Is Wormhole Space Travel Possible?

Science Fiction or Fact? Is Wormhole Space Travel Possible?

In this weekly series, Life’s Little Mysteries explores the plausibility of popular science fiction concepts.

Sometimes warp speed just isn’t an option. How, then, to traverse vast cosmic distances? Jump through a wormhole, of course.

These tunnels through space-time allow starships to zip across the galaxy in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and form the alien transit hub seen in the 1997 movie “Contact.”

For now, though, wormholes are merely a concept, and a highly speculative one at that. “The whole thing is very hypothetical at this point,” said Stephen Hsu, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oregon. “No one thinks we’re going to find a wormhole anytime soon.”The ability to ever actually use wormholes as interstellar superhighways seems extremely remote. Yet physics does not close the door completely on the existence of these bridges through space-time.

Burrowing through spacetime

Wormholes have been bandied about by scientists for close to a century now. From a physics standpoint, a number of roads could lead to the creation of wormholes. One of the most explored is Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. “There could be solutions to the Einstein equations which are wormholes,” Hsu told Life’s Little Mysteries.

The solutions describe a “tube” through the four dimensions of space-time, potentially connecting two regions vast distances apart. Think of two dots on a sheet of paper that is then folded so the dots overlap. That overlap is your wormhole, and it could theoretically allow for the transfer of matter from dot A to dot B instantaneously, instead of traveling the normal, long way across the sheet.

Scientists have theorized how a wormhole might work. The “entrance” would be a black hole. Where matter “exits” from the wormhole would be, naturally, a white hole. The first half of that construction definitely exists: Black holes — hyperdense objects thought to be at the center of many galaxies, some of which are known to have formed during the collapse of giant stars — exert so much gravity that not even light can escape their clutches. [Slideshow: 6 Everyday Things That Happen Strangely in Space]

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