In science fiction, wormholes are often used for traveling long distances in space. Is it possible these magical bridges the reality? With all my enthusiasm, the future of mankind in space (and here, under the space I don’t mean Solar system and not even the galaxy) looks foggy. We are bags of meat and water, water more, and the stars very, very far away. Armed with the most optimistic technology of space flight, imaginable, to reach another star for human life is unlikely.
Reality tells us that even the closest stars are incomprehensibly far away, and would require an enormous amount of energy and time to make the journey. Reality says that we need a ship that somehow is going to last hundreds or thousands of years will be born generations and generations of astronauts to live out their lives and die on the way to another star.
Science fiction, on the other hand, teases us seductively by methods of advanced movement. Cut the warp engine and watch the stars rush by, and a trip to alpha Centauri seem like a pleasure cruise.
Even easier to take the wormhole. A magical bridge connecting two points in space and time with each other. Just determine your destination, wait for the Stargate to stabilize and move. Move to a place for halfway across the galaxy from you.
It would be nice. Someone really needs to invent wormholes, paving — no, cut through — for us the track of the bold new future of intergalactic travel. How did these wormholes and why we still don’t use them?
A wormhole, also known as bridge of Einstein — Rosen, is a theoretical method pierce the space and time so that you can connect two points in space together. And then to move instantly from one to another.
A classic example of the demonstration of the wormhole was shown in the movie “interstellar”: draw two points on paper, and then fold the paper and use a pencil to pierce both points. Well, on paper everything is clear, but what about the physics?
Einstein showed that gravity is not a force that attracts matter like magnetism, but rather warps space-time. Moon thinks that moving in a straight line through space, but actually follows a curved path created by Earth’s gravity.
Albert Einstein and physicist Nathan Rosen decided that it is possible to confuse the space-time so closely that the two points share the same physical location. If you then manage to stabilize all of this you will be able to gently separate two regions of space-time so that they will be in one place, but at any distance from each other.
Take a dip in a gravity well on one side of the wormhole and instantly find yourself on the other side. For millions or billions of light years. And while wormholes theoretically it is perfectly possible to create, in practice, from what we know at the moment, it’s almost impossible.
The first major problem is that the wormhole impassable in accordance with the General theory of relativity. Think about it: physics, which predicts these things, you can’t use them as a method of transportation. This is a serious argument against them.
Second, even if the wormhole is possible to create, they will be completely unstable and collapse immediately after formation. If you try to go in one end, you can easily fall into a black hole.
Thirdly, even if they will be passable and stable, attempt some material to pass through them, not even photons of light can lead to collapse.
However, there is a glimmer of hope, as the physics still not figured out how to unify gravity and quantum mechanics. This means that the universe itself can hide the facts about the wormhole, which we do not yet understand. There is a possibility that they are generated naturally as part of the Big Bang, when space-time was messed up the entire Universe in a singularity.
Astronomers have proposed to look for wormholes in space, watching the way their gravity distorts the light of stars behind them. But so far found nothing.
There is also the possibility that wormholes appear in a natural way, similar to virtual particles, which, as we know, exist. Only would be extremely small, in the Planck scale. You will need a small spacecraft.
One of the most exciting consequences of wormholes is that they can be used for time travel. Here’s how it works. First, create the wormhole in the laboratory. Then take one end of the wormhole, put on a spacecraft and fly at a speed close to that of light, so that triggered the effect of time dilation. For people on a space ship will be just a few years, then how on Earth will pass hundreds or even thousands of years. If you manage to keep the wormhole stable, open and passable, to travel through it would be very interesting.
If you go in one direction, you will not only overcome the distance between the wormholes, but also move from one time to another. And this should work in both directions, there and back. Some physicists like Leonard Susskind believe that it won’t work because it violates two basic principles of physics: the conservation of local energy and the uncertainty principle energy-time.
Unfortunately, it seems that the wormhole must remain in the realm of science fiction for the foreseeable future and possibly forever. Even if it will be possible to create a wormhole, it will have to maintain a stable and open, and figure out how not to allow the matter to collapse. However, if we ever take this feat, the issue with traveling in space will be solved.