
Magnetic wormhole created for first time - Southron
http://www.uab.cat/web/newsroom/news-detail/magnetic-wormhole-created-for-first-time-1345668003610.html?noticiaid=1345689132054
======
kenbellows
But... but it's not a wormhole. Not in the usual sense of the word anyway.
When I think of a wormhole, I think of a "hole" through spacetime that
transfers something from point A to point B by entirely bypassing all the
space in between; this is not that at all. It's more like a cloaking device.
The magnetic field still travels the whole distance in exactly the same way
that it would, it's just not visible to an outside observer. Still super
awesome, I just wish they wouldn't use the word "wormhole".

~~~
pythonlion
It is a hole through space, not through time. Am i right?

~~~
kenbellows
From the abstract of the Nature article linked by @comboy below
([http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12488](http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12488)):

> the magnetic field from a source at one end of the wormhole appears at the
> other end as an isolated magnetic monopolar field, __creating the illusion
> of a magnetic field propagating through a tunnel outside the 3D space __.

Seems that there's no actual tunneling, just the illusion of tunneling.

~~~
lvs
The article is in the journal Scientific Reports, not Nature. Nature
Publishing Group is the publisher of that journal.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Also, note that Scientific Reports has no requirements for a paper to be
super-novel/cool/hot topic, in contrast to the actual Nature journal. Anything
which is decent science will get published in SRep; it's NPG's version of PLOS
One.

It seems Nature's strategy is working here, since many news outlets and the
general public don't seem to be aware of the difference.

------
bd
If you have trouble understanding what "magnetic wormhole" means / what
researchers actually did, this figure from the original paper explains it
pretty well:

[http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12488/figures/1](http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12488/figures/1)

Note red lines showing magnetic field, how they get cloaked by spherical
device, starting on right side, then they re-appear on the left side.

This is the figure they use to show "wormhole", but it's just the figure above
with erased spherical cloaking device (which must be physically present, field
is still there, just the device hides it):

[https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/201...](https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/2015/08/dn28071-3_800.jpg)

And this is how it looks in real life:

[http://www.uab.cat/Imatge/758/790/cucweb.jpg](http://www.uab.cat/Imatge/758/790/cucweb.jpg)

Still very cool, but now you can see it's basically just some sort of
shielding of magnetic field that creates distortion of the field on the other
end, nothing is getting teleported.

~~~
kbenson
Which is why we didn't just discover FTL communication. The term "wormhole" is
a fairly loaded term for the layman. One of those rider concepts is
_instantaneous_.

~~~
elektromekatron
I am not sure I agree. For the layman, wormholes come in a couple of popular
forms, and the most common is the one with a weird energy tunnel thing between
the entrance and the exit. The version where the entrance is the exit, such as
in the game portal, seems to be much less popularly considered.

~~~
kbenson
Fair enough. It may be more accurate to say one of the rider concepts is they
allow FTL.

~~~
elektromekatron
I guess, is just that to think that FTL matters and ties up with causality
means to grok relativity, and causality issues may be a result of a layman
physics views of wormholes, but it generally isn't really a part of it.

I think you are making a category error by saying that wormhole is too loaded
a term for the layman in this instance. Non-technical people are generally
better at dealing with ignoring the details of a metaphor anyway.

------
qCOVET
as @kenbellows said ... it is not a wormhole.

It is an illusion of a wormhole. It is not creating a real path in the space-
time. It is a magnetic phenomenon that makes it look as if two points got
connected and a magical tunnel was established. Pretty cool experiment,
though.

Authors suggest that this illusionary wormhole could also be used to making
smaller MRI machines and patients don't have to go through the claustrophobic
experience of current machines. Super Awesome .. Giant machine in one room and
the patient is sitting on a couch in the other room, and being scanned.

Oooh wait - what if police investigation rooms get designed this way, such
that as they ask you questions and from the other room, they are actually
scanning your brain for changes in the signal pattern ?? - Crazy idea. Aight,
I am re-pivoting as of now. Scanning as a Service...lol

~~~
KingMob
Former cognitive neuroscientist here. In all seriousness, if this technology
were dropped in today, it would be hard to use surreptitiously; you still need
to immobilize the head to get a good fMRI signal at current speeds.

Also, interpreting a brain scan to determine lying is way beyond our actual
abilities (though sadly, there are Indian courts and companies doing just
that, despite the warnings of the neuroscience community).

~~~
duaneb
Also, IIRC from "lying experts", there is no such thing as an objective lie.
If you have no anxiety about the lie (I think I was reading about Lance
Armstrong on this), or you don't think you're lying, you can easily pass a
polygraph test.

You can habituate your brain to follow certain patterns even if you do know
you're lying. I suspect there will never be a "magic lie detector" with any
reliability for people who understand what is happening or take preventative
measures.

~~~
ethbro
I heard similar and figured it was a signal to noise problem. In that it was
impossible to reliably eliminate false positives (the anxiety of someone
normal being polygraphed) while still detecting trained liars (who minimize
their anxiety while still lying).

------
snoman
So correct me if I'm wrong, but a lay-person's understanding might go like
this:

It's like a fiber optic cable, except that instead of light, it transmits a
magnetic field, and instead of being a cable, it's a metal ball.

------
univalent
Jesus, this was the biggest letdown from a click bait title to TFA ever.

~~~
lukeschlather
I don't know, I would have been pretty psyched to click on "Researchers create
monopole magnet (kind of.)" Obviously not as useful as wormholes, but it's up
there from a "that's physically possible?!!!???111?!" perspective.

------
comboy
More detailed description:
[http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12488](http://www.nature.com/articles/srep12488)

------
carlesfe
I didn't quite get the idea:

> "This consists of a tunnel that transfers the magnetic field from one point
> to the other while keeping it undetectable – invisible – all the way".

I guess that means generating a magnetic field on A, which can be detected on
C, without being detected on an intermediate point B?

> "This technology could, for example, increase patients' comfort by
> distancing them from the detectors when having MRI scans in hospital, or
> allow MRI images of different parts of the body to be obtained
> simultaneously."

So that means placing the detectors away from the patient and making them
receive the magnetic field through one of these "wormholes"?

~~~
irremediable
I wondered about the MRI application too. Presumably you couldn't use this for
the main bore magnet or gradient coils, so it'd have to be just the detectors.
But could you run this "wormhole" thing through a hole in the bore?

------
powertower
I've read over this and I can't figure out if they really did create a
magnetic monopole from the end of the sphere, or if that field is still
coupled with the other side and it's only monopolar in some virtual or
mathematical sense?

I'm kind of suspecting it is the latter, as a magnetic monopole discovery
would overshadow their magnetic tunnel/wormhole work, and it's definitely not
the focus of the report.

------
ChuckMcM
I wonder if they would have similar clicks for calling it a 'magnetic flux
conduit' or 'magnetic field hose'. I expect using meta-materials for magnetic
shielding will be a bigger deal as really strong magnetic fields are needed
for things like fusion reactors, but for now its just an interesting
validation that you can cloak a magnetic field using meta materials.

~~~
webXL
Well, the 'hose' came out 2 years ago:
[http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514201/physicists-
build...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514201/physicists-build-worlds-
first-magnetic-hose-for-transmitting-magnetic-fields/)

Am I correct in saying that this got a "wormhole" label just because the
"hose" is shielded??

------
sampo
While magnets and their field are often pictured like this
[http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/barmag.jpg](http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/barmag.jpg)
in reality the field is everywhere like this
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Magnet08...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Magnet0873.png)
so what the "wormhole" does is, it shields the field from the bar magnet
inside the sphere, so only the field from the ends of the bar is projected
outside, like this [https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/201...](https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/2015/08/dn28071-3_800.jpg)

------
tangerine_beet
The word 'wormhole' suggests to me that there would be no loss of field
strength or signal strength, irregardless of the distance in three-dimensional
space. A device that could tunnel its magnetic field between, say, Tokyo and
New York, with no energy loss -- that's my idea of a wormhole.

------
stevebmark
This is a horrible and intentionally misleading article. They intentionally
dupe the reader to imply it's a real wormhole.

    
    
        The overall EFFECT (emphasis mine) is that of a magnetic
        field that appears to travel from one point to another 
        through a dimension that lies outside the conventional 
        three dimensions
    

If anything in the article were like what it was implying this would be world-
shattering news. It's entirely lackluster news by comparison. The author
should be ashamed for generating this tabloid.

------
gandarojin
Since they did not create a wormhole: Doesn’t this submission’s title go
against the guidelines?

> […] please use the original title, _unless it is misleading or linkbait_.

------
mmaunder
This is what happens when engineers try to be both physicists and marketers.
This has nothing to do with an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. They've created a
magnetic monopole in space through some cool engineering but don't seem to
have any theoretical understanding of why it occurs.

If this really was a wormhole, the MRI machine might suck the patients brain
into a different point in spacetime and possibly a different universe.

------
cfontes
Some schematics of it would be really helpful.

From what I got the magnetic field from point A is felt at point B even
without being able to be measured between those 2 points.

Is that it?

~~~
Vexs
Basically. They put the magnetic source in an shielded sphere, and then
somehow moved the field outside of the sphere.

------
rthomas6
Does the "wormhole" only exist inside the sphere?

I wonder if this could be used for undetectable point-to-point communication?

~~~
andallas
That is EXACTLY what I'm thinking. I read a few weeks back about how
superconductors allow the free-flow of electricity without any loss of power,
couple that with this shielding and you could (in theory) create a completely
secure form of communication (during transit, not necessarily secure at the
endpoints).

------
baxter001
If the effect at the interface point of two spheres leaks similarly little
field one could imagine a chain of these invisibility conducting huge magnetic
fields with no loss or external effects along its path.

~~~
fredkbloggs
A new kind of lossless transmission line, perhaps? That would be a big deal if
so. Such a line would also be immune to the effects of space weather, since
the field along the tunnel does not interact with any exterior field.

------
megakwood
Isn't that exactly what a shielded coax cable does?

------
zxcvcxz
Is it possible to have one of these "wormholes" with one entrance and two
exits?

~~~
tomelders
Two girls, one wormhole?

------
jheriko
quick. stop. look.

its some sensationalism!!!!

------
fsiefken
could you get a faster then light signal through this magnetic wormhole?

~~~
irremediable
Disclaimer: I am not a physicist.

I _really_ doubt it. People are fairly convinced that faster-than-light
communication can't happen -- and if it can, it's going to take a bigger
change than this.

~~~
fsiefken
If wormholes are theoretically possible and allow for some sort of FTL
communication by joining two points in space, then I thought perhaps the same
goes for magnetic wormholes.

~~~
kenbellows
problem is it's not really a wormhole, so no FTL yet

------
wonkaWonka

      Scientists in the Department of Physics at the 
      Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have designed 
      and created in the laboratory the first experimental 
      wormhole that can connect two regions of space 
      magnetically.
    
      > magnetically
    

Come on.

~~~
Dylan16807
I don't understand what you're objecting to.

Perhaps you're implying that they're leading you on with implications of
something really impressive and then the last word lets you down? But
'magnetic' is the first word in the title, so that doesn't make any sense.

~~~
wonkaWonka
The transfer of unseen magnetic force, across space, in this manner, does not
constitute a "worm hole", and is clearly a "force field" instead, which is
slightly less exciting.

If we were reading an X-men comic book, and Magneto's abilities were conflated
as "worm holes", everyone would cry foul.

I object to the misuse of a well-known science fiction term as click-bate.

