...either seen or heard the mention of the mysterious WORMHOLE.
Yet, what exactly is a wormhole? Let me break it down for you...
1) If you've ever seen Jet Li's The One, you'd notice that the villain would use these supernatural phenomena to travel through reality into different alternate-dimensions. Although this is Hollywood-made fiction, the display isn't that far off from the truth. Essentially, wormholes are a pair of black holes. In Einstein's calculations, he found "that the solution lent itself to an extension whose geometric interpretation was that of two copies of the black hole geometry connected by a "throat" (known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge). The throat is a dynamical object attached to the two holes that pinches off extremely quickly into a narrow link between them."
2) Theorists have since found other wormhole solutions; these solutions connect various types of geometry on either mouth of the wormhole. One amazing aspect of wormholes is that because they can behave as "shortcuts" in space-time, they must allow for backwards time travel! This property goes back to the usual statement that if one could travel faster than light, that would imply that we could communicate with the past. (Holoman)
3) Although, Stephen Hawking denies that any wormhole be stabilized enough for any literal use. One particle is all that would be needed to disrupt the whole thing!
4) At present, I believe space-time wormholes are only theoretical constructs derived from general relativity; used for studying theoretical physics...but nevertheless, this should never dismay any sci-fi fanatics from enjoying their fun!
Cheers.
SotoMeister.
