wormhole

Also known as wormholes, worm-hole, worm-holes

thumb|upright=1.3|A wormhole visualized as a two-dimensional surface. Route (a) is the shortest path through normal space between points 1 and 2; route (b) is a shorter path through a wormhole.

AI overview

A wormhole is a theoretical tunnel through space that could potentially connect two distant points more directly than traveling through normal space. If wormholes exist, they could allow shortcuts across the universe, though physicists have not yet confirmed they are real or physically possible.

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Image: Lorentzian Wormhole.svg

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Commons category: Wormholes

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~25 min read

Article

20 sections

Contents

Terminology
Modern definitions
Development
Schwarzschild wormholes
Einstein–Rosen bridges
Traversable wormholes
Raychaudhuri's theorem and exotic matter
Modified general relativity
Faster-than-light travel
Time travel
Interuniversal travel
Metrics
In fiction
Warp portals and higher-dimensional shortcuts
See also
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
External links

thumb|upright=1.3|A wormhole visualized as a two-dimensional surface. Route (a) is the shortest path through normal space between points 1 and 2; route (b) is a shorter path through a wormhole.

A wormhole is a hypothetical structure that connects disparate points in spacetime. It can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, different points in time, or both). Wormholes are based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations. Wormholes are consistent with the general theory of relativity, but whether they actually exist is unknown. Many physicists postulate that wormholes are merely projections of a fourth spatial dimension, analogous to how a two-dimensional (2D) being could experience only part of a three-dimensional (3D) object.