Allan Milne Lees
1 min readFeb 22, 2020

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Ella, I know scifi writers adore so-called wormholes (more accurately known as Einstein-Rosen bridges) because they permit cowboys-in-space fiction to traverse distances otherwise too great for any presently-known particles. But if my understanding of the equations governing the phenomenon is adequate, it turns out that (i) a real black hole (as opposed to the theoretical non-rotating, and non-interacting model used for the wormhole scenario) would pinch off the moment any particle passed its event horizon, and (ii) the bridge between two entangled black holes would expand faster than the speed of light, thus precluding any transit, and (iii) the difficulties of engineering a pair of entangled black holes and then moving one to the desired destination location would be a “non-trivial” challenge. So we’d be stuck with “natural” wormholes, rather like passengers offered simply the option to board a train to X or not to board, with no control over one’s destination.

And although both Thorne and Morris show that with suitable modifications the Einstein field equations can be manipulated to yield theoretically stable traversible bridges between two nominally separate spacetime locations, the requirement for exotic particles not yet predicted by the Standard Model suggest this may be wishful thinking.

As you say, it will be interesting if in the years ahead sufficiently precise measurements can be obtained to enable us to determine if such bridges do exist in our universe; until then perhaps a degree of skepticism is warranted.

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Allan Milne Lees
Allan Milne Lees

Written by Allan Milne Lees

Anyone who enjoys my articles here on Medium may be interested in my books Why Democracy Failed and The Praying Ape, both available from Amazon.

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