It is possible that very advanced extraterrestrial civilizations have created a transport network of wormholes around the universe, and we may even be able to detect them.

According to a new article in the BBC Science Focus, it’s certainly a far-fetched theory, but it’s piqued the interest of some scientists. Fumio Abe, an astrophysicist at Nagoya University, told the publication that he may have already found evidence for such a network in existing observations, but it was lost in a sea of ​​data and old observations A re-analysis of the SETI led to the interesting prospect of a possible breakthrough.

“Where wormhole throat radii range from he 100 million to he 10 million km, are associated with galaxies, and are as common as ordinary stars, the discovery was achieved by reanalyzing previous data. There is a possibility that there will be more,” Abe told his Science Focus.

In other words, it’s a fascinating theory that suggests another way to find out if humans are alone in space. Simply put, a wormhole is a theoretical tunnel with two ends at different points in time and space. They don’t violate Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but we still don’t know if they actually exist, let alone if a sufficiently advanced civilization can produce them.

However, wormholes require astronomical amounts of energy to exist.

“Intrinsically unstable wormholes have repulsive gravitational ‘things’ to keep their respective mouths open, and an energy equivalent to that emitted by a significant portion of the stars within the galaxy.” is needed,” said an article in Science Focus. The idea is that if ET created a network of wormholes, it could be detected by gravitational microlensing.

This technique has been used in the past to discover thousands of far-flung exoplanets and stars by looking at how they bend light. Frankly, whether it can be used for wormhole detection is an open question. Fortunately, finding wormholes isn’t the only way to discover life elsewhere in the universe. The Science Focus also explores theoretical megastructures that harness stellar energy by completely enclosing it, atmospheric chemicals linked to human pollution, or ultra-thin reflective spacecraft called light sails. Exploration points out and could theoretically lead to the discovery of extraterrestrial civilizations. .

The concept of wormholes is a tantalizing prospect, especially considering the fact that they could give an alien civilization — or even us — the ability to travel over vast stretches of space and time.

But for now, unfortunately, they’re not much more than a fun thought experiment.