Consider two settlements on opposing sides of a mountain. People from these communities would have to trek around the mountain to see each other. They could, however, dig a tunnel right through the mountain to establish a shortcut if they wanted to get there faster. That is the concept of a wormhole.
A wormhole is a tunnel connecting two distant points in our universe that reduces the time it takes to go from one to the other. Instead of traveling for millions of years from one galaxy to another, under the appropriate conditions, a wormhole might hypothetically reduce travel time to hours or minutes.
Wormholes, because they are shortcuts across space-time, have the potential to operate as time machines. You could emerge from one end of a wormhole at a different moment than when you entered the other.
While there is no proof that wormholes exist in our world, they are useful tools for astrophysicists like me to think about space and time. They may also provide answers to age-old questions regarding the nature of the universe.
Is it true or false?
Because of these intriguing characteristics, many science fiction writers incorporate wormholes in their novels and films. Scientists, like novelists, have been enthralled by the concept of wormholes.
While no wormholes have been discovered in our universe, scientists frequently observe wormholes stated in the solutions to major physics equations. Wormholes are prominent among the solutions to the equations underlying Einstein’s theories of space-time and general relativity.
This hypothesis describes the shape of the cosmos as well as the movement of stars, planets, and other objects inside it. Some scientists believe wormholes exist somewhere in the universe since Einstein’s idea has been tested numerous times and confirmed to be right each time.
Other scientists, however, believe that wormholes cannot exist because they are too unstable.
Every object in the cosmos, including Earth, is affected by gravity’s continual pull. Gravity would therefore influence wormholes as well. Scientists that are dubious of wormholes believe that the middle of the wormhole would collapse under its gravity after a short period unless there was some force pushing outward from inside the wormhole to offset that pull. The most likely method would be to use “negative energies,” which would oppose gravity and stabilize the wormhole.
However, scientists believe that negative energy can only be formed in quantities far too minuscule to resist the gravity of a wormhole. It’s possible that the Big Bang spawned teeny, tiny wormholes containing minuscule amounts of negative energy at the beginning of the universe, and that these wormholes spread out over time as the cosmos expanded.
Exactly like black holes?
While wormholes are intriguing concepts, they have yet to be recognized by mainstream science. But it doesn’t mean they don’t exist; black holes, which astrophysicists know to exist in our universe, weren’t recognized when scientists originally proposed them in the 1910s.
Einstein first proposed his renowned field equations in 1915, and after only one year, German physicist Karl Schwarzschild discovered a means to mathematically characterize black holes.
This description, however, was so strange that the top scientists of the day refused to believe that black holes could exist in nature. It took 50 years for people to take black holes seriously; the name “black hole” was not even used until 1967.
Wormholes might do the same thing. It may take some time for scientists to reach an agreement on whether or not they can exist. However, if they find convincing evidence pointing to the existence of wormholes – which they may be able to accomplish by observing unusual motions in star orbits – the revelation will change how scientists see and comprehend the universe.