Introduction to Wormholes

• Wormholes appear round/spherical like black holes
• Light from other side passes through creating window to far away place
• Once crossed, other side comes into view with old home receding into shimmering spherical window
• Question: real physics or "magic disguised as physics and math"

Space-Time Fundamentals

• Historical view: space as flat stage where universe events unfold
• Empty stage exists unchanging and eternal
• Einstein's relativity changed this concept
  • Space and time make up stage together
  • Not same everywhere
  • Things on stage affect stage itself (stretching/warping)
  • Old stage: unmoving hardwood → Einstein's stage: water bed
• Elastic space can be bent, torn, patched together
• Makes wormholes theoretically possible

2D Visualization

• Universe like big flat sheet
• Bent right way, wormholes connect distant spots with short bridge
• Cross almost instantaneously
• Enable travel faster than speed of light

Current Status

• Presently exist only on paper
• General relativity says might be possible but doesn't mean they exist
• Mathematical theory with many possible answers
• Not all math describes reality
• Theoretically possible with different kinds

Einstein-Rosen Bridges

• First kind of wormholes theorized
• Describe every black hole as portal to infinite parallel universe
• 2D visualization:
  • Empty space-time flat but curved by objects
  • Compress object → space-time more curved
  • Eventually space-time warps, collapses into black hole
  • One-way barrier forms: Event Horizon
  • Anything enters, nothing escapes
  • Trapped at singularity core
• Alternative possibility:
  • No singularity
  • Other side looks like our universe but mirrored upside down
  • Time runs backwards
  • Our universe: things fall into black hole
  • Parallel universe: mirror black hole spews things out (white hole)
• Fatal limitation:
  • Can't actually be crossed
  • Takes infinite time to cross to opposite universe
  • Crimp shut in middle
  • Going into black hole = death, not emergence from white hole

Traversable Wormholes

• Needed for cosmic travel in blink of eye
• String Theory possibilities:
  • If correct description of universe, could be lucky
  • Universe might have tangled web of countless wormholes already
• Early universe formation:
  • Shortly after Big Bang
  • Quantum fluctuations at smallest scales (far smaller than atom)
  • Created many traversable wormholes
  • Threaded through with cosmic strings
  • First billionth of trillionth second after Big Bang
  • Tiny wormhole ends pulled light years apart
  • Scattered through universe
• Could be everywhere waiting to be discovered
• One might be closer than realized

Black Holes vs Wormholes

• From outside, look very similar
• Some physicists suggest supermassive black holes in galaxy centers actually wormholes
• Very hard to travel to Milky Way center to verify
• Alternative: try to make wormholes artificially

Wormhole Requirements

• Must connect two distant parts of space-time (bedroom/bathroom or Earth/Jupiter)
• Should not contain event horizons (would block two-way travel)
• Should be sufficiently sized so gravitational forces don't kill human travelers

Keeping Wormholes Open

• Biggest problem: gravity tries to close wormholes
• Gravity wants to pinch closed, cut bridge
• Leaves only black holes at ends
• Whether traversable wormhole or to another universe, will try to close
• Need something propping open
• Very old String Theory wormholes: cosmic strings do job
• Man-made wormholes: need exotic matter

Exotic Matter

• Not anything like Earth matter or antimatter
• Totally new and different with crazy properties
• Has negative mass (positive mass is attractive via gravity)
• Negative mass is repulsive, pushes away
• Creates anti-gravity that props open wormholes
• Must exert enormous pressure to push space-time open
• Greater pressure than centers of neutron stars
• With exotic matter, could weave space-time however desired

Vacuum of Space as Exotic Matter

• Potential candidate for exotic matter
• Quantum fluctuations in empty space constantly creating particle/antiparticle pairs
• Annihilated instant later
• Vacuum of space "boiling" with them
• Can already manipulate to produce effect similar to negative mass
• Could use to stabilize wormholes

Wormhole Network Construction

• Once keeping open, ends start together
• Must move around to interesting places
• Could wire solar system
• Leave one end of each wormhole in Earth orbit
• Fling others into deep space
• Earth could be wormhole hub for vast interstellar human civilization
• Spread over light years but only wormhole away

Dark Side of Wormholes

• Opening single wormhole breaks universe in fundamental ways
• Potentially creates time travel paradoxes
• Violates causal structure of universe
• Many scientists think means should be impossible to make
• Impossible for them to exist at all

Current Conclusion

• For now, wormholes exist only "in our hearts and on paper in form of equations"