Unfortunately, according to Einstein's laws, this is impossible. They say that space can stretch and warp, but it cannot rip. Wormholes might exist somewhere fully formed, but you could not rip space to create a new one, over Manhattan or anywhere else. In other words, I can't take a wormhole to work.
But now string theory is giving us a whole new perspective on space, and it's showing us that Einstein wasn't always right. To see how, let's take a much closer look at the spatial fabric.
If we could shrink down to about a millionth of a billionth of our normal size, we'd enter the world of quantum mechanics, the laws that control how atoms behave. It's the world of light and electricity and everything else that operates at the smallest of scales. Here, the fabric of space is random and chaotic. Rips and tears might be commonplace. But if they were, what would stop a rip in the fabric of space from creating a cosmic catastrophe?
Well, this is where the power of strings comes in. Strings calm the chaos. And as a single string dances through space, it sweeps out a tube. The tube can act like a bubble that surrounds the tear, a protective shield with profound implications. Strings actually make it possible for space to rip.
