How can we use the miniature wormholes around us for time travel?
by Angela Olah

I'm working on a new trick as a circus performer. It's not so easy to pull it off in a way that the audience doesn't catch on, but also doesn't even suspect that it's genuine and involves no magic at all. I have to design it so it looks like magic, as if I possess some supernatural power.

The specific trick is that I transform a bicycle into a flying machine and take off high enough into the sky that the audience can no longer see me. Then I open a portal and travel back in time. Suddenly, I reappear inside a glass dome filled with water, covered by a cloth, which has been placed in the center of the arena.

The key is that the bicycle frame must be both strong and lightweight. That's why I chose a hybrid bicycle, a cross between a mountain bike and a road bike. An aluminum frame would be the lightest option, but it is harder to weld than steel, for example. Aluminum welding typically requires TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) or MIG (Metal Inert Gas) techniques.

The challenge is that the oxide layer on aluminum melts at a significantly higher temperature than the metal itself, so I must first remove it, either mechanically or chemically. Aluminum also distorts or cracks easily if heat distribution or preheating isn't done correctly. The weld seam is much less "forgiving" than with steel.

Considering all this, a steel frame is the only viable option; it's easier to work with. Then there's the problem of where to leave the bicycle once I travel back to the stage through the portal. I have to leave it somewhere beyond the atmosphere, but I must ensure it's not exposed to extreme heat. Steel begins to lose its structural strength above approximately 300–400 °C. That's why it's crucial to cool the steel frame thoroughly before takeoff to make it more resistant to extreme conditions. Under home conditions, I can cool it down to at least -20 degrees Celsius. It's simple: I just need to place the modified bike in a freezer for at least twenty-one days before the performance.

To ensure the audience can't fully see what's happening when I open the portal, I need thick black smoke, which will emanate from a small engine mounted on the frame. It will also make noise, a deafening buzzing sound so that it appears as if something is lifting the bike into the sky. The motorcycle mustn't float on its own. The illusion has to be believable… for the sake of the technology.

"How do I open a portal and travel back in time? That's what you wanted to ask, right? "You know that there are micro-wormholes everywhere around us. I can see you're surprised, so let's take it step by step. First of all, let's get one thing straight: spacetime isn't smooth; it's chaotically swirling and foamy in structure. Think of it like boiling water: microscopic "vortices". Wormhole-like connections can flicker in and out of existence, even right now, in your room. These aren't stable, they're not traversable, and they're not detectable, but theoretically, they exist.

So, the question is: how can we capture one? They're so microscopic that no current instrument can measure them. And yet, my buddy Charlie managed to 'grab' one and stabilize it, using something called negative energy density.Charlie's not a trained scientist, just a self-taught guy, the type who spends all day reading scientific articles. But he doesn't just read them; he understands all that jargon. Maybe not instantly, but if there's something he doesn't get, he keeps digging until he finds the explanation.

So, during an experiment, Charlie noticed a repeating fluctuation in the air, millions of times faster than any known radiation. And he figured out, all by himself, that it was a microscopic wormhole "vibrating" over and over again, probably due to some repeating signal.

Wormholes, by their nature, are unstable, he explained that, and even I got it. I understand the words, but not necessarily what they imply or what I'm supposed to do with that info. But Charlie knows, and he says: "In theory, they can be stabilized."

Now, here's the most challenging part of the trick: how do you stabilize a wormhole? Simple. You need negative energy. And Charlie, being the genius he is, found a method to create an artificial Casimir zone in the quantum vacuum, and that's where he "caught" the micro-wormhole.

Now, thanks to Charlie, I have this stable wormhole. And when I fly up, say, about ten meters into the air, I activate it. But hold on, I also need a destination point for the other end of the wormhole.

Charlie solves this by scanning for the exit using an artificial gravitational wave packet, which then anchors the wormhole's other mouth at a specific spacetime coordinate. In my case, that's exactly the location of the water-filled tank, and it was precisely four minutes in the past.

Now, you may understand why my bike has three clocks. Or at least they look like clocks. One of them is a field equalizer disguised as a watch. See, the human body might not survive a wormhole intact. But this equalizer protects me. Please don't ask me how. Charlie explained it, but I didn't get it. But maybe you'll make more sense of this, so I'll write it down: "The spacetime coordinate offset between the two mouths of the wormhole is compensated by a local time synchronization field, which is continuously calibrated by the stabilizer, because the wormhole is alive, always changing."

And that's the trick: As I smoothly lift off with the transformed bike, spewing thick black smoke, the audience stares upward with their mouths hanging open. I ascend through the central opening in the circus tent. When I reach a height of ten meters, one of my watches beeps; specifically, the second one from the left, if you want details.

The wormhole activates, and suddenly, I'm already inside the tank, sitting there, only my head above the water. Of course, when I hear the ringmaster's announcement: "magic," "mystery," yada-yada, and he pulls off the red velvet cloth that had been concealing me, that's the moment, and only then that I must act as if my head had been underwater the entire time.

The crowd gasps. Jack helps me out of the tank. Applause. Admiring stares.

Jack, ever determined, keeps trying to figure out my trick. He takes notes and always shares his theories about what he thinks I did. But I smile because I can't tell him. First of all, he wouldn't believe me.

And second, how on earth could I explain to him how Charlie made dark matter out of plain table salt?