Wormhole

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For other uses, see Wormhole (disambiguation).
"Einstein-Rosen Bridge" redirects here. For the EP by Venetian Snares,
see Einstein-Rosen Bridge (EP).
Part of a series of articles about

General relativity


o Introduction
o History
 Mathematical formulation

o Tests

Fundamental concepts[show]
Phenomena[hide]
 Gravitoelectromagnetism
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 Gravitational time dilation
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  Frame-dragging
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Spacetime
 Space
 Time
 Spacetime diagrams
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 Wormhole 
o Ellis wormhole

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A wormhole (or Einstein–Rosen bridge or Einstein–Rosen
wormhole) is a speculative structure linking disparate points
in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field
equations. A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at
separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, or different points
in time, or both.)
Wormholes are consistent with the general theory of relativity, but
whether wormholes actually exist remains to be seen. Many scientists
postulate wormholes are merely a projection of the 4th dimension,
analogous to how a 2D being could experience only part of a 3D object.
[1]
 A wormhole could connect extremely long distances such as a
billion light years or more, short distances such as a few meters,
different universes, or different points in time.[2]

Contents

 1Visualization
 2Terminology
o 2.1Modern definitions
 3Development
o 3.1Schwarzschild wormholes
o 3.2Einstein–Rosen bridges
o 3.3Traversable wormholes
 4Raychaudhuri's theorem and exotic matter
 5Modified general relativity
 6Faster-than-light travel
 7Time travel
 8Interuniversal travel
 9Metrics
 10In fiction
 11See also
 12Notes
 13References
o 13.1Citations
o 13.2Sources
 14External links

Visualization[edit]

Wormhole visualized in 2D
For a simplified notion of a wormhole, space can be visualized as a two-
dimensional (2D) surface. In this case, a wormhole would appear as a
hole in that surface, lead into a 3D tube (the inside surface of a cylinder),
then re-emerge at another location on the 2D surface with a hole similar
to the entrance. An actual wormhole would be analogous to this, but with
the spatial dimensions raised by one. For example, instead of circular
holes on a 2D plane, the entry and exit points could be visualized as
spheres in 3D space.
Another way to imagine wormholes is to take a sheet of paper and draw
two somewhat distant points on one side of the paper. The sheet of
paper represents a plane in the spacetime continuum, and the two points
represent a distance to be traveled, however theoretically a wormhole
could connect these two points by folding that plane ( i.e. the paper) so
the points are touching. In this way it would be much easier to traverse
the distance since the two points are now touching.

Terminology[edit]
In 1928, Hermann Weyl proposed a wormhole hypothesis of matter in
connection with mass analysis of electromagnetic field energy;[3]
[4]
 however, he did not use the term "wormhole" (he spoke of "one-
dimensional tubes" instead).[5]
American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (inspired by
Weyl's work)[5] coined the term "wormhole" in a 1957 paper co-authored
by Charles Misner:[6]
This analysis forces one to consider situations ... where there is a net
flux of lines of force, through what topologists would call "a handle" of
the multiply-connected space, and what physicists might perhaps be
excused for [for] more vividly terming a "wormhole".
— Charles Misner and John Wheeler in Annals of Physics
Modern definitions[edit]
Wormholes have been defined both geometrically  and  topologically.[further
explanation needed]
 From a topological point of view, an intra-universe wormhole
(a wormhole between two points in the same universe) is
a compact region of spacetime whose boundary is topologically trivial,
but whose interior is not simply connected. Formalizing this idea leads to
definitions such as the following, taken from Matt Visser's Lorentzian
Wormholes (1996).[7][page  needed]
If a Minkowski spacetime contains a compact region Ω, and if the
topology of Ω is of the form Ω ~ R × Σ, where Σ is a three-manifold of the
nontrivial topology, whose boundary has topology of the form ∂Σ ~ S 2,
and if, furthermore, the hypersurfaces Σ are all spacelike, then the
region Ω contains a quasipermanent intrauniverse wormhole.
Geometrically, wormholes can be described as regions of spacetime that
constrain the incremental deformation of closed surfaces. For example,
in Enrico Rodrigo's The Physics of Stargates, a wormhole is defined
informally as:
a region of spacetime containing a "world tube" (the time evolution of a
closed surface) that cannot be continuously deformed (shrunk) to
a world line (the time evolution of a point).

Development[edit]

"Embedding diagram" of a Schwarzschild wormhole

Schwarzschild wormholes[edit]
The first type of wormhole solution discovered was the Schwarzschild
wormhole, which would be present in the Schwarzschild
metric describing an eternal black hole, but it was found that it would
collapse too quickly for anything to cross from one end to the other.
Wormholes that could be crossed in both directions, known
as traversable wormholes, would be possible only if exotic
matter with negative energy density could be used to stabilize them.[8]
Einstein–Rosen bridges[edit]
Schwarzschild wormholes, also known as Einstein–Rosen
bridges[9] (named after Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen),[10] are
connections between areas of space that can be modeled as vacuum
solutions to the Einstein field equations, and that are now understood to
be intrinsic parts of the maximally extended version of the Schwarzschild
metric describing an eternal black hole with no charge and no rotation.
Here, "maximally extended" refers to the idea that the spacetime should
not have any "edges": it should be possible to continue this path
arbitrarily far into the particle's future or past for any possible trajectory
of a free-falling particle (following a geodesic in the spacetime).
In order to satisfy this requirement, it turns out that in addition to the
black hole interior region that particles enter when they fall through
the event horizon from the outside, there must be a separate white
hole interior region that allows us to extrapolate the trajectories of
particles that an outside observer sees rising up away from the event
horizon. And just as there are two separate interior regions of the
maximally extended spacetime, there are also two separate exterior
regions, sometimes called two different "universes", with the second
universe allowing us to extrapolate some possible particle trajectories in
the two interior regions. This means that the interior black hole region
can contain a mix of particles that fell in from either universe (and thus
an observer who fell in from one universe might be able to see light that
fell in from the other one), and likewise particles from the interior white
hole region can escape into either universe. All four regions can be seen
in a spacetime diagram that uses Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates.
In this spacetime, it is possible to come up with coordinate systems such
that if a hypersurface of constant time (a set of points that all have the
same time coordinate, such that every point on the surface has a space-
like separation, giving what is called a 'space-like surface') is picked and
an "embedding diagram" drawn depicting the curvature of space at that
time, the embedding diagram will look like a tube connecting the two
exterior regions, known as an "Einstein–Rosen bridge". Note that the
Schwarzschild metric describes an idealized black hole that exists
eternally from the perspective of external observers; a more realistic
black hole that forms at some particular time from a collapsing star
would require a different metric. When the infalling stellar matter is
added to a diagram of a black hole's history, it removes the part of the
diagram corresponding to the white hole interior region, along with the
part of the diagram corresponding to the other universe. [11]
The Einstein–Rosen bridge was discovered by Ludwig Flamm in 1916,
[12]
 a few months after Schwarzschild published his solution, and was
rediscovered by Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen, who
published their result in 1935.[10][13] However, in 1962, John Archibald
Wheeler and Robert W. Fuller published a paper[14] showing that this
type of wormhole is unstable if it connects two parts of the same
universe, and that it will pinch off too quickly for light (or any particle
moving slower than light) that falls in from one exterior region to make it
to the other exterior region.
According to general relativity, the gravitational collapse of a sufficiently
compact mass forms a singular Schwarzschild black hole. In
the Einstein–Cartan–Sciama–Kibble theory of gravity, however, it forms
a regular Einstein–Rosen bridge. This theory extends general relativity
by removing a constraint of the symmetry of the affine connection and
regarding its antisymmetric part, the torsion tensor, as a dynamical
variable. Torsion naturally accounts for the quantum-mechanical,
intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of matter. The minimal coupling
between torsion and Dirac spinors generates a repulsive spin–spin
interaction that is significant in fermionic matter at extremely high
densities. Such an interaction prevents the formation of a gravitational
singularity.[clarification needed] Instead, the collapsing matter reaches an
enormous but finite density and rebounds, forming the other side of the
bridge.[15]
Although Schwarzschild wormholes are not traversable in both
directions, their existence inspired Kip Thorne to imagine traversable
wormholes created by holding the "throat" of a Schwarzschild wormhole
open with exotic matter (material that has negative mass/energy).
Other non-traversable wormholes include Lorentzian wormholes (first
proposed by John Archibald Wheeler in 1957), wormholes creating
a spacetime foam in a general relativistic spacetime manifold depicted
by a Lorentzian manifold,[16] and Euclidean wormholes (named
after Euclidean manifold, a structure of Riemannian manifold).[17]
Traversable wormholes[edit]
The Casimir effect shows that quantum field theory allows the energy
density in certain regions of space to be negative relative to the ordinary
matter vacuum energy, and it has been shown theoretically that quantum
field theory allows states where energy can be arbitrarily negative at a
given point.[18] Many physicists, such as Stephen Hawking,[19] Kip Thorne,
[20]
 and others,[21][22][23] argued that such effects might make it possible to
stabilize a traversable wormhole.[24][25] The only known natural process
that is theoretically predicted to form a wormhole in the context of
general relativity and quantum mechanics was put forth by Leonard
Susskind in his ER=EPR conjecture. The quantum foam hypothesis is
sometimes used to suggest that tiny wormholes might appear and
disappear spontaneously at the Planck scale,[26]:494–496[27] and stable
versions of such wormholes have been suggested as dark
matter candidates.[28][29] It has also been proposed that, if a tiny wormhole
held open by a negative mass cosmic string had appeared around the
time of the Big Bang, it could have been inflated to macroscopic size
by cosmic inflation.[30]
Image of a simulated traversable wormhole that connects the square in
front of the physical institutes of University of Tübingen with the sand
dunes near Boulogne sur Mer in the north of France. The image is
calculated with 4D raytracing in a Morris–Thorne wormhole metric, but
the gravitational effects on the wavelength of light have not been
simulated.[note 1]
Lorentzian traversable wormholes would allow travel in both directions
from one part of the universe to another part of that same universe very
quickly or would allow travel from one universe to another. The
possibility of traversable wormholes in general relativity was first
demonstrated in a 1973 paper by Homer Ellis [31] and independently in a
1973 paper by K. A. Bronnikov.[32] Ellis analyzed the topology and
the geodesics of the Ellis drainhole, showing it to be geodesically
complete, horizonless, singularity-free, and fully traversable in both
directions. The drainhole is a solution manifold of Einstein's field
equations for a vacuum space-time, modified by inclusion of a scalar
field minimally coupled to the Ricci tensor with antiorthodox polarity
(negative instead of positive). (Ellis specifically rejected referring to the
scalar field as 'exotic' because of the antiorthodox coupling, finding
arguments for doing so unpersuasive.) The solution depends on two
parameters: m, which fixes the strength of its gravitational field, and n,
which determines the curvature of its spatial cross sections. When m is
set equal to 0, the drainhole's gravitational field vanishes. What is left is
the Ellis wormhole, a nongravitating, purely geometric, traversable
wormhole. Kip Thorne and his graduate student Mike Morris, unaware of
the 1973 papers by Ellis and Bronnikov, manufactured, and in 1988
published, a duplicate of the Ellis wormhole for use as a tool for teaching
general relativity. For this reason, the type of traversable wormhole they
proposed, held open by a spherical shell of exotic matter, was from 1988
to 2015 referred to in the literature as a Morris–Thorne wormhole. Later,
other types of traversable wormholes were discovered as allowable
solutions to the equations of general relativity, including a variety
analyzed in a 1989 paper by Matt Visser, in which a path through the
wormhole can be made where the traversing path does not pass through
a region of exotic matter. However, in the pure Gauss–Bonnet gravity (a
modification to general relativity involving extra spatial dimensions which
is sometimes studied in the context of brane cosmology) exotic matter is
not needed in order for wormholes to exist—they can exist even with no
matter.[33] A type held open by negative mass cosmic strings was put
forth by Visser in collaboration with Cramer et al.,[30] in which it was
proposed that such wormholes could have been naturally created in the
early universe.
Wormholes connect two points in spacetime, which means that they
would in principle allow travel in time, as well as in space. In 1988,
Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever worked out how to convert a wormhole
traversing space into one traversing time by accelerating one of its two
mouths.[20] However, according to general relativity, it would not be
possible to use a wormhole to travel back to a time earlier than when the
wormhole was first converted into a time "machine". Until this time it
could not have been noticed or have been used. [26]:504

Raychaudhuri's theorem and exotic matter[edit]

To see why exotic matter is required, consider an incoming light front
traveling along geodesics, which then crosses the wormhole and re-
expands on the other side. The expansion goes from negative to
positive. As the wormhole neck is of finite size, we would not expect
caustics to develop, at least within the vicinity of the neck. According to
the optical Raychaudhuri's theorem, this requires a violation of
the averaged null energy condition. Quantum effects such as
the Casimir effect cannot violate the averaged null energy condition in
any neighborhood of space with zero curvature, [34] but calculations
in semiclassical gravity suggest that quantum effects may be able to
violate this condition in curved spacetime.[35] Although it was hoped
recently that quantum effects could not violate an achronal version of the
averaged null energy condition,[36] violations have nevertheless been
found,[37] so it remains an open possibility that quantum effects might be
used to support a wormhole.

Modified general relativity[edit]

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 R 2 gravity, a form of f(R)
gravity.[38]

Faster-than-light travel[edit]
Further information: Faster-than-light
Wormhole travel as envisioned by Les Bossinas for NASA
The improbability of faster-than-light relative speed only applies locally.
Wormholes might allow effective superluminal (faster-than-light) travel by
ensuring that the speed of light is not exceeded locally at any time. While
traveling through a wormhole, subluminal (slower-than-light) speeds are
used. If two points are connected by a wormhole whose length is shorter
than the distance between them outside the wormhole, the time taken to
traverse it could be less than the time it would take a light beam to make
the journey if it took a path through the space outside the wormhole.
However, a light beam traveling through the same wormhole would beat
the traveler.

Time travel[edit]
Main article: Time travel
If traversable wormholes exist, they could allow time travel.[20] A
proposed time-travel machine using a traversable wormhole would
hypothetically work in the following way: One end of the wormhole is
accelerated to some significant fraction of the speed of light, perhaps
with some advanced propulsion system, and then brought back to the
point of origin. Alternatively, another way is to take one entrance of the
wormhole and move it to within the gravitational field of an object that
has higher gravity than the other entrance, and then return it to a
position near the other entrance. For both these methods, time
dilation causes the end of the wormhole that has been moved to have
aged less, or become "younger", than the stationary end as seen by an
external observer; however, time connects differently through the
wormhole than outside it, so that synchronized clocks at either end of
the wormhole will always remain synchronized as seen by an observer
passing through the wormhole, no matter how the two ends move
around.[26]:502 This means that an observer entering the "younger" end
would exit the "older" end at a time when it was the same age as the
"younger" end, effectively going back in time as seen by an observer
from the outside. One significant limitation of such a time machine is that
it is only possible to go as far back in time as the initial creation of the
machine;[26]:503 It is more of a path through time rather than it is a device
that itself moves through time, and it would not allow the technology
itself to be moved backward in time.[39][40]
According to current theories on the nature of wormholes, construction of
a traversable wormhole would require the existence of a substance with
negative energy, often referred to as "exotic matter". More technically,
the wormhole spacetime requires a distribution of energy that violates
various energy conditions, such as the null energy condition along with
the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions. However, it is known
that quantum effects can lead to small measurable violations of the null
energy condition,[7]:101 and many physicists believe that the required
negative energy may actually be possible due to the Casimir effect in
quantum physics.[41] Although early calculations suggested a very large
amount of negative energy would be required, later calculations showed
that the amount of negative energy can be made arbitrarily small. [42]
In 1993, Matt Visser argued that the two mouths of a wormhole with
such an induced clock difference could not be brought together without
inducing quantum field and gravitational effects that would either make
the wormhole collapse or the two mouths repel each other, [43] or
otherwise prevent information from passing through the wormhole.
[44]
 Because of this, the two mouths could not be brought close enough
for causality violation to take place. However, in a 1997 paper, Visser
hypothesized that a complex "Roman ring" (named after Tom Roman)
configuration of an N number of wormholes arranged in a symmetric
polygon could still act as a time machine, although he concludes that this
is more likely a flaw in classical quantum gravity theory rather than proof
that causality violation is possible.[45]

Interuniversal travel[edit]
A possible resolution to the paradoxes resulting from wormhole-enabled
time travel rests on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum
mechanics.
In 1991 David Deutsch showed that quantum theory is fully consistent
(in the sense that the so-called density matrix can be made free of
discontinuities) in spacetimes with closed timelike curves. [46] However,
later it was shown that such a model of closed timelike curves can have
internal inconsistencies as it will lead to strange phenomena like
distinguishing non-orthogonal quantum states and distinguishing proper
and improper mixture.[47][48] Accordingly, the destructive positive feedback
loop of virtual particles circulating through a wormhole time machine, a
result indicated by semi-classical calculations, is averted. A particle
returning from the future does not return to its universe of origination but
to a parallel universe. This suggests that a wormhole time machine with
an exceedingly short time jump is a theoretical bridge between
contemporaneous parallel universes.[8]
Because a wormhole time-machine introduces a type of nonlinearity into
quantum theory, this sort of communication between parallel universes is
consistent with Joseph Polchinski's proposal of an Everett
phone[49] (named after Hugh Everett) in Steven Weinberg's formulation
of nonlinear quantum mechanics.[50]
The possibility of communication between parallel universes has been
dubbed interuniversal travel.