In science fiction, wormholes are hyperspace subway tubes linking one part of a galaxy directly to another, distant point. But could they actually exist? To find out, we talk to theoretical physicist Ron Gamble, who says wormholes aren't just a matter of science fiction — and they have big implications about the shape of space itself.Want to hear about more hypotheticals physicists have to confront in their work? Email us at [email protected] — we might turn your idea into a whole episode!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Space. I love it. And the things inside of it. Us, of course. Stars and galaxies I studied. And I even love the other cool hypothetical stuff that mostly lives in science fiction. Like wormholes. Wormholes are a funky but possible solution to Albert Einstein's famous equations for the theory of general relativity.
These theoretical cosmic portals can shorten a trip from hundreds of light years to minutes. Wormholes have been a mainstay of transportation in movies like Interstellar.
That's it. That's the wormhole.
And TV shows like my favorite, Star Trek. The aliens who live in the wormhole, as you call them. Which Ron Campbell says is not far off from how scientists think about these wormholes.
It's very much like a bridge. You can do this thought experiment yourself. You take a sheet of paper, you fold it kind of like in half and you poke a pencil hole right through the middle. And that is essentially a wormhole. It connects two points in space and time together.
Ron's a theoretical physicist, and he wrote his PhD on funky solutions to Einstein's equations for general relativity, like wormholes. Basically, he did this by studying space-time, the four-dimensional existence we all live in. It includes three dimensions of space and one dimension of time moving forward as that fourth dimension.
And general relativity talks about how space-time itself has a shape to it. a shape that is distorted by all the wonders inside of it. All the beautiful stars, planets, galaxies, black holes. Their distortion of space-time is gravity. And if you push that gravity to its extreme, you get black holes. And some physicists theorize that white holes could also exist.
And that would be the opposite to a black hole. They'd push out matter instead of consuming it. And the thing that could connect them is a wormhole. But scientists have never seen one. And as a lifelong Trekkie, I have long wanted to know, could we ever? Or are wormholes purely science fiction?
I think, according to the physics, there is a non-zero chance that we could find a wormhole. So you're saying there's a chance. I think if we find a wormhole, that means someone else created it.
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