Wormholes, or tunnels in the fabric of space-time, are ferociously unstable. As soon as even a single photon slips down the tunnel, the wormhole closes in a flash.
But what if the problem was that our imagined wormholes weren’t quite weird enough?
A new study suggests that the secret to a stable wormhole is making them funny looking. By shaping the wormhole so that it’s not a perfect sphere, we might be able to hold that tunnel open for long enough to travel through. The only catch is that said wormhole would have to be incomprehensibly tiny.
Down the hatch
Wormholes, if they exist, would allow you to travel from Point A to some extremely distant Point B without bothering with all the arduous traveling from Point A to Point B. They’re a shortcut. A cheat-code to the universe. See a star millions of light-years away? You could reach it in just a few minutes, if you had a wormhole linking you to that star.
No wonder it’s a staple of science fiction.