Can We Create Wormholes?
A look into the popular sci-fi method of travel
Imagine you want to get from point A to point B. Point A in this case is Earth, and point B is our nearest exoplanet, Alpha Centauri Bb at 4.24 light years away. Because the laws of physics prevent anything from traveling faster than the speed of light, that means the minimum number of years it’ll take to reach point B is a little over 4 years. However, for now — and for many more years to come — we don’t have the means to travel anywhere near the speed of light. What we can do with our current technology is travel at around 20,000 miles per hour or 0.003% the speed of light. At this rate it will take us 142,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri Bb.
To send anyone to the exoplanet would take either incredible advancements in human preservation or sending generations of people to live onboard a spaceship, somehow overcoming the problems of reproduction in space, as well as the physical and psychological strain it would put on the families. Then there’s also ship design. What material will hold up for hundreds of thousands of years? How will that many resources — food, water, fuel — fit onto the craft? How will communication work across such a vast distance?
So there is no way to get from point A to point B. Not unless there was some kind of shortcut that would drastically…
