Published By: Shriparna

What are Wormholes and how these space-time shortcuts act like time machines

Wormholes is a kind of thing that cuts the travel time between two distant points in the universe.

Imagine there is a town on one side of a mountain and another on the other side. People from these two communities would have to travel a long way to visit each other. But if they could dig a tunnel through the mountain they can get there in no time. Worm hole is that tunnel through time.

Wormholes is a kind of thing that cuts the travel time between two distant points in the universe. In this case, the tunnel goes from one point to another. For most people, the journey from one galaxy to another can take millions of years. With the right conditions, one can use a wormhole to cut the trip down to just minutes or hours.

Wormholes: Fact or fiction?

Many science fiction writers have used space-time tunnels in their works. Scientists, on the other hand, were just as fascinated by the idea.

Although scientists have never discovered a space-time tunnel in our universe, they commonly see hints of this in the solutions to some of the most important physics equations. For instance, the solutions to some of Einstein's general relativity and space-time equations involve the use of wormholes.

Yet, there are other scientists who overthrow the concept of wormholesbecause they would be too unstable.

They also believe that the constant pull of gravity on objects in the universe, such as Earth, could cause a space-time tunnel to collapse. According to these scientists, if a space-time tunnel is unstable, it could collapse under its own gravity after a short time. The most likely way to fix this issue is by using a type of negative energy.

Are wormholes similar to blackholes?

Despite being interesting, the idea of a space-time tunnel that can travel through time is not widely accepted in mainstream science. Black holes, which are also known to exist in our universe, were first suggested to be possible during the 1910s.

Einstein first came up with the field equations in 1915. A year later, Karl Schwarzschild was able to describe black holes using a method that only took a year.

It took a long time for people to realize the existence of black holes. For instance, it took until 1967 for the term black hole to be coined. It may take scientists a while to come up with a consensus regarding the possibility of a black hole or a space-time tunnel coming into existence. However, if they find strong evidence that supports the existence of these objects, the discovery could help scientists understand the universe.