age, and city. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our best.
For example, the earth is made of matter and curves the space around it. As objects move around the earth, they follow the curved space, causing them to fall to the earth. That’s what we call gravity. This curvature of space caused by matter also affects time. The more curved space is, the slower time passes. Because space and time are so closely related, we often talk about spacetime when we study how the universe works.
A wormhole is created by warping space-time, creating a tunnel between two separate regions in the universe. Where the tunnel leads out into space it is called the “mouth”. A wormhole has two mouths that can be separated by a tremendous distance, and the tunnel itself is called a “throat”.
Creating a wormhole
One type of exotic matter that may be associated with wormholes is negative-mass matter. All matter we know has positive mass and is attracted to other matter by gravity – like an apple falling to earth. Matter with negative mass would push other matter away from it.
Physicist Kip Thorne suggested that negative matter would be needed to keep a wormhole stable once it formed. We’ve never discovered negative matter, and we don’t even know what it would look like, but we can put it into equations and understand how it would behave if it existed.
Although we can tell what a wormhole is, we don’t know how to make one, so we can’t know if exotic matter can make wormholes.
Wormholes are of interest to scientists and science fiction writers because of the possibility that wormholes could connect two widely separated regions in space. If they existed, we might be able to travel vast distances across the universe in a short amount of time.
This article is republished by The conversation (opens in new tab) under a Creative Commons license. read this original article (opens in new tab).
Follow all Expert Voices topics and debates – and join the discussion – on twitter @spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
#Curious #Kids #Exotic #Matter #Wormholes
Leave a Comment