Friday, April 4, 2014

Space Travel (part 5)


Although we have not officially proven their existence, wormholes (also called Einstein-Rosen bridges) are hypothetical shortcuts through spacetime. Visualize a flat, two-dimensional surface like a piece of paper, where the openings of the wormhole are on opposite ends of the paper. While it would be an immense distance to traverse (in space) between the two points, imagine the paper being folded in half so the two openings align on top of each other. Traveling through a wormhole would be a nearly instantaneous way to travel a great distance. Though researches currently have no observational evidence for wormholes, equations of the theory of general relativity have solid solutions which point to the existence of wormholes. If we were to discover a wormhole nearby, it would be possible to catapult a starship a vast distance, allowing us to avoid years of listening to the kids in the back seat asking, “Are we there yet?”

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