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Carl Sagan's Contact
Honors 368, Section 1
Science in Science Fiction
Odis Hickman
April 3, 2001
Wormholes: Sci-Fi Trapdoors

Einstein’s general theory of relativity
– Time moves slower in space
– Reversal is possible

Is time travel possible?
Theory of Wormholes
Matter is neither created nor destroyed
 Objects sucked into a rotating, electrically
charged blackhole do not disappear
 One theory is that they reappear elsewhere
out of an exit point or whitehole
 The tunnel that links a blackhole and
whitehole is known as a wormhole

Wormholes

Possibly created after the
Big Bang, which began
the Universe roughly
thirteen billion years ago

The wormhole provides a
convenient and rapid way
to travel great distances
Wormholes cont.

According to current theories, natural
wormholes are too small for star travel
Wormholes are thought to be very unstable,
being subject to collapse due to internal and
external influences
 It is thought that a technically advanced
civilization could find the means of
widening these wormholes and keeping
them open, or even creating their own

Whiteholes
As universes have a beginning and end, so
do wormholes
 Whiteholes are the reverse of blackholes
 The equations of general relativity have the
interesting mathematical property of
symmetry in time


Just as a black hole can only suck things in,
a white hole can only spit things out
Whiteholes cont.

You can take any solution to the equations
and imagine that time flows backwards
rather than forwards and you will get
another valid solution to the equations
These may exist in a different universe,
region of space, or time
 If not for the wormhole, it would be
completely disconnected from the
blackhole’s region

Blackholes
A region of space that has so much mass
concentrated in it that there is no way for a
nearby object to escape its gravitational pull
 We suspect that most of the black holes that
exist are produced in the deaths of massive
stars


Black holes are believed to weigh about as
much as a massive star or ten times the
mass of the sun
Blackholes cont.

The interior of a charged or rotating black
hole can "join up" with a corresponding
white hole in such a way that you can fall
into the black hole and pop out of the white
hole
Blackholes cont.

As you get closer and closer to the center of
the hole, "tidal" gravitational forces begin to
take affect
Blackholes cont.

As you get closer to the center, these tidal
forces get more and more intense until
eventually ripping you apart

Sagan originally wanted to use black holes
as the aliens' space transit system, but soon
realized any travelers would be stretched
and crushed into oblivion, thus settling on
artificial intergalactic wormholes
Kip Thorne
Relativity theorist and astrophysicist
 Professor of Theoretical Physics at
California Institue of Technology


Has researched in several areas including
gravitational radiation, black holes, neutron
stars and the nature of space, time, and
gravity
Kip Thorne cont.

Theory that wormholes may act as time
machines
– According to quantum mechanics, if a
spacecraft is traveling at the speed of light in a
wormhole, then time would be moving
backward relative to other objects
Kip Thorne cont.

Advised Carl Sagan on Contact
– Sagan wanted a plausible way in which the
characters would be able to zip around the
galaxy at superlight speeds without violating
the laws of physics to a great extent
Examples of Wormholes

2001: A Space Odyssey
– Stanley Kubrick was the first director to depict
his vision of time travel through a wormhole

Star Trek: Generations
– Uses a moving ribbon of energy, referred to as a
Nexus
– Has the power to destroy ships and civilizations
and also transport people through time or a
fantasy
Examples of Wormholes cont.

Deep Space Nine
– A wormhole connects the Alpha and Gamma
quadrants from opposite sides of the Milky Way

Sliders’
– Featured a portal that would transport its users
to parallel universes

Timecop
– Wormholes permit the reversal of a murder
Related Sources

Center for Particle Astrophysics, an NSF
Science and Technology Center
– http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/home.html

Black Holes and Beyond
– http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/Black
Holes.html

Wormholes: Searching for a “Subway to the
Stars”
– http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/wormh