This article was originally published at The Conversation. (opens in new tab) The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Dejan Stojkovic (opens in new tab), Professor of Physics, University at Buffalo
Curious Kids (opens in new tab) is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.
What are wormholes and do they exist? — Chinglembi D., age 12, Silchar, Assam, India
Imagine two towns on two opposite sides of a mountain. People from these towns would probably have to travel all the way around the mountain to visit one another. But, if they wanted to get there faster, they could dig a tunnel straight through the mountain to create a shortcut. That’s the idea behind a wormhole.
A wormhole is like a tunnel between two distant points (opens in new tab) in our universe that cuts the travel time from one point to the other. Instead of traveling for many millions of years from one galaxy to another, under the right conditions one could theoretically use a wormhole to cut the travel time (opens in new tab) down to hours or minutes.
Because wormholes represent shortcuts through space-time (opens in new tab), they could even act like time machines. You might emerge from one end of a wormhole at a time earlier than when you entered its other end.
While scientists have no evidence that wormholes actually exist in our world, they’re good tools to help astrophysicists like me (opens in new tab) think about space and time. They may also answer age-old questions about what the universe looks like.
Fact or fiction?
Because of these interesting features, many science fiction writers use wormholes in novels and movies. However, scientists have been just as captivated by the idea of wormholes as writers have.
While researchers have never found a wormhole in our universe, scientists often see wormholes described in the solutions to important physics equations. Most prominently, the solutions to the equations behind Einstein’s theory of space-time and general relativity include wormholes. This theory describes the shape of the universe and how stars, planets and other objects move throughout it. Because Einstein’s theory has been tested many, many times and found to be correct every time (opens in new tab), some scientists do expect wormholes to exist somewhere out in the universe.
But, other scientists think wormholes can’t possibly…
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