Wormhole

[m2q]

Wormhole

Ahypothetical shortcut, or ‘tunnel’, that, in principle, may

link the interior of a black hole to another universe or

to another location in our universe. During the 1930s,

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) and Nathan Rosen (1909–95)

showed that the sharply curved spacetime of the interior

of a black hole may open out again into another spacetime

(another universe). The hypothetical connection between

these two regions of spacetime came to be known as an

Einstein–Rosen bridge. An alternative interpretation is

that the bridge, or tunnel, links two different regions in

the spacetime of our own universe. More recently, the

term ‘wormhole’ has been used to describe a spacetime

tunnel of this kind. Although it has been speculated

that wormholes could be used to facilitate virtually

instantaneous interstellar travel, in practice it seems likely

that, even if wormholes do exist, they will be too small

and too short-lived (and too physically hazardous) to be

utilized in this way.