What about wormholes?

The theory of wormholes has been around for quite some time, at least since the 1930's and especially when Albert Einstein published his theories of relativity. Einstein proposed that space and time are linked and can be bent, stretched and compressed. The only thing that's constant is the speed of light. Einstein and Nathan Rosen published this idea in 1935. It didn't take long for people to speculate that wormholes through space existed or could be created. This idea soon became a well established science fiction plot device. I've used it myself. However, there is a big problem with maintaining a wormhole because they're unstable.

But, are wormholes practical? The answer is that they could be if we could do one of the following; find a wormhole and experiment with it; actually find a way to generate the immense energy needed to create a wormhole and stabilize it. Good luck with either of those!
When you think about what it takes to create a wormhole, you begin to realize that it isn't going to be easy. A wormhole is a hypothetical tunnel through widely distant parts of space. This means that the fabric of space-time has to be bent over so that the tunnel could make a shortcut between the two halves of the fabric. It's as if you take a piece of paper and bend it over and then take a pencil and punch a hole through the two halves. You would see that you've created a shortcut between the two halves. That's what you have to do with space-time. Sounds easy, right? Not!

If a traversable wormhole could be created, it would permit travel from one part of the universe to another. Although, you would be in effect traveling faster than light, you would actually be traveling at less than that speed. The advantage is that the distance is shorter.
Some have proposed that traversing a wormhole would allow you to time travel, but it has been shown mathematically that you cannot go back any further in time than before the wormhole was created. One method of time travel would be to accelerate one end of the wormhole faster than the other. Time dilation (predicted by Einstein's equation) would make time travel possible under this condition. However, quantum particles could spoil your trip by creating a feedback loop that would increase their velocity to a point that would destroy the wormhole.

Needless to say, wormholes have been employed for both travel to distant parts of the universe and time travel in science fiction and video games. In some cases the wormhole is associated with a black hole. Some of the more notable movies or TV shows are: 'Contact', 'Interstellar', 'Dr. Who', 'Babylon 5', and 'Stargate'. This does not include the many Marvel comic episodes and the CW Network 'The Flash'.

One thing that could help us in creating and maintaining a wormhole is to identify, create, and concentrate dark energy. This is the force that is making the universe expand at an accelerating rate. It's some sort of negative energy and it would do wonders to keep a wormhole open. Maybe there is some exotic matter connected to dark energy. We need to discover if there is and then determine a method to make it. This is our only hope to create and control a wormhole.

Wormholes do promise the way to time travel to both the future and the past. They certainly would be a way to explore the universe, but are they technically viable? That's a question that only the future could answer.

Thanks for reading.