Search for traversable wormholes in active galactic nuclei using X-ray data

Understand

In a previous paper, one of us calculated iron K$\alpha$ line profiles emitted from possible accretion disks around traversable wormholes as a first step to use X-ray reflection spectroscopy to search for astrophysical wormholes in active galactic nuclei.

• In the present paper, we extend that work and construct an XSPEC model for the whole relativistic reflection spectrum.
• We apply our model to XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations of the supermassive object in MCG-6-30-15 and we check whether these observations prefer the hypothesis that the central body is a Kerr black hole or a traversable wormhole.
• We find that the two models provide equally good fits, so with the available data we cannot distinguish the black hole and wormhole scenarios.