What is Wormholes: Definition and 113 Discussions

A wormhole (or Einstein–Rosen bridge or Einstein–Rosen wormhole) is a speculative structure linking disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations.
A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, different points in time, or both).
Wormholes are consistent with the general theory of relativity by Einstein, but whether wormholes actually exist remains to be seen. Many scientists postulate that wormholes are merely projections of a fourth spatial dimension, analogous to how a two-dimensional (2D) being could experience only part of a three-dimensional (3D) object.Theoretically, a wormhole might connect extremely long distances such as a billion light years, or short distances such as a few meters, or different points in time, or even different universes.

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  1. B

    B Visible Light Through a Wormhole

    In the Stephen Baxter novel "The Light of Other Days," scientists develop a technology which allows information to be sent and received through a wormhole, first gamma-ray bursts then visible light. This technology develops into a near-omniscient camera system which allows a viewer to observe...
  2. jaketodd

    I Event Horizon movie, with some interesting concepts (papers cited)

    Please hear me out; I've referenced some good papers below, and I think you'll find the movie clip intriguing. Is there anything solid to this movie? The faster than light travel. The dimensional gateway. The folding of spacetime, passing through the hole, and then the return of spacetime to...
  3. Onyx

    B Intra-Universe Wormhole Metrics

    Are there any metrics for intra-universe wormholes?
  4. Onyx

    B Find Geodesics in Dynamic Ellis Orbits Metric

    Does anyone see a way I can find geodesics in the metric ##ds^2=-dt^2+dp^2+(5p^2+4t^2)d\phi^2## (ones with nonzero angular momentum)? I'm hoping it can be done analytically, but that may be wishful thinking. FYI, this is the metric listed at the bottom of the Wikipedia article about Ellis Wormholes.
  5. S

    I Wormholes & Warp Drives: Can Circular Polarizers Create Them?

    hello i would like to ask if circular polarizers generate wormholes and warp drives. thanks very much.
  6. G

    B What does relativity say about wormholes?

    I would like to think this is a legitimate question in the fold of Relativity theory. It originally started with the idea that "If someone were to wormhole themselves 2000 or so light years away and turn their sights back on the Earth, they could possibly get a glimpse of the Crucifixion?" On...
  7. Dave Gungan

    B How many nuclear weapons are needed to make a wormhole?

    Hi guys! After many years of lurking quietly I finally have a question that I'd like to know, please. I'd like to know how much energy is needed to make a wormhole in terms of our current nuclear weapons, or how much mass is needed to turn into pure energy, maybe via antimatter annihilation...
  8. G

    B Can electromagnetic waves traverse wormholes?

    Hello I'm new to this forum and interested in astrophysics and metaphysics. My first question here is if we can create nano sized wormholes to send information faster than light to other stars for example. We don't need to travel if we could send small satellites or even just radiowaves to the...
  9. Pmfr

    Hypothetical sci-fi question about wormholes and elapsed time

    Hi there. I'm writing a sci-fi story for a video game. At some point in time an advanced civilization from the future, say 4010, creates a wormhole for a not so advanced civilization spacecraft in the past, say 2050, to travel through. The idea is for the not so advanced civilization...
  10. A

    B Wormholes & Warp Drives: Refuted by AANEC?

    I'm not an expert, I'm definitely a scifi fan, But I'm hoping for professional opinions on a particular view of the old wormholes and/or warp drives issue... A quote from scientist Tim Andersen: "Achronal Average Null Energy Condition or AANEC may be the ultimate cosmic traffic cop making...
  11. G

    How do 3-D wormholes work/shift space compared to 2-D portals?

    Wormholes, or Einstein-Rosen bridges, are often hypothesized to be spherical in shape. The hole parts, that is. The 2007 videogame Portal gives a different take on hyperdimensional shortcuts. In the game, "portals" are these oval-shaped, planar holes in the fabric of spacetime, and they...
  12. Alex Petrosyan

    Why the explanation of wormholes using paper grinds my gears

    Hey, This is more of a discussion rather than a question. A lot of movies (e.g. interstellar, Event Horizon), have a go at trying to explain how the Warp/Alcubierre drive could work, and usually, the argument goes like this: They take a point A and a point B, connect them with a line on the...
  13. BadgerBadger92

    I Are wormholes and tachyon fields unified?

    I read this article. Apparently tachyon fields and wormholes (classical and quantum) are unified. Is there any credibility? I know that with the known laws of physics we can’t go faster than light, and also that tachyons are hypothetical. What is the credibility and what are your opinions? How...
  14. nomadreid

    I Inter-Bubble Connections in Inflationary Multiverse Models?

    I know this is getting into the highly speculative, but given the mathematics that has been done on versions of these concepts that are not known to be inconsistent: In the inflation concept which leads to a multiverse of the "bubble universes" type, in which the laws governing the space-time...
  15. Q

    B Can we entangle particles to make wormholes our own size?

    Is it possible to find a particle large enough when entangled can create a wormhole for humans?
  16. Richie Smash

    B Faster than Light and wormholes

    If the concept of a wormhole is like folding a piece of space-time like a piece of paper, for near instantaneous travel faster than light, what is keeping us back right now? I am aware that it's really complicated and far beyond my scope of understanding right now, however I am fascinated by...
  17. Aarav Sangar

    I Exploring the Possibility of Creating Wormholes and Switching Universes

    Is there a possibility that we create a wormhole sometime and switch between universes? First of all what is required to make a wormhole? What will happen if we made a wormhole? What proves that there are many universes and that we can switch between them??
  18. C

    I Wormholes & Arbitary High Energy: Exploring Possibilities

    Could we hypothetically use it to create a region of space with the magnitude of the stress component of stress energy tensor greater than magnitude of mass denisty component?
  19. S

    I Time dilation and wormholes?

    Hi, I've been trying to work this out for quite a while and I just can't seem to get anywhere. My question is, if I were to travel between two points, say from Earth to a planet in the Trappist system, I know that if I traveled in a vehicle I would experience time dilation, but if I were to...
  20. T

    I Radiation passing through Planck-scale wormholes

    This is something that has really been bugging me lately. There was a study from over twenty years ago that proposed that electromagnetic radiation might have been able to pass from one end of the universe to another in the early universe, furnishing an explanation for the homogeneity of the...
  21. T

    B A Possible Challenge To Chronology Protection Conjecture?

    Correct me if I am wrong, but my basic understanding of how the Chronology Protection Conjecture (CPC) would work is that, as virtual particles created from the quantum fields of the vacuum would traverse a wormhole and arrive in the past, they would then travel back into the wormhole alongside...
  22. F

    B Entanglement using Wormholes?

    Hasn't anyone or others thought of this before.. entanglement using wormholes seem to be quite obvious and logical. According to Jun Maldacena in November 2016 issue of Scientific American (see...
  23. Quantum of Solace

    I Exploring a Link between Wormholes & Entanglement

    I apologize in advance that this is not the usual format. I don't have a specific question, and it's not out of peer review just yet, but this new study seems pretty interesting overall. Does anyone here want to share any thoughts on this? Seems pretty darn interesting to me...
  24. G

    Does quantum entanglement in fact equal a wormhole?

    So I came across this paper claiming that quantum entanglement was an as yet not understood Einstein Rosen-Bridge: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.0533v2.pdf I have two questions pertaining to this: 1. Does the math on this paper actually check out and is this possible? 2. Since this paper...
  25. astrophysicskid

    Exploring Wormholes: Where Do They Lead?

    I don't know pretty much about worm holes. but I have this doubt. Where do worm holes lead us to if we get into one?Do they lead us to a new but different universe or into some other part of this universe?
  26. Ryan Reed

    Wormholes, Gravity & Interaction: Can a Star Pull a Planet?

    Would objects interact via gravity through the wormhole? Let's say there's a star outside one wormhole, and a planet outside the other, would the star pull the planet through the wormhole?
  27. Ryan Reed

    B Magnetic Wormholes: Reality or Fiction?

    There have been things popping up about magnetic wormholes and such, are these claims true? and if they are, how does this work?
  28. H

    Questions about black holes and wormholes

    Questions about black holes: Various articles mention that it takes infinite amount of time to observe something pass through the event horizon. Does this imply that the redshift observed from afar would carry on forever, that the infalling object would just become dimmer and dimmer, but never...
  29. PWiz

    Energy conservation and wormholes

    Okay, so I've had this question on wormholes which seems to have hijacked my mind from some time now, and what better place to bring it out rather than PF? A previous thread containing lots of lengthy posts was made here a few years ago, but I'm not getting a clear-cut answer despite leafing...
  30. N

    Time Travel to the Past: CTC or Wormhole?

    In theory, is time travel to the past possible by traveling completely around the loop of the CTC (where it would seem future links with its own past) or is a wormhole the only way to time travel by way of short cutting the CTC.
  31. S

    Exploring the Possibility of Time-Only Wormholes

    Hello, All! Could a wormhole take us to a different time, but the same place? (Meaning, is it possible for the two mouths of a wormhole to be separated only by time, and not by (significant) space? Thank you very much!
  32. Breo

    A question about wormholes and their typical representation

    Why the wormholes are typically represented as follows: instead: Is the same? in that case why there are two type of draws? Another question, why the wormhole has length? or at least that seems in the draws and in the movies like interstellar or contact.
  33. C

    Rationale Behind Wormholes: Exploring Possibilities

    What's the rationale for wormholes?? Aside from being a cool concept, how did someone decide that they were possible? One thing I know is with the space-time concept, where a u-shaped space-time fabric can be connected to, but that suggests the ability to bend spacetime in a ridiculous...
  34. ChrisVer

    Are Wormholes Physically Possible in Our Universe?

    Well I just have one question. Is the existence of wormholes really possible or not? I've only seen them appearing in the Kruskal metric formalism, where we set the timelike parameter=0... However any motion on that "space" seems unphysical to me (it lies outside any possible light cone)...
  35. C

    Are Wormholes Really Impossible Without Exotic Matter?

    I've read works by Kip Thorne, Brian Greene, Sean Carroll, Leonard Susskind and I get the impression that wormholes are highly problematic and are based on relativistic equations, but not reality. I want to know why wormholes are impossible.
  36. stevebd1

    Could Supermassive Black Holes At The Center Of Galaxies Be Wormholes?

    Not sure how speculative this is but thought it would be of interest- http://www.iflscience.com/space/could-supermassive-black-holes-center-galaxies-be-wormholes and the related paper- http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1883v1 Distinguishing black holes and wormholes with orbiting hot spots by...
  37. H

    Help w/ Wormholes (Neg.Mass & Subatomic particles)

    Ok, so I've been doing some research about wormholes and Faster than Light travel for a book I'm writing and I have a few questions that I figured you guys/girls could help me with. Firstly, I've read that wormholes possibly exist at a subatomic level at the Planck Scale, and my understanding...
  38. F

    Generating energy with wormholes?

    Let's say there's a wormhole entrance on the floor of my room, and the exit would be on the ceiling. If I drop a ball on it, it would "fall forever". Am I right on this one? So, if it falls forever, I could throw some water, and use its motion to turn a gear that would generate electricity. In...
  39. V

    Matter Used to Create Wormholes

    I'm writing a sci-fi novel ("You don't say?") and I've decided that the only method of interstellar travel that will exist is wormholes. I've debated a warp drive that doesn't reach the speed of light, but I'll save that for another time. Basically, I need to know what properties matter would...
  40. P

    Wormholes with a different gravitational potential at each end

    Hi - I have a question about wormholes, specifically when the two endpoints have a differnt gravitational potential. If we imagine the technology extisted to create a person sized wormhole between say the Earth and the moon, I think the popular perception would be that one could simply walk...
  41. P

    Why do we need wormholes to describe entanglement?

    I've seen before and especially now that there is growing support for a theory of wormholes to describe entanglement (even though Hawking showed they can't exist?). But, this makes no sense to me, because you don't need worm holes at all. I thought that you could describe entanglement merely as...
  42. U

    What Happens If a Craft Travels Through a Wormhole and Collides with a Planet?

    Question: If one creates a wormhole (theoretically has a space/hyper drive) and one is going from point A to point B, and there is a moon or planet in the way, intersecting the path... What might happen? Is a wormhole out of space/time of this dimension and thus the craft would pass through...
  43. G

    Would wormholes transmit gravity, if so how?

    Would wormholes transmit gravity, if so how? Seeing as wormholes transmitting gravity would prevent them from being used as a perpetual motion device, generating increasingly more kinetic energy, the way they are in the video game "Portal", and since they would transmit matter, it would stand to...
  44. I

    Uncovering Centuries-Old Secrets: The Fascinating World of Mediaeval Wormholes

    http://phys.org/news/2012-11-wormholes-centuries-old-art-reveal-history.html
  45. F

    Do wormholes require higher dimensions?

    Every picture I've seen to illustrate wormholes is always a shortcut from one point on a 2D surface to another. And it's easy to see that the distance is shorter through the wormhole since we are view it from a 3D perspective. This makes me wonder if higher dimensions are required to construct...
  46. I

    The philosophy of Wormholes, Blackholes, Deep space, etc

    Many scientist have actually wondered what scientific discoveries await from the beginning of a wormhole to the bitter end on the other side. But what exactly can be waiting on the other side at the very end of that dark abyss? What do we truly know about the deep regions of space and time...
  47. J

    Wormholes in Euclidean Space?

    As it would appear the universe is spatially flat, a Euclidean Plane. If this is true then how could black holes exist? Doesn't this necessitate that if black holes are embedded in flat space that the mean curvature must be zero and thus all black holes are minimal surfaces? So, if black holes...
  48. G

    Question on the CPC and wormholes

    I've been reading into wormholes lately and understand how a wormhole with one mouth moving with a relativistic speed relative to the other mouth would constitute a time machine if the two mouths were brought close enough together. Apparently a physicist called "Matt Visser" calculated that it's...
  49. S

    Is there a new objection to wormholes based on information loss?

    "New" objection to wormholes Hi. I saw on this site: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/19754/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-through-a-wormhole Has anyone else seen this objection? It's one I haven't seen before, thus the scare-quoted "new" in the title. Not sure if this is the...
  50. Q

    Can Quantum Probability Fields Mimic Wormhole Effects in Particle Transfer?

    Stephen Hawking said wormholes within the fabric of space can't exist, so is it logical to think that you could achieve similar results of a wormhole by creating different areas of probability which take a group of particles and make their location most likely to pop up in another location? How...
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