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From: kilcup@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Greg Kilcup)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Wormholes, Contact (Carl Sagan)
Message-ID: <1259@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Wed, 22-Oct-86 22:52:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.1259
Posted: Wed Oct 22 22:52:55 1986
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Reply-To: kilcup@batcomputer.UUCP (Greg Kilcup)
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Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
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In reference to Stephen King's queries about wormholes:

Kip Thorne (an astrophysist at Caltech) was at Cornell
a couple of weeks ago, and gave a colloqium (introduced
by none other than Carl "BILLyuns and BILLyuns" Sagan)
at which he explained that:

--> The original wormhole is a bizarre but valid solution
of the Einstein equations in the absence of matter,
which in principle allows the universe to be multiply
connected for a time. That is, two distant places in 
the universe may be temporarily connected by a shortcut
through hyperspace.

--> In practice, they are actually useless for getting from one
place to another.  Firstly, wormholes are dynamic solutions,
and disappear before anyone can even in principle travel through one.
Furthermore, such solutions are very unstable, and in the
presence of even the slightest background radiation, wormholes
will not even form.  For this reason, one believes that wormholes
do not naturally form.

--> However, when finishing the novel, Sagan called Thorne,
asking if there was any possible way to form a wormhole, given
a sufficiently advanced technology.  After some thought, Thorne
found that if one could somehow create an incredible tension
(many orders of magnitude greater than that required to tear
a nucleus apart, for example), then there is another bizarre,
and STATIC wormhole solution to Einstein's equations.
Of course we have no idea how to create such a tension---
in particular ordinary matter won't do---but there is no (known)
reason rule out the idea.  Thorne has apparently produced
an undergraduate level writeup, which will soon appear in
The American Physicist (if it hasn't already).
-- 

Greg Kilcup  (kilcup@lnssun2.tn.cornell.edu)
Newman Labatory of Nuclear Studies
Cornell University
ARPA: kilcup@lnssun2.tn.cornell.edu