By: Nick Swafford
We’ve read the books and the comics. We’ve watched the movies. Super powers are a major part of modern pop-culture. One of my favorite super powers has always been teleportation, and according to Einstein’s famed Theory of Relativity, it may soon be non-fiction. So how do we, as a species, achieve this level of transportation? Scientists theorized that teleportation might be possible through the use of black holes. The most commonly accepted method is called the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen first came up with the idea in 1935 that black holes connected to white holes by folding space-time, creating a wormhole.
To understand the workings of a wormhole, we have to understand the science of black holes. “Black” holes, as we understand, are large spherical entities with gravities strong enough to block out light entirely, including the color black. If humans ever see a black hole without immediately dying due to the immense gravitational pull, we’d probably look right past it. They’re invisible. Theoretically, any object with mass can become a black hole. There are three main types of black holes: stellar, supermassive, and miniature–and each is created in a different way.
Supermassive black holes are the theoretical black holes at the center of each galaxy, but we still don’t quite know what causes them. The supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way is Sagittarius A, which has a 90 million-mile diameter. To put that in comparison, Earth is 93 million miles from the sun. The massive size of this black hole causes the entire Milky Way galaxy to orbit it. Stellar black holes are the most common type of black hole; millions of them inhabit each galaxy. These stellar black holes are formed when massive stars collapse in on themselves, resulting in a supernova. A supernova is simply a giant explosion caused by the death of a large star. There isn’t a lot of definite facts on miniature black holes, but it is theorized that these smaller black holes formed when the universe was first created. Unlike the other black holes, these miniature black holes don’t have enough energy to collapse onto themselves, so they need tremendous amounts of outside energy to help them along.
As we all know, black holes are cosmic vacuums that suck matter inside. But where does that matter go? Scientists theorize that they go through a bend in space-time and emerge through white holes, which spew fragments of matter out into space. The problem with humans transporting through wormholes is that the black holes we would enter have lots of deadly radiation. There is also the issue of what would physically happen to your body once you enter a black hole; because of the immense gravity, it is thought that our bodies would be ripped down to our most basic molecules. If we somehow survived entrance to a black hole, there’s also the possibility of the wormhole collapsing as they are naturally unstable. Even if we get through those obstacles, we would still have to compete with the inhabitable vacuum of space when we emerge from a white hole.
But what if we could somehow create a method of transit through a wormhole? How would we even use it? I think that it would be in the very far future that we even get enough technological knowledge to travel to one, much less create a vessel to travel through it. I also think humans could use these to possibly explore other worlds, but, until then, only one thing is for sure: if wormholes exist, it’s a one way door, and once you cross, there’s no turning back.