Scientists think we have received a signal from a parallel universe via a WORMHOLE

A gravitational wave event detected in 2019 might have led astronomers to discover the first wormhole in the universe. LIGO and Virgo picked up the wave that lasted less than a tenth of a second. Scientists analysed the event and deduced that it was the result of a collision between two black holes. However, six years later, they think they might have been partly wrong. While the scientists still think that a merger between two black holes triggered the waves, it probably didn't happen in our universe. Instead, what we witnessed was the reverberation from an alternate universe that reached us through a wormhole. The signal named GW190521 is still the "preferred interpretation", as per researchers of a new study, but they are not denying the wormhole theory either. The revelation was made by physicist Qi Lai of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in a preprint uploaded to arXiv.

What are wormholes?

Wormholes are hypothetical structures in the universe that connect two points in the universe. These two points could either be divided by space or time. The wormhole acts as a bridge between the distant points, and hence, is also known as the Einstein–Rosen bridge and was proposed by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935. If the 2019 event did come from a wormhole formed because of the merger of the two black holes, it would prove that these objects, popularised by space fiction movies and TV shows, are real. However, the study authors are playing it safe and not just calling it a collapsing wormhole formed from a mega collision. Also Read: Humans can survive cosmic winter by befriending super intelligent aliens, scientist says

To explain their wormhole theory, Lai and team wrote that gravitational waves are generated when massive, dense objects, such as black holes and neutron stars, collide. But, in case the event occurs with a black hole pair in a binary orbit, their interacting gravitational fields also generate ripples as they are pulled towards each other. These ripples start off weak and gradually become stronger. The mass of the merger is 142 times the mass of the Sun; hence, the wave should have been detectable. But they were missing in the case of GW190521. This led the researchers to state that the black holes were not locked together and were passing each other when they became entangled in each other's gravitational fields.

Humans may have probably seen their first wormhole

Another explanation given by the researchers for the short burst of gravitational waves is that a binary black hole merger resulted in a wormhole that collapsed and formed a single black hole. Such an event would trigger only a short burst. A waveform model of what this gravitational wave signal would look like was made and compared with data collected in 2019. They also constructed a waveform for a standard binary black hole merger. They noted that the binary black hole merger waveform was only slightly a better explanation for the signal, yet they think the wormhole scenario could still have happened. This would mean that GW190521 was the first time humanity likely observed another universe.