Wormholes are instances of curved and warped spacetime that have two mouths connected at their throats. They were originally thought to be static and retain their shape, but since they were first discovered researchers have found out that there are in fact three stages to wormholes which involve their throats being opened, narrowed, and then pinched off. But, the transition happens so quickly that even light doesn’t have time to pass through when it is open. To keep the throat open indefinitely, theoretical physicist Kip Thorne suggested it should be threaded by material that would repel the rays. This was later called Exotic Material as exhibits antigravity and has a negative mass.
It has been proven by physicist Casimir, that at the quantum scale vacuum has energy and according to quantum mechanical model, the vacuum has fluctuations at Planck scale where both particles and antiparticles are created and then destroyed. With the Casimir effect in mind, when plates get close to one another the creating and destroying of particles occurs, changing the energy density inside while remaining stable and unchanged on the outside. The difference in energy density causes an effect of negative mass. But to keep the throats of the wormhole open for just a few meters would take the exotic matter with enough energy to equal the mass of the planet Jupiter.
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The energy density of a vacuum will vary from point to point causing fluctuations in it. This is due to the uncertainty principle. The fluctuations that occur can only be felt at a distance limited to that of Planck length, or at a microscopic scale. Those found at Planck length are called Quantum Foam. In this foam, conditions are quite chaotic, and bubbles of wormholes are continually created and destroyed as are baby universes. It may be possible that our own Universe came from quantum foam and that we could, in fact, be connected to other universes through these wormholes.
But, the fact that we’ve been studying wormholes now for more than 50 years and still no exotic material has been found or viable solution offered it may be a while before we are in a position to really use wormholes to our advantage. If researchers could create wormholes, we could travel to far away galaxies in a matter of hours opposed to billions of light years and lead ourselves to a whole new world of unknowns.
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