How Wormholes Work?

An explanation of wormholes and how they

could connect the universe

How wormholes work? If you saw a wormhole in reality, it would look round and spherical, like a black hole. Light from the other side would come through, showing you a distant place.

Once you pass through, you’d see the other side completely, and your old home will fade away through the round window. But are wormholes real or just like magic?

Space was simple?

For a long time, people thought space was simple, like a big, flat stage where the universe’s events happen. Even if you remove all the planets and stars, the stage (space) still exists, unchanging and eternal. But Einstein’s theory of relativity changed that idea. It says space and time make up the stage together, and they can change and bend.

If the old stage was like hard wood, Einstein’s stage is like a waterbed. This flexible space can bend and maybe even tear and patch together, possibly creating wormholes. Imagine our universe as a flat sheet that can bend in a way that connects two distant spots with a short bridge, letting you travel faster than light.

Where can we find a wormhole?

Right now, only in theory. General relativity suggests they might be possible, but that doesn’t mean they exist. It’s a mathematical theory with many possible solutions, but not all math describes reality.

The first theorized wormholes

The first theorized wormholes were Einstein-Rosen Bridges. They describe black holes as portals to infinite parallel universes. In 2D, space-time is flat but curves around objects. If an object compresses enough, space-time bends into a black hole, forming a one-way barrier called the event horizon, where nothing can escape.

But maybe there’s no singularity. Instead, the other side of the event horizon could be a mirrored universe where time runs backward, called a white hole. However, these bridges can’t be crossed because they close in the middle, meaning you can’t go through them.

Travel quickly across the universe

To travel quickly across the universe, humans need a different kind of wormhole: a traversable wormhole. If string theory is correct, the universe might have many tiny wormholes formed after the Big Bang, stretched across the universe.

These could be everywhere, waiting to be found. Some scientists even think the supermassive black holes in galaxies might be wormholes.

Creating a wormhole is another option. To be useful, it should connect distant parts of space-time, have no event horizons, and be big enough for safe travel. The biggest challenge is keeping it open since gravity tries to close it.

We need exotic matter

For this, we need exotic matter, which has negative mass and creates anti-gravity to keep the wormhole open. This exotic matter is different from anything we know and must exert great pressure.

With exotic matter, we could shape space-time as we wanted. We might already have a candidate for exotic matter in the vacuum of space, filled with quantum particles and antiparticles. We can manipulate these to produce a similar effect as negative mass, stabilizing our wormholes.

Once stable, we could move the wormholes to interesting places, making Earth a hub for an interstellar civilization.

However, opening even one wormhole could break the universe in fundamental ways, causing time travel paradoxes and other issues. Many scientists believe this means wormholes are impossible to make or exist. For now, wormholes remain in our hearts and on paper as equations.

Conclusion

Wormholes are fascinating theoretical objects that could potentially connect distant parts of the universe, offering possibilities for instantaneous travel across vast distances. While they have been a part of scientific theories and popular imagination for decades, their existence and practical usability remain unproven.

Wormholes might be possible according to the mathematics of general relativity and string theory, but significant challenges remain, such as finding or creating them and keeping them open with exotic matter.

For now, wormholes are intriguing concepts that push the boundaries of our understanding of space and time. They invite us to explore the deeper mysteries of the universe, even if they currently exist only in theoretical models and equations.

Whether they are real or not, wormholes inspire curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge, driving scientific exploration into the unknown realms of physics and cosmology.

FAQs About Wormholes

1. What is a wormhole?
A wormhole is a theoretical tunnel-like structure that connects two separate points in space-time, potentially allowing for faster-than-light travel between them.

2. Are wormholes real?
As of now, wormholes are purely theoretical. While they are predicted by the equations of general relativity and string theory, there is no experimental evidence to confirm their existence.

3. How do wormholes work?
Wormholes work by bending or warping space-time to create a shortcut between two distant points. This bending is described by Einstein’s theory of relativity, which suggests that space-time can be stretched or compressed.

4. Can we travel through a wormhole?
In theory, if a wormhole could be stabilized and kept open, it might allow for travel between distant parts of the universe. However, practical challenges, such as keeping the wormhole open and preventing it from collapsing, make this currently impossible.

5. What are Einstein-Rosen Bridges?
Einstein-Rosen Bridges are a type of wormhole theorized to connect black holes to other regions of space or parallel universes. However, they are generally thought to be one-way and not traversable, meaning you can’t travel through them to the other side.

6. What is exotic matter?
Exotic matter is a theoretical type of matter with negative mass, which could help keep a wormhole open by creating anti-gravity effects. It is different from any matter currently known and would need to exert a huge amount of pressure to prevent a wormhole from collapsing.

7. How might we find a wormhole?
Wormholes might be discovered by looking for unusual gravitational effects or patterns in space. Some scientists speculate that supermassive black holes could be wormholes, but this is still speculative.