How do you keep a wormhole stable?

The keys to stability If you cross a black hole’s event horizon, you’ll never escape. In order to overcome this problem, the entrance to a wormhole must be outside of the event horizon. This way you can traverse the wormhole without plunging through an event horizon and never escaping.

Is it possible to create a stable wormhole?

First, it turns out that in general relativity, the gravitational attraction of any normal matter passing through a wormhole acts to pull the tunnel shut. Making a stable wormhole requires some kind of extra, atypical ingredient that acts to keep the hole open, which researchers call “exotic” matter.

How does negative mass work?

Negative mass is any region of space in which for some observers the mass density is measured to be negative. This could occur due to a region of space in which the stress component of the Einstein stress–energy tensor is larger in magnitude than the mass density.

Can we open a wormhole?

Not when you can pop into the nearest wormhole opening, take a short stroll, and end up in some exotic far-flung corner of the universe. There’s a small technical difficulty, though: Wormholes, which are bends in space-time so extreme that a shortcut tunnel forms, are catastrophically unstable.

What are the two main problems identified with using wormholes to travel?

One of the challenges with using a wormhole is the inclination it has to collapse as you make your way through. The energy requirements needed to keep a wormhole open may be resolved with the use of exotic matter. The exotic matter has negative pressure and negative energy density.

Why is negative energy needed to open a wormhole?

Negative energy is needed to repel the gravity, to hold the wormhole open so that matter can continue through it and exit at the other end (otherwise the matter would “converge” inside the wormhole and not exit as the wormhole collapsed; gravity, say Ford and Roman, is a converging force).

How hard is it to build a wormhole?

Easy-peasy. In principle, building a wormhole is pretty straightforward. According to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, mass and energy warp the fabric of space-time. And a certain special configuration of matter and energy allows the formation of a tunnel, a shortcut between two otherwise distant portions of the universe.

Can matter with negative mass pass through a wormhole?

However, a healthy dose of negative mass — yes, that’s matter but with an opposite weight — can counteract the destabilizing effects of regular matter trying to pass through the wormhole, making it traversable. OK, matter with negative mass doesn’t exist, so we need a new plan.

Why can’t we open a wormhole in outer space?

It’s not a perfect solution: Eventually the inherent vibrations in the cosmic strings — the same ones that might keep the wormhole open — pull energy, and therefore mass, away from the string, making it smaller and smaller.