Wonder Project | Wormholes 

What are wormholes? How could their existence change spacetime as we know it? How could it affect space travel? Does it only work on paper, or could the theories be real? How do they connect black and white holes?

These are all questions I had while researching my initial Wonder question “What are wormholes, and how could their existence affect Earth and space?”.  

To start, what is a wormhole? There are many possible answers as wormholes are highly theoretical but the best way to explain one is if you imagine the universe like a folded piece of paper. If bent in the right way, it could create a wormhole. Going through a wormhole would be like walking through a door except it could take you to another side of the universe.  

This is essentially what it would look like from each side 

Wormholes existing could revolutionize space travel for humans and allow us to travel possibly faster than the speed of light. Einstein’s theory of relativity proves mathematically that wormholes could exist, but we have yet to find one. Math, although helpful, does not describe reality. 

While researching Wormholes I was able to find three main theories.  

• Einstein’s Rosen Bridges 
• String theory 
• Manmade Wormholes using Exotic Matter 

Einstein’s Rosen Bridge Theory 

First is Einstein’s Rosen Bridge theory. After Einstein published his theory of relativity, it says that gravity defines how objects will attract each other and affect space and time around them. This backs up wormholes in a sense and led to the mathematical equations that created the Rosen bridge theory.  

Imagine a black hole, as we know black holes attract and pull objects towards them. Because of different equations,  it showed that this black hole might not be by itself and that it could have another side A.K.A a white hole. While the black hole inhales everything the white hole expels everything. The white hole would essentially be in a parallel universe where time moves backwards. 

Although this theory could be real, it would not be a traversable wormhole. It would take an infinite amount of time to reach the other side which would result in your death before you reach the end.

String theory  

This theory, unlike the last, opens the possibility for traversable wormholes. The string theory gets very complicated but essentially after the Big Bang quantum fluctuations (which are smaller than an atom. Their size is 10^-35m) may have created a vast number of traversable wormholes. Threaded through these wormholes are cosmic strings which keep the wormholes open and theoretically traversable for humans. If these wormholes exist because of the Big Bang, they could be spread out all over the universe and we just need to discover one.  

(A video in case you’re curious about string theory) 

Manmade Theory  

The final theory I found about wormholes was a manmade Wormhole. In theory and with the right resources we could create our own wormhole. This wormhole can’t contain an event horizon if we want it to be traversable both ways, it’s mass must be just right so gravity doesn’t kill humans and the biggest problem we need to figure out is keeping it open.  

Because of gravity, if we were to create a wormhole it would shut almost immediately. We would need a matter with more power than the center of a neutron star to keep it open. This is where exotic matter comes in. Unlike positive and negative matter which attract because of positive mass, exotic matter repels due to having negative mass. With enough exotic matter, it would be powerful enough to repel gravity and keep the wormhole open.  

Now even with all these theories and solutions, Wormholes present quite a few issues. The existence of wormholes could create time travel paradoxes and would pretty much break spacetime. They essentially violate the structure of the universe. Because of this Wormholes currently exist only through paper equations and our minds. 

Their existence could revolutionize life as we know it, we could travel the universe easily and change physics as we know it but currently, that isn’t a possibility.   

This video goes more into depth about the theories and wormhole explanation 

Resources!!