Wormholes and why they might forever be a peice of Science Fiction.
You could get into a wormhole at this very moment, it could take you possibly a million, maybe even a billion years into the past. It could also take you to last week, or maybe even yesterday. It could take you to Alaska, the edge of the galaxy, the center of the universe, or even your backyard.
“Wormholes are rip in the fabric of space itself.”
— Morgan Freeman
Hate Airplanes? Me too.
Picture, if you will, a world where you could potentially hop from your city to Hawaii in the blink of an eye.
It’s a getaway we all need and we could perhaps, jump into one of those swirly portals you probably thought of when I mentioned ‘Wormholes’, and trust it would take you to the land of Aloha.
This is the promise of wormholes — sci-fi tunnels through space-time that tantalize us with the prospect of interstellar travel.
Three words. Wormholes warp spacetime.
Wormholes are spacetimes with nontrivial topology in which a kind of tunnel exists connecting distant parts in the universe. These wormholes may not only serve as shortcuts in space but also for time travel. — NASA
To simplify, they bend spacetime enough to cause tears in its very fabric allowing the conjunction of two different points in space. and time. (because space and time are connected).
You could get into a wormhole at this very moment, it could take you possibly a million, maybe even a billion years into the past.
It could also take you to last week, or maybe even yesterday. It could take you to Alaska, the edge of the galaxy, the center of the universe, or even your backyard.
..provided that they’re real.
But, are wormholes even real?
Long Story Short
The scientific community loves possibilities. The thing is — in science, everything is a possibility (until its actually proved of course)
Black Holes were, at one point in history, a possiblity.
They aren’t now.
Yeah, we’ve all seen the black hole picture that took over the internet.
But back then, they were a mere possibility — a bunch of equations scribbled on paper, where some people speculated or even went ahead and contradicted that such an entity could even exist.
So, everything that was and everything that will be in the scientific community was/is simply put, a possibility.
A wormhole is a possibility as well.
Wormholes have been cooked up by the scientific community based on theoretical concepts and ideas about as concrete as a marshmallow castle.
It hasn’t stopped scientists and the public from daydreaming about the possibilities ever since.
They could be real, but being the devils advocate that I am, let’s get into why wormholes cant be real.
No Observational Evidence
As much as I would love for wormholes to be real, the truth, unfortunately yeilds that there is absolutely no observational evidence, whatsoever to support their existence.
It’s like searching for a unicorn in a haystack, or hoping to find a leprechaun at the end of a rainbow.
As much as we may want it to be true, there’s just no evidence to back it up.
Black Holes and the misguided leap of faith.
Now, I know what you might be thinking.
“But wait, didn’t they just detect black holes? Doesn’t that prove or like, maybe even support the existence of wormholes?”
Unfortunately, the answer is no.
You might have heard that black holes and wormholes are related concepts, and that’s because both are predicted by the theory of general relativity.
Some scientists have gone so far as to suggest that the intense gravitational forces generated by black holes could create wormholes.
However, it’s important to note that this idea remains purely theoretical and there is currently no direct evidence linking black holes to wormholes.
In fact, the lack of observational evidence for wormholes is a major reason why many scientists remain skeptical about their existence.
We’ve searched the skies and combed through countless data sets, but so far, nada.
Absence of evidence is not Evidence of absence.
There may be some slim chance that wormholes do exist out there in the vast expanse of the universe.
But, until we have some concrete evidence to back it up, we’re stuck with nothing more than your plain old science fiction dreams.
White Holes Violate Physical Laws
The existence of exotic matter with negative energy density is a crucial requirement for the theoretical existence of wormholes, as they would need to generate enough negative energy to hold the wormhole open.
What’s Exotic matter?
It’s a hypothetical form of matter which violates some of the commonly known laws of physics.
It is called “exotic” because it has properties that are not found in normal matter.
One of the most significant properties of exotic matter is that it has negative energy density, meaning it has less energy than empty space.
This is a bizarre concept because normal matter always has positive energy density.
However, despite many attempts, no evidence of exotic matter has been found in the universe, and its existence remains purely speculative.
Violation Of Causality and Paradoxes arise
The Infamous Grandfather Paradox:
A person goes back in time to kill their own grandfather before their parent is born.
If this were to happen, it would create a paradox where the person’s parent would never be born.
so, the person themselves would never exist to go back in time and commit the act.
This goes against the principle of cause and effect because the cause of the person’s non-existence is a result of the effect (killing their grandfather) that hasn’t happened yet.
It defies our understanding of how events are supposed to unfold in a logical order.
Since wormholes, function as a conduit between space and time, this would entail the foreboding concept of time travel, because not only could one travel between two points in space, but also two points in time.
Although the thought of time travel sounds pretty cool, a bunch of paradoxes arise which would in fact make us think twice if time travel could even be possible.
If time travel isn’t possible, wormholes too — aren’t possible.
As I said earlier, they are a possibility, and that’s all they are.
Given what we have at the moment and with no evidence linking that they could exist, I don’t see any reason to propogate that they are real currently.
They could be, but until then I guess until then we’re stuck with mere speculations and shots in the dark.
Present-day science cannot speak for future science: It is in principle impossible to make any secure inferences from the substance of science at one time about its substance at a significantly different time. The prospect of future scientific revolutions can never be precluded. — Nicholas Rescher (1984)
