Wormholes

Beyond the dangers of spaghettification and collisions with singularities, the tunnel that connects a black hole to another universe stays open only briefly and then collapses. But there may be an alternative, although at the moment it exists only in theory. One day, scientists may be able to turn off the fury of a black hole using antigravity- the opposite of gravity- to create a wormhole. A wormhole has two mouths that are connected by a tunnel through curved space. Unlike the event horizon of a black hole, the mouth of a wormhole allows two-way traffic: you can enter and leave. And a wormhole also has the great advantage that it can connect different parts of our own Universe, providing a safe shortcut between two distant places.

A wormhole’s mouth would look like the entrance to a non-spinning black hole. The difference is that there is no event horizon, so traffic can cross in both directions in and out of the tunnel.

The image of the other end of the wormhole is distorted because the light rays follow the flared mouth of the wormhole, which bends them like a lens.

-Maiya Wenzel