A wormhole is a hypothetical connection between widely separated points of space-time. A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends and each end is located at a separate point in space and/or time. Different points in time can be theoretically connected by a wormhole using time dilation. One end of the wormhole would be kept stationary while another end would be moved to a speed close to light and then brought back next to the stationary wormhole.

One common analogy when explaining wormholes is folding a piece of paper and punching a hole through the folded paper. When unfolded the holes in the paper are no longer touching but rather far apart. The sheet of paper in this analogy represents a plane in the space-time continuum and the two holes represent a distance to be traveled between the two points. When the paper is folded so the holes are touching it would be much easier in this analogy to travel the distance between the holes since the two points (holes) are close together.

In fiction a wormhole can be natural (such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) or artificially created (such as in the Stargate franchise). Wormholes in fiction can connect to other points in time (such as the movie Timeline) or connect between different universes (such as the Sliders TV series).

Photo Source: scientificamerican.com

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