FASTER THHH LIGHT 211
"nontransversable wormholes"; that is, passing through the event
horizon is a one-way trip. Once you pass through the event horizon
and the Kerr ring, you cannot go backward through the ring and out
through the event horizon.
But in 1988 Rip Thorne and colleagues at Cal Tech found an example of a transversable wormhole, that is, one through which you could
pass freely back and forth. In fact, for one solution, the travel through
a wormhole would be no worse than riding on an airplane.
Normally gravity would crush the throat of the wormhole, destroying the astronauts trying to reach the other side. That is one reason
that faster-than-light travel through a wormhole is not possible. But
the repulsive force of negative energy or negative mass could conceivably keep the throat open sufficiently long to allow astronauts a clear
passage. In other words, negative mass or energy is essential for both
the Alcubierre drive and the wormhole solution.
In the last few years an astonishing number of exact solutions have
been found to Einstein's equations that allow for wormholes. But do
wormholes really exist, or are they just a figment of mathematics?
There are several major problems facing wormholes.
First, to create the violent distortions of space and time necessary
to travel through a wormhole, one would need fabulous amounts of
positive and negative matter, on the order of a huge star or a black
hole. Matthew Visser, a physicist at Washington University, estimates
that the amount of negative energy you would need to open up a 1-meter wormhole is comparable to the mass of Jupiter, except that it would
need to be negative. He says, "You need about minus one Jupiter mass
to do the job. Just manipulating a positive Jupiter mass of energy is already pretty freaky, well beyond our capabilities into the foreseeable
future."
Rip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology speculates
that "it will turn out that the laws of physics do allow sufficient exotic
matter in wormholes of human size to hold the wormhole open. But it
will also turn out that the technology for making wormholes and holding them open is unimaginably far beyond the capabilities of our human civilization."
"nontransversable wormholes"; that is, passing through the event
horizon is a one-way trip. Once you pass through the event horizon
and the Kerr ring, you cannot go backward through the ring and out
through the event horizon.
But in 1988 Rip Thorne and colleagues at Cal Tech found an example of a transversable wormhole, that is, one through which you could
pass freely back and forth. In fact, for one solution, the travel through
a wormhole would be no worse than riding on an airplane.
Normally gravity would crush the throat of the wormhole, destroying the astronauts trying to reach the other side. That is one reason
that faster-than-light travel through a wormhole is not possible. But
the repulsive force of negative energy or negative mass could conceivably keep the throat open sufficiently long to allow astronauts a clear
passage. In other words, negative mass or energy is essential for both
the Alcubierre drive and the wormhole solution.
In the last few years an astonishing number of exact solutions have
been found to Einstein's equations that allow for wormholes. But do
wormholes really exist, or are they just a figment of mathematics?
There are several major problems facing wormholes.
First, to create the violent distortions of space and time necessary
to travel through a wormhole, one would need fabulous amounts of
positive and negative matter, on the order of a huge star or a black
hole. Matthew Visser, a physicist at Washington University, estimates
that the amount of negative energy you would need to open up a 1-meter wormhole is comparable to the mass of Jupiter, except that it would
need to be negative. He says, "You need about minus one Jupiter mass
to do the job. Just manipulating a positive Jupiter mass of energy is already pretty freaky, well beyond our capabilities into the foreseeable
future."
Rip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology speculates
that "it will turn out that the laws of physics do allow sufficient exotic
matter in wormholes of human size to hold the wormhole open. But it
will also turn out that the technology for making wormholes and holding them open is unimaginably far beyond the capabilities of our human civilization."