If wormholes exists, could we really Travel through them?

Ibadur Rahman

B. Sc 3^rd Sem (Major)

Wormholes could offer a path to the most distant places in the universe. Wormholes make the best shortcuts in the universe. That’s true in a literal sense, since the theoretical things can connect distant corners of the cosmos (or even different universes), allowing a traveller to go some place without having to visit everywhere in between.

But wormholes also present the perfect way for writers to get around the pesky speed of light, the universe’s speed limit and impediment to fast travel through the cosmos. If characters in science fiction aren’t taking months or years to travel between worlds, a wormhole is likely a reason.

But wormholes could exist. We just don’t know whether they actually do, or for that matter, if they would be useful to us as potential shortcuts. But ever since Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity, we’ve had the mathematical language for describing and imagining these fantastic structures. Back then, though scientists referred to them as “ one – dimensional tubes “ and simply “ bridges” – in fact, the term “ Einstein- Rosen bridge” is still used semi- interchangeably with “ wormholes” . (‘Rosen’ being Israeli Physicist Nathan Rosen )

It was American Physicist John Wheeler who coined the “vermicular” vernacular in 1957 “Annals of Physics Paper” : ‘This analysis forces one to consider situations’, he wrote, ‘where there is a net flux of lines of force, through what topologists would call ‘a handle’ of the multi- connected space, and what physicists might perhaps be excused for more vividly forming a ‘wormhole’.

It’s a lucky thing, because that vivid name helps describe just what we’re talking about. The curvature of space and lines of force might not mean much to most people, but who can’t imagine a worm eating its way through an apple or piece of timber? The resulting tunnel, connecting one part of the surface with another most distant part, is the perfect metaphor for something that can connect otherwise remote location in the universe. And, Einstein also showed that space and time are fundamentally interconnected, travelling through a wormhole might not only take us to another far away place, but it could even serve as a shortcut to another time.

In real life, the speed of light is the end of the line. Nothing with mass can even accelerate faster. Wormholes, thus, are the perfect way to bypass Einstein’s speed limit. But the first problem for any explore determined to survey a wormhole is simply finding one. While Einstein’s works say that they can exist, we just currently don’t know of any. They may actually be impossible after all, forbidden by some deeper physics that the universe obeys but we haven’t discovered.