A wormhole is described as any structure connecting two regions of space-time which are otherwise very far apart or unrelated, somewhat like a tunnel with two ends where each end is in a separate point of space. Some scientists have theorised that a wormhole is in fact a phenomenon which connects two black holes – places of incredible gravitational force that nothing can escape from; matter would theoretically disappear into one black hole and then reappear from the other through a tube-like structure. Nobody has ever seen or experienced a wormhole, but there is plenty of valid scientific speculation to support the idea, famously the equations of Einstein’s theory of general relativity contain wormholes.
In the early 1930’s, Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen discovered that the theory of general relativity allows for the existence of hypothetical time or space “bridges,” originally called Einstein-Rosen bridges, they are now known as wormholes. The notion of wormholes will be very familiar to those who have watched or read a lot of science fiction, in the modern age, TV programmes like Farscape, Stargate SG1 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine have addressed the phenomenon in some depth and wormholes are a major part of the plot. In these shows and in the very real world of scientific research they have been viewed as a possible mode of time travel – as a shortcut through space-time enabling travel from one area to another which is situated vast distances away almost instantly.
A well known and simply analogy used to describe these phenomena involves making two holes at opposite ends of a sheet of paper which represent two distant, unrelated points in space. By bending the paper over so that the two remote points are positioned on top of each other, one can see how a wormhole would theoretically connect these distant points and enable travel between the two sites. If it were possible to warp space-time like this, matter might be able to enter through one end of a wormhole and emerge at a different time or distant location in the blink of an eye.
Einstein’s theory of wormholes had a fatal characteristic, they were very unstable, opening only briefly allowing possible matter to enter, but then they would ‘pinch off’ in the middle of the tunnel, thus anything attempting to pass through would be destroyed in the process. Today scientists are working on the possibility that wormholes could be stabilised, able to stay open long enough to allow passage through them, the thing that may allow this is ‘negative matter’, a relatively little understood force but one that could change the whole concept.
If wormholes could be easily found or even engineered, and they could be kept open for periods of time, the possibility of time travel both into the future and into the past as well as travel across vast distances of space seems a much more likely possibility, the research continues.
