Is it theoretically possible to create a wormhole on Earth? (2024)

Asked by: Sam Stonefield,via email

In 1935, Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen showed that black holes can theoretically be connected via ‘wormholes’ – shortcuts through space and time that could link up black holes light-years apart.

To create a wormhole on Earth, we’d first need a black hole. This is problematic: creating a black hole just a centimetre across would require crushing a mass roughly equal to that of the Earth down to this tiny size. Plus, in the 1960s theorists showed that wormholes would be incredibly unstable.

It could be possible to stabilise the wormhole using so-called ‘exotic matter’, whose existence is predicted by quantum theory. This weird stuff is expected to have an antigravitational effect, which could stop the wormhole collapsing. But no one has a clue how to do any of this. And even if they did, it might all be pointless: theorists now suspect that travelling via wormholes would actually take longer than simply taking the conventional route through space.

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Is it theoretically possible to create a wormhole on Earth? (2024)

FAQs

Is it theoretically possible to create a wormhole on Earth? ›

To create a wormhole on Earth, we'd first need a black hole. This is problematic: creating a black hole just a centimetre across would require crushing a mass roughly equal to that of the Earth down to this tiny size. Plus, in the 1960s theorists showed that wormholes would be incredibly unstable.

Is it theoretically possible to create a wormhole? ›

Modified general relativity

In some hypotheses where general relativity is modified, it is possible to have a wormhole that does not collapse without having to resort to exotic matter. For example, this is possible with R2 gravity, a form of f ( R ) gravity.

Could a wormhole exist on Earth? ›

While scientists have no evidence that wormholes actually exist in our world, they're good tools to help astrophysicists like me think about space and time. They may also answer age-old questions about what the universe looks like.

Is wormhole practically possible? ›

The shortcuts came to be called Einstein-Rosen bridges, or wormholes. "The whole thing is very hypothetical at this point," said Stephen Hsu, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oregon, told our sister site, LiveScience. "No one thinks we're going to find a wormhole anytime soon."

Has NASA created a wormhole? ›

Wormholes are theorized but have never been shown to actually exist. No one has any solid idea whether they really exist and it is unlikely one could be created and controlled.

Did Google create a wormhole? ›

In November 2022, Maria Spiropulu at the California Institute of Technology and her colleagues announced that they had used Google's Sycamore quantum computer to simulate a holographic wormhole.

How much energy is needed to create a wormhole? ›

There is no easy answer to this question.

You need all sorts of strange things like negative energy or repulsive gravity for which we have seen no evidence that they exist. However, an interesting detail is that energy is conserved in the equations which predict wormholes.

How do you prove wormholes exist? ›

There are three methods that can possibly detect wormholes: Negative Temperature, Hawking/ Phantom Radiation, and Kα iron emission lines. This paper discusses whether or not any of these three methods are useful ways to detect wormholes with today's technology and if so, which one is the best and which is the worst.

Do white holes exist? ›

The negative square root solution inside the horizon represents a white hole. A white hole is a black hole running backwards in time. Just as black holes swallow things irretrievably, so also do white holes spit them out. White holes cannot exist, since they violate the second law of thermodynamics.

Do black holes exist? ›

We can't see them, but we know that black holes can exist thanks to the groundwork laid by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. A black hole forms when the mass of an object, like a star, suddenly collapses down to a tiny volume. A small object with a large mass causes a gaping dent in space-time.

Did Cern create a wormhole? ›

Does the Large Hadron Collider create black holes or wormholes that could be used as portals? No. Absolutely not.

What is the formula for the wormhole theory? ›

For the wormhole metric, ds2 = -dt2 + dr2 + (b2 + r2)(dθ2 + sin2 θ dφ2).

Has anyone been in a black hole? ›

Fortunately, this has never happened to anyone — black holes are too far away to pull in any matter from our solar system. But scientists have observed black holes ripping stars apart, a process that releases a tremendous amount of energy.

Can we theoretically create a wormhole? ›

To create a wormhole on Earth, we'd first need a black hole. This is problematic: creating a black hole just a centimetre across would require crushing a mass roughly equal to that of the Earth down to this tiny size. Plus, in the 1960s theorists showed that wormholes would be incredibly unstable.

Are wormholes mathematically possible? ›

We show that wormholes are not mathematically allowed in the spherical metric of a newly-released unified quantum gravity theory known as collision space-time [1] [2] [3].

Could a human survive a wormhole? ›

Humans could survive a trip through a wormhole, but there's a catch. There are drawbacks to this method — namely, such wormholes would be only microscopic, which means even the most hardcore exercise routine wouldn't make humans thin enough for the trip.

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