SCIENTIFIC CURMUDGEON Physicists make wormhole! Not

stein’s theory of gravity, general relativity; and quantum theory, which accounts for electromagnetism and the nuclear forces. The two theories are mathematically and conceptually incompatible.

BY HIMA THUMMALA ‘26

The action of giving in to shopping temptations with disregard to its impact on bank statements is a characteristic that can be seen in the common college student. Although some may be able to get away with it, many students need to stick to a specifc spending frame. This may seem like a complicated task to go upon, but it really just boils down to one simple question: Is it something you NEED or something you WANT? Needs and wants are two polarizing concepts that people often get mixed up even though they play important roles in a typical, everyday shopping spree. Pretend you’re at the mall and you see a new phone case that you like. Should you buy it? This is where you determine if it is a need or a want. Stop and consider why you want to buy it. Is it because your old one is starting to wear out, or maybe because it is better quality than your old one? Or is it because you like the pattern and design better than your current one? Is it because it is on sale for a good price? All these different questions and their answers can be interpreted diferently depending on who the buyer is.

If an item is classifed as a need for you, it doesn’t mean that it cannot be a want for another person. Take a look at it this way, if someone is buying a new phone case because theirs has broken, it would be a need for them. But if someone has a perfectly fne case, the purchase would be considered a want. As it can be inferred, the meaning of a product varies from individual to individual depending on their specifc life circumstances.

Furthermore, be sure to not confuse the concept of needs and wants with budgeting, while they are related they do have their diferences. Categorizing products is essentially a stepping stone to creating a budget, but is still equally, if not more, important to manage your fnances. This step is what helps you organize what outlets you should allow to take your money and if it has worthwhile outcomes, hence, showing the importance of having a healthy fnancial balance.

A simple method to sort your expenses into these two groups is to start of by listing out everything you desire to buy, whether you have the need for it or not. Next, make a mark of which ones you see as something you cannot see your life without. Whether it’s food, clothing, school books, etc. these will be the ones that will be purchased. Then take a look at what is left on your list. If you could only choose one thing to buy out of them, which would it be? Move that item to the top of your remaining list. Continue this process until you go through and rearrange all of what is leftover, from most wanted to least wanted. Now, look at your fnances. Can you aford these products? Did their prices impact how you prioritize them? Should you save up for your favorite item or do you want to buy what you currently can afford? All these factors lead up to defning what is a need or a want for you When looked at from a broader perspective, this process is essentially choosing what is going to help you build the foundation of your future fnances. The money that you end up saving now will allow you to purchase higher-quality products later on with less damage done to your bank account, but this does not mean not spending on your wants at all; they could add positive value to your life at this current moment. However, it should be kept in mind that your wants should not replace the spot of your needs on your shopping bills. Overall, it is imperative that, in order to ensure productivity while managing your fnances, there is a responsibility of understanding the contrast between needs and wants.

BY JOHN HORGAN CAL PROFESSOR

By now, you might have heard that physicists have created a wormhole, which heretofore has existed, as far as we know, only in the imaginations of physicists and science-fction writers. The story begins with a paper, “Traversable wormhole dynamics on a quantum processor,” by physicists at Harvard and Google, among other institutions. It was published in the prestigious journal Nature, along with commentary by two Stanford physicists.

Two top-notch physics writers, Dennis Overbye of The New York Times and Natalie Wolchover of Quanta, reported that the Nature authors “created” an actual wormhole. A leader of the research, Maria Spiropulu of Caltech, makes this same claim in a 17-minute video, “Wormhole in the Lab.”

Here’s the problem. According to qualifed critics, Spiropulu’s group created only a crude simulation of a wormhole based on highly speculative, untested theories. Peter Woit, a physicist at Columbia, calls the claim that physicists created an actual wormhole “complete bullshit” and a “publicity stunt.”

Below is my attempt to make sense of the controversy. The “traversable wormhole” work is the latest wrinkle in physicists’ quest to unify Ein-

Physicists hope a unifed theory—also called a quantum-gravity theory, fnal theory or theory of everything— will provide a compact and yet complete description of the cosmos. This quest for a unifed theory has spawned fantastical conjectures involving infnitesimal strings and extra dimensions and parallel universes. Although these ideas are mathematically compelling (or so proponents assure us), they cannot be tested; the strings and extra dimensions and universes are experimentally inaccessible. The unifcation quest hasn’t lived up to its hype, not even close, but hope dies hard.

One recent stab at unifcation involves entanglement, a quantum efect whereby particles infuence each other at faster-than-light speeds. Some theorists have proposed that entanglement might be mediated by wormholes. This conjecture is based on a speculative notion called the holographic principle, which postulates deep mathematical linkages between relativity and quantum theory.

Like black holes, wormholes are a hypothetical consequence of general relativity. Science fction writers love wormholes, just as they love multiverses; wormholes let you whisk a spaceship from one universe to another instantaneously. But whereas there is circumstantial evidence for black holes, there is none for wormholes.

Back to the claims of Spiropulu et al. What distinguishes their work from most quan- tum-gravity speculation is their use of a quantum computer. Called Sycamore and built by Google, the computer carries out computations with particles nudged into superposition, meaning that the particles, like Schrodinger’s cat, occupy more than one state at the same time. Superposed particles serve as the basis of qubits, which encode more information—and hence can carry out more computations--than ordinary bits in ordinary computers.

The Nature group performed its experiment with a nine-qubit version of Sycamore, which can’t compute anything beyond the range of a conventional computer. The researchers constructed a cartoonishly simple mathematical model of a “wormhole” connecting “black holes” in a “spacetime” based on a simple version of the holographic principle. The researchers say they “teleported” information through the “wormhole” in a manner consistent with the Maldacena-Susskind conjecture. Teleportation is a term used to describe certain interactions between entangled particles.

I can see only one way in which Spiropulu et al. could claim they have created an actual as opposed to simulated wormhole. Quantum computing exploits entanglement as well as superposition. If you assume the Maldacena-Susskind conjecture is true, you could claim that the entangled particles in your quantum computer are linked by actual wormholes.

The problem with this argument is that it assumes what it purports to prove; it is a spectacular example of begging the question, or circular reasoning. Also, by this logic, any physicists who produce entangled particles, in a quantum computer or elsewhere, could claim they have “created a wormhole.” And physicists can make this claim without constructing a simulation of a wormhole based on an untested quantum-gravity theory. The simulations are unnecessary—unless of course your intention is to obscure the line between what is simulated and what is real.

On his blog, Peter Woit notes that I warned in my 1996 book The End of Science that the quest for a unifed theory was dragging physics into a “speculative post-empirical mode.” Woit suggests that the wormhole incident bears out my prediction. Yes, I suppose it does, and I appreciate Woit’s hat-tip. The irony is that I have recently become more optimistic about physics, and science as a whole, because of advances in quantum computing.

Two years ago, as part of my attempt to learn quantum mechanics, I read a book called Q Is for Quantum, which gave me a better understanding of quantum computing. I subsequently had email and zoom exchanges with the author, Terry Rudolph, a quantum theorist and co-founder of the quantum-computing company PsiQuantum. Rudolph’s optimism about quantum computing rubbed of on me.

I hope quantum computing leads to exciting advances, both practical and theoretical, that propel physics forward. But those advances might be hard to spot beneath all the “bullshit” and “publicity stunts” that quantum computing enables. And I no longer believe that physicists will ever fnd a true unifed theory, which tells us how we came to be. That belief, I’ve decided, was always delusional.