How to build a wormhole

Could we build our own warp gate through space-time?

Create negative energy

The vital first step towards building a working wormhole would be to understand how to manufacture a source of ‘negative energy’ on a large scale. Although various forms of negative energy exist, there’s no guarantee that a form suitable for building wormholes exists.

Find a natural wormhole

Wormhole types depend on cosmology and particle physics. Non-traversable ones may link black holes, while microscopic ones may connect entangled quantum particles. An advanced detector would be needed to identify and ‘collect’ one end of a wormhole to use.

Make it traversable

Adding negative energy would create an antigravitational force. In the case of a non-traversable black hole wormhole, this would draw the opening out into accessible space beyond the event horizon, while for a microscopic wormhole it could expand the tunnel to a traversable size.

First trip

The first exploration of a newly opened wormhole would be done by a space probe. If it led somewhere safe and useful, the nearby end could be relocated closer to hand by a ‘space tug’ using the attractive force of gravity or repulsive ‘antigravity’ from the negative energy source.

Cosmic motorways

Once a civilisation has learned how to open up one wormhole, it’s easy to build a network of cosmic shortcuts. Some suggest they could even be used to build time machines, although the laws of physics mean that such a machine could not allow travel back to a time before it was created.