From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A wormhole, also known as an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is essentially a "shortcut" from one point in the universe to another point in the universe, allowing travel between them that is faster than it would take light to make the journey through normal space. The name "wormhole" comes from an analogy that was used to explain this; imagine that the universe is the skin of an apple, and a worm is travelling over its surface. The distance from one side of the apple to the other is equal to half the apple's circumference if the worm stays on the apple's surface, but if it instead burrows a wormhole directly through the apple the distance it has to travel is considerably less.
It is not known if wormholes are possible. A solution to the equations of general relativity which would make wormholes possible has not been discovered, without exotic matter, a theoretical substance which has negative energy density. However, neither wormhole-accommodating solutions to relativity equations, nor the existence of exotic matter have been disproven. Many physicists, including Stephen Hawking (see Hawking's Chronology Projection Conjecture), believe that due to the problems a wormhole would theoretically create, including allowing time travel, that something fundamental in the laws of physics would prohibit them. However, this remains speculation, and the notion that nature would censor inconvenient objects has already failed in the case of the cosmic censorship principle.
A wormhole could potentially allow time travel. This could be accomplished by accelerating one end of the wormhole relative to the other, and then sometime later bringing it back; relativistic time dilation would result in less time having passed for the accelerated wormhole mouth compared to the stationary one, meaning that anything which entered the stationary wormhole mouth would exit the accelerated one at a point in time prior to its entry. The path through such a wormhole is called a closed timelike curve, and a wormhole with this property is sometimes referred to as a "timehole." It is thought that it may not be possible to convert a wormhole into a time machine in this manner, however; some mathematical models indicate that a feedback loop of virtual particles would circulate through the timehole with ever-increasing intensity, destroying it before any information could be passed through it. This has been called into question by the suggestion that radiation would disperse after traveling through the wormhole, therefore preventing infinite accumulation. The debate on this matter is described by Kip S. Thorne in the book Black Holes and Time Warps [1], and will likely require a theory of quantum gravity to resolve.
Wormholes are also a feature of science fiction. The setting of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a space station, Deep Space Nine, located near the Bajoran wormhole. The TV series Stargate SG-1 follows the adventures of the characters as they explore the galaxy through a network of wormholes.
A related method of faster-than-light travel that often arises in science fiction, especially military science fiction, is a "jump drive" that can propel a spacecraft between two fixed "jump points" connecting solar systems. Connecting solar systems in a network like this results in a fixed "terrain" with choke points that can be useful for constructing plots related to military campaigns.
See also: Spacecraft propulsionTheoretical basis
Timeholes
Wormholes in fiction
