Einstein-Rosen Bridges

Einstein-Rosen Bridges

General Relativity admits a class of solutions, called wormholes, similar to black holes, but with no evolutionary connection – they cannot be generated, as black holes can, by the gravitational collapse of a star. But the usual sort of wormhole, once made, expands and contracts before anything can cross through; it exerts disastrous tidal forces, and it also requires – at least as seen by an observer left behind – an infinite amount of time to get through.

The key problem is holding the wormhole open. Such a wormhole would pose none of the other problems of black holes. It would have much smaller tidal stresses, two-way access, quick transit times as measured by an exterior observer, and no devastating interior radiation field. A macroscopic field is a kind of tension that could be used to prevent a wormhole from contracting fully. If the wormholes can be Einstein-Rosen bridges, we can give some answer.

Einstein-Rosen Bridge. In fact, the universe seems to have been determined and ordered in accordance with number, by the forethought and the mind of the creator of all things; for the pattern was fixed, like a preliminary sketch, by the domination of number pre-existent in the mind of the world-creating God (Nicomachus of Gerasa), Arithmetic I, 6 (ca. a.d. 100). Illustration by Elena

Wormholes can distribute at convenient intervals around innumerable stars in this and others galaxies. They resembled black holes, but they had different properties and different origins. They are not exactly massless, because she had seen the leave gravitational wakes in the orbiting debris of any star system. And through them beings and ships of many kinds traversed and bound up the Galaxy.

Wormholes. In the revealing jargon of theoretical physics, the universe is their apple and someone has tunneled through, riddling the interior with passegeways that crisscross the core. For a bacillus who lived on the surface, it was a miracle. But a being standing outside the apple might be less impressed.