Wormhole Time Travel: How to Build a Time Machine with Einstein’s Theory

7 min readJun 17, 2023

A Wormhole Could Be Your Ticket to Time Travel

Have you ever wished you could go back or forward in time? To see what happened before you were born, or what will happen after you die? To change something you regret, or to make something you desire? You are not the only one. Many people have dreamed of time travel, and some have even tried to invent a machine that would make it possible. But is time travel really possible, or just a fantasy?

In this post, I will show you how a wormhole could be your ticket to time travel, and what problems and questions you would face if you use it. A wormhole is a possible shortcut in space and time that connects two faraway places in the universe. If it exists, it could help us travel faster than light, and even to different times. But how does it work, and how can we make one?

What is a Wormhole?

A wormhole is an idea that comes from Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which tells us how gravity affects the shape of space and time. According to this theory, space and time are not flat, but curved by the presence of matter and energy. This curvature can be very strong near massive objects, such as black holes, which bend space and time so much that nothing can escape their gravity.

A wormhole is a possible solution to the equations of general relativity that describes a tunnel-like structure in space and time that connects two regions that are otherwise very far apart. Imagine folding a piece of paper in half and making a hole through both layers. The hole would create a shortcut between the two sides of the paper, allowing you to travel from one point to another without crossing the whole surface.

A wormhole has two openings, or mouths, that are connected by a throat. The throat can have different shapes and sizes, depending on the type of wormhole. Some wormholes may be round, tube-like, or ring-like. Some may be big enough to fit a spaceship, while others may be very small or even smaller. Some may be stable and safe, meaning that you can go through them and come out on the other side, while others may be unstable and dangerous, meaning that they collapse or destroy anything that tries to enter them.

How Can a Wormhole Be Used as a Time Machine?

One of the most interesting features of wormholes is that they may not only connect two different places in space, but also two different moments in time. This is because time is relative, and depends on the speed and gravity of the observer. This phenomenon is known as time dilation, and it means that moving clocks run slower than still ones, and clocks near massive objects run slower than clocks far away from them.

This means that if you move one mouth of a wormhole near a black hole, or speed it up close to the speed of light, then bring it back to its original position, you will create a time difference between the two mouths. The mouth that was moved will have aged less than the mouth that stayed still, because it experienced more gravity and speed. This time difference could be minutes, hours, days, or even years, depending on how much you moved the mouth and how fast.

Now imagine going into the mouth that was moved. You would come out from the other mouth at an earlier time than when you went in. You would have gone back in time. On the other hand, if you go into the mouth that stayed still, you would come out from the other mouth at a later time than when you went in. You would have gone forward in time.

This situation is theoretically possible under the rules of general relativity. However, there are many practical difficulties and paradoxes that come from using a wormhole as a time machine.

What Are the Challenges and Implications of Wormhole Time Travel?

The first challenge is finding or creating a wormhole in the first place. Wormholes are not seen in nature, and there is no proof that they exist at all. Even if they do exist, they are likely to be very rare and very small, maybe at the level of atoms or smaller. To use them for time travel, we would need to find a way to make them bigger and keep them open against gravity that would tend to close them.

One possible way to do this is by using exotic matter, which is a possible form of matter that has negative mass and negative energy density. Exotic matter would have anti-gravity effects that could balance out the normal gravity effects of matter and energy inside the wormhole. However, exotic matter has never been seen or made in reality, and it may break some basic laws of physics.

The second challenge is avoiding paradoxes and inconsistencies that result from changing the past or affecting the future. One of the most famous paradoxes is the grandfather paradox, which asks what would happen if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he meets your grandmother. If you do this, you would stop your own existence, which means you would not be able to go back in time and kill your grandfather in the first place. This creates a logical contradiction that makes no sense.

There are many possible ways to solve this paradox, but none of them are very satisfying. One way is to assume that there is only one timeline, and that whatever you do in the past has already happened and cannot be changed. This means that you cannot kill your grandfather, because he already lived and gave birth to your parent. You may try to kill him, but something will always stop you from succeeding, such as a random event or a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Another way is to assume that there are multiple timelines, and that every time you go back in time you create a new branch of history that splits from the original one. This means that you can kill your grandfather, but you will not erase yourself from existence. You will simply create a new timeline where you do not exist, but you will still exist in the original timeline where you came from. However, this raises the question of how many timelines there are, and whether they can interact or influence each other.

A third way is to assume that there is a self-consistency principle, or a cosmic censorship, that prevents paradoxes from happening. This means that the universe has a way of protecting its own logic and history, and that it will not let you do anything that would create a paradox. This could be done by some physical mechanism, such as feedback loops or quantum fluctuations, or by some metaphysical force, such as fate or free will. However, this begs the question of how and why the universe does this, and whether it is possible to avoid it.

The third challenge is dealing with the ethical and moral implications of wormhole time travel. If we have the power to change the past or affect the future, what should we do with it? Should we use it for good or evil? Should we use it for personal gain or for altruism? Should we use it at all?

Wormhole time travel could have many positive uses, such as stopping disasters, curing diseases, saving lives, exploring history, learning from mistakes, or fulfilling dreams. However, it could also have many negative effects, such as causing disasters, spreading diseases, killing lives, changing history, creating mistakes, or destroying dreams. It could also have unintended and unpredictable effects, such as creating butterfly effects, paradoxes, or temporal wars.

Wormhole time travel could also raise many ethical dilemmas and moral questions, such as who has the right to use it, who controls it, who regulates it, who benefits from it, who suffers from it, who is responsible for it, who is accountable for it, and who decides what is right and wrong. It could also challenge our notions of identity, causality, free will, justice, and destiny.

Conclusion

Wormhole time travel is a fascinating and controversial topic that has inspired many scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists. It is a possible idea that relies on some assumptions and guesses that may or may not be true. It is a difficult challenge that requires some technologies and resources that may or may not be available. It is a complex dilemma that involves some values and judgments that may or may not be agreed upon.

Wormhole time travel is not impossible, but it is not easy either. It is not a fantasy, but it is not a reality either. It is somewhere in between: a possibility that waits for more exploration and experimentation.

If you liked this post and want to know more about wormhole time travel, here are some resources that you can check out:

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