Building on my previous blog post (The Theory of Time Travel) is The Potential of Wormholes. Wormholes are often mentioned when the topic of time travel comes up, and for good reason. Wormholes may be mankind’s best chance at making time travel a possibility. Hypothetically, a wormhole is a tunnel which connects two difference points in space which could make it possible to take a shortcut from point A to point B, as illustrated by the picture to our right.
Wormholes were first called Einstein-Rosen bridges, named after Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen back in 1935. Now simply known as wormholes, they still hold their association to Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Although these wormholes hold a potential for traveling space at ultra-high speeds or even traveling inter-universe (meaning the wormhole could connect two different universes), theorists are still skeptical on whether or not matter would be able to travel through them. Wormholes are believed to be highly unstable with a probability to collapse instantly if even a single photon were to pass through them. More recent calculations have offered a possible solution, exotic matter. Exotic matter is a negative energy which could act as a balance t
o offset the matter which travels through the wormhole.
These theories are certainly quite undeveloped at this point in time, but that will certainly not slow down the human imagination. If you have even seen the cult classic film Donnie Darko, then you have at least some idea of the imaginative possibilities associated with these bridges. Until we figure out exactly how to travel through these “shortcuts”, I suppose it will just have to be the ordinary way of travel.
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I find wormholes incredibly interesting. Black holes and wormholes I have found in my research to be similar. All wormholes are black holes but not all black holes are wormholes. I bring this up because in my astronomy class I learned the nature of black holes. If a person were to fall into one of these "time travel shortcuts" it would be impossibly to survive. From afar the person would look like they were falling for an infinite amount of time. However, within seconds the persons body would stretch until they were torn apart. Now would you want to be the first person to travel through a wormhole? I sure would not.
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