• Question: how do wormholes work

    Asked by anon-244414 to Ondrej, Jordan, Eleanor, Ed, Christine, Alice on 12 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Eleanor Jones

      Eleanor Jones answered on 12 Mar 2020:

      So theoretically, a wormhole is something that connects two points in space that would basically create a shortcut between them. Strangely enough, the maths involved with general relativity actually predicts that wormholes exist but we have yet to discover any. And even if we do, we wouldn’t be able to use them for things that science fiction has suggested – the wormholes would be super small and super unstable.

    • Photo: Edward Banks

      Edward Banks answered on 12 Mar 2020:

      The idea with wormholes is that they are so dense they stretch the very fabric of space time to breaking point. Bodies with mass create so-called ‘gravity wells’ in space-time; a common way to visualise this is a ball sitting on a sheet, it will create a big dent around itself. The heavier the ball, the deeper the dent. Black holes are so heavy/dense that they create super deep dents/gravity wells, which stretch all the way to a sharp point at the very bottom.
      With wormholes the thinking is; what if this super deep gravity well was somehow connected to another gravity well somewhere else in the universe? This would create a sort of ‘short-cut’ through space-time. You can sort of visualise this by getting a piece of paper, folding it over and cutting a hole through the folded-over parts.
      But we haven’t had any evidence for real wormholes yet- so we’re not sure if they do actually work!

    • Photo: Ondrej Kovanda

      Ondrej Kovanda answered on 14 Mar 2020:

      Just to supplement more visually: imagine actual worm hole running through an apple. Rather than going the long way ‘around’ you can take a shortcut ‘through’. Now, just replace the apple with spacetime! 🙂

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