Good sci fi, but … From astrophysicist Paul Sutter at Space.com:
The concept of wormholes got its start when physicist Ludwig Flamm, and later Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, realized that black holes can be “extended.” When one goes about solving the fantastically complicated equations of general relativity, the machinery that predicts a black hole also predicts a phenomenon called a white hole. A white hole is pretty much what you think: Whereas a black hole’s event horizon marks a region of space that once you enter you can’t leave, it’s impossible to enter a white hole’s horizon, although anything already in there can escape.
That same mathematical machinery delivers a bonus, too: All black holes would be naturally “connected” to white holes via their singularities, making a tunnel through space. Woohoo, wormholes here we go!
Or not. While we have gobs of evidence for the existence of black holes, white holes appear to be mathematical fiction. There’s no known process in our universe that would actually form them, and even if they did pop into existence, their natural extreme instability would snuff them right out again. More.
Rats. See also: Did you know? The Milky Way might be a huge, navigable wormhole?
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