Wormholes in fiction
A wormhole is a postulated method, within the general theory of relativity, of moving from one point in space to another without crossing the space between. Wormholes are a popular feature of science fiction as they allow interstellar travel within human timescales. While it is common for the creators of a fictional universe to decide that faster-than-light travel is either impossible or that the technology does not yet exist, they also use wormholes as a means of allowing humans to travel long distances in short time periods.
Wormholes in written fiction
- In Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, wormholes are an immensely important plot device, one which is first discovered in the trilogy by protagonist Will Parry, when fleeing from his home after an accidental murder; he finds a window in the air in an Oxford street which leads to a totally different universe, the town of Cittagazze. In the rest of the trilogy, the other main characters use wormholes in the form of these extradimensional windows in order to travel "between worlds," and thus speed their journeys.
- In Madeleine L'Engle's Young-adult novel A Wrinkle in Time, the process by which the characters travel through space and time is explained in a manner similar to the wormhole theory. Say an ant wants to get from one part on a tablecloth to another some distance away; it's a lot quicker to just "wrinkle up" the space between them so that the two points touch, and travel directly from one to the other.
- In Joe Haldeman's classic war novel The Forever War, interstellar travel is achieved through gateways located at collapsars. This is an early word for a black hole, and the novel refers to the (now obsolete) theory that black holes may contain Einstein-Rosen Bridges.
- Wormholes are a centerpiece of Carl Sagan's novel Contact, in which a crew of five humans make a trip to the center of the Milky Way galaxy through a transportation system consisting of a series of wormholes. The novel is notable in that Kip Thorne advised Sagan on the possibilities of wormholes. Likewise, wormholes are also central to the film version (discussed below).
- In The Power of Five series by Anthony Horowitz, wormholes are an important plot device: the Gatekeepers can travel anywhere they wish in the world instantly by using wormholes in the form of doors found in holy places such as churches, and the wormholes are also used as an important plot device in Book Two of the series, Evil Star, this time for a much more sinister purpose; the Old Ones, the antagonists, use the Nazca Lines as a gigantic wormhole to unlock the Lines in order to escape onto the Earth.
- In Stephen Baxter's Xeelee universe, human beings use wormholes to traverse the solar system before the discovery of the hyperdrive. A wormhole is also used in this universe to put a probe into the sun (the wormhole is utilized to cool the probe, throwing out solar material fast enough to keep the probe at operating temperatures). In his book Ring the Xeelee construct a gigantic wormhole into a different universe which they use to escape the onslaught of the Photino birds.
- In 2000, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter co-wrote a science fiction novel, The Light of Other Days, which discusses the problems which arise when a wormhole is used for faster-than-light communication. In the novel the authors suggest that wormholes can join points distant either in time or in space and postulate a world completely devoid of privacy as wormholes are increasingly used to spy on anyone at any time in the world's history.
- Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos tetralogy contains a mode of personal interstellar transport called a "Farcaster" which closely resembles wormhole travel. The Farcaster network employs "singularity spheres" to warp space-time and allow individuals to literally step across light-year distances in moments.
- The novel Diaspora by Greg Egan features scientifically well-founded depictions of wormholes.
- In the Iain M. Banks novel The Algebraist, traversable wormholes can be artificially created and are a central factor/resource in the stratification of space-faring civilizations.
- John G. Cramer's novel Einstein's Bridge featured travel via wormholes between alternate universes.
- In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, naturally occurring wormholes form the basis for interstellar travel. The world of Barrayar was isolated from the rest of human civilization for centuries after the connecting wormhole collapsed, until a new route was discovered, and control over wormhole routes and jumps is the frequent subject of political plots and military campaigns.
- The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton describes how wormhole technology could be used to explore, colonize and connect to other worlds without having to resort to traditional travel via starships. This technology is the basis of the formation of the titular Intersolar Commonwealth, and is used so extensively that it is possible to ride trains between the planets of the Commonwealth.
- The "Ramsbotham Gates" in Robert A. Heinlein's novel Tunnel in the Sky apparently operate by forming stable wormholes between two points, though Heinlein does not use the term "wormhole."
- The novel "House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds features a wormhole to Andromeda. One main character also alludes to other wormhole mouths leading to galaxies in the Local Group and beyond. In the books, all wormhole-linked galaxies are cloaked by Absences, which prevent information escaping the galaxy and thus protecting causality from being violated by FTL travel
- Military science fiction often uses a "jump drive" to propel a spacecraft between two fixed "jump points" connecting solar systems; such jump drives are often described in ways that make them seem similar to wormholes. For example, the hyper-spatial tubes in E. E. Smith's Lensman series seem very like wormholes.
- Connecting solar systems in a network like this results in a fixed "terrain" with choke points that can be useful for constructing plots related to military campaigns. The Alderson points postulated by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in Mote in God's Eye and related novels is an example. The development process is described by Niven in N-Space, a volume of collected works.
- Traversable wormholes are used as time travel along with the theory of quantum foam in Michael Crichton's bestselling novel, Timeline.
- In The Urth of the New Sun, Severian becomes linked with a White Hole (called a White Fountain) that moves to and rejuvenates Urth's dying sun.
Wormholes in television and film fiction
There is one episode of Invader Zim where Zim, in order to get rid of Dib and his horrible classmates once and for all, utilizes a wormhole to send Dib and the other Skoolkids on a one-way busride to an alternate dimension containing a room with a moose. However, Dib discovers Zim's plan, and taking advantage of a fork in the wormhole, is able to transport the bus back to Earth.
In the television series Fringe, the main storyline is the investigation of an unusual series of events and scientific experiments called the Pattern. In the second season episode "Peter" it's revealed that the root cause of the Pattern was an incident in 1985 where Dr. Walter Bishop opened a wormhole into an alternate universe so that he may cure the alternate version of his terminally-ill son Peter (who had died in our universe). By crossing the wormhole, Dr. Bishop disrupted the fundamental laws of nature and weakened the fabric of space-time, causing incalculable destruction in the alternate universe and forcing them to seek a way to repair the damage caused and save their existence.
In Power Rangers Time Force, artificial Temporal Wormholes were used extensively for the delivery of the Time Fliers to travel to the past to aid the Rangers and was also used by Wes, Eric and Commandocon to travel to prehistoric times to recover the Quantasaurus Rex. In Power Rangers SPD, in the episode Wormhole, Gruumm and later the SPD Rangers used a "Temporal Wormole" to travel from 2025 to 2004 to battle with the Dino Thunder Rangers in early 21st century Reefside.
In the FOX/Sci-Fi series Sliders, a method is found to create a wormhole that allows travel not between distant points but between different parallel universes; objects or people that travel through the wormhole begin and end in the same location geographically (e.g. if one leaves San Francisco, one will arrive in an alternate San Francisco) and chronologically (if it is 1999 at the origin point, so it is at the destination, at least by the currently-accepted calendar on our Earth.) Early in the series the wormhole is referred to by the name "Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge," apparently a merging of the concepts of an Einstein-Rosen bridge and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, a thought-experiment in quantum mechanics. This series presumes that we exist as part of a multiverse and asks what might have resulted had major or minor events in history occurred differently; the wormholes in the series allow access to the alternate universes in which the series is set. The same premise is used in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Parallels and the Star Trek: The Original Series episode The Alternative Factor which premiered in 1967.
The 2011 film Thor, based on the Marvel Comics character, reimagines the mythical Bifrost Bridge as a wormhole, specifically referred to as an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, which is opened and closed by the gatekeeper, Heimdall, to enable travel between the Nine Realms.
In The Black Hole, a 1979 film, the spacecraft carrying the main characters is sucked into a black hole and then ejected from a white hole in another part of the universe.
In The Masters of the Universe, episode "The Taking of Grayskull", Skeletor uses a white hole to transport Castle Grayskull into an alternate dimension where he has access to the secrets of the castle, and the Sorceress is unable to stop him because her powers work in reverse. He-Man is able to send Castle Grayskull back through the white hole to its proper location on Eternia. Once Castle Grayskull is back in its proper location, the white hole disappears.
The Lost Room is a science fiction television miniseries that aired on the Sci Fi Channel in the United States. The main character is allowed to travel around the planet when using a special key together with any kind of door, leading him to random locations. The key is part of a series of different artifacts, coming from an alternate reality.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is a 1989 American science fiction–comedy buddy film and the first film in the Bill & Ted franchise in which two metalhead slackers travel through a temporal wormhole in order to assemble a menagerie of historical figures for their high school history presentation.
Babylon 5 and Crusade
In the Babylon 5 universe, Jump points are artificial wormholes that serve as entrances and exits to hyperspace, allowing for faster-than-light travel. Jump points can either be created by larger ships (battleships, destroyers, etc.) or by standalone Jump Gates. The more energy used to create the wormhole, the larger the opening will be, so the stand-alone gates are used for heavily used, predetermined, interstellar traffic routes, while engines on ships serve as a means of travel primarily for the ship that creates it and its support vessels, allowing them to enter and exit hyperspace were a jumpgate isn't conveniently close by in normal space.
Three distinct types of wormhole are characterized in the series and its sequel stories.
The Jump Points created by both the Jumpgates and large vessels characterize a Lorentzian traversable wormhole with intra-universal end points. In the series however, rather than the exiting endpoint being defined at the time of entry, the ship enters a non-euclidean Hyperspace within which tachyon beacons mark possible endpoint destinations in real space. A ship may enter hyperspace then with no particular destination, linger or hide there before returning to normal space, even be lost irretrievably should it become unable to exit into normal space.
The second type of wormhole depicted in the series is temporal in nature, when the Great Machine buried miles below the surface of Epsilon Erridani III, a massive alien complex for the generation and control of power on a solar scale, displaces Babylon 4 1000 years into the past, 24 hours after it becomes fully functional, taking Commander Sinclair with it into the past to begin preparations a millennium in advance for the coming war with the Shadows, creating a temporal paradox.
The third type of wormhole appears in the series sequel story Babylon 5: Thirdspace, an ancient Vorlon artifact is found drifting in Hyperspace and is recovered and brought back into normal space. The device is enormous and mysterious and is revealed to be a jumpgate for the creation of an extra-universal Lorentzian wormhole, which opens not at a remote point in our own universe, but into a universe dominated by an incredibly powerful and ruthlessly violent alien race.
Farscape
The television series Farscape features an American astronaut who accidentally gets shot through a wormhole and ends up in a distant part of the universe, and also features the use of wormholes to reach other universes (or "unrealized realities") and as weapons of mass destruction.
Wormholes are the cause of John Crichton's presence in the far reaches of our galaxy and the focus of an arms race of different alien species attempting to obtain Crichton's perceived ability to control them. Crichton's brain was secretly implanted with knowledge of wormhole technology by one of the last members of an ancient alien species. Later, an alien interogator discovers the existence of the hidden information and thus Crichton becomes embroiled in interstellar politics and warfare while being pursued by all sides (as they want the ability to use wormholes as weapons). Unable to directly access the information, Crichton is able to subconsciously foretell when and where wormholes will form and is able to safely travel through them (while all attempts by others are fatal). By the end of the series, he eventually works out some of the science and is able to create his own wormholes (and shows his pursuers the consequences of a wormhole weapon).
Star Trek
- Early in the storyline of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, an antimatter imbalance in the refitted Enterprise starship's warp drive power systems creates an unstable ship-generated wormhole directly ahead of the vessel, threatening to rip the starship apart partially through its increasingly severe time dilation effects, until Commander Pavel Chekov fires a photon torpedo to blast apart a sizable asteroid that was pulled in with the starship (and directly ahead of it), destabilizing the wormhole effect and throwing the Enterprise clear as it slowed to sub-light velocities. Near the end of the film, Willard Decker recalls that "Voyager 6" (aka V'ger) disappeared into what they used to call a "black hole". At one time, black holes in science fiction were often incorrectly endowed with the traits of wormholes. This has for the most part disappeared as a black hole isn't really a hole in space but a dense mass and the visible vortex effect often associated with black holes is merely the accretion disk of visible matter being drawn toward it. Decker's line is most likely to inform that it was probably a wormhole that Voyager 6 entered.
- The setting of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a space station, Deep Space Nine, located near the Bajoran wormhole. This wormhole is unique in the Star Trek universe because of its stability. In an earlier episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation it was established that wormholes are generally unstable on one or both ends - either the end(s) move erratically or they do not open reliably.[1] The Bajoran Wormhole is stationary on both ends and opens consistently. It provides passage to the distant Gamma Quadrant, opening a gate to starships that extends far beyond the reach normally attainable. It is also the source of a severe threat to the Alpha Quadrant from an empire called the Dominion.
Stargate franchise
Wormholes are also the principal means of space travel in the Stargate movie and the spin-off television series, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. The central plot device of the programs is an ancient transportation network consisting of the ring-shaped devices known as Stargates, which generate artificial wormholes that allow one-way matter transmission and two-way radio communication between gates when the correct spatial coordinates are "dialed". However, for some reason not yet explained, the water-like event horizon breaks down the matter and converts it into energy for transport through the wormhole, restoring it into its original state at the destination. This would explain why electromagnetic energy can travel both ways — it doesn't have to be converted. The one-way rule may be caused by the Stargates themselves: as a Gate may only be capable of creating an event-horizon that either breaks down or reconstitutes matter, but not both. It does serve as a very useful plot device: When one wants to return to the other end one must close the original wormhole and "redial", which means one needs access to the dialing device. The one way nature of the Stargates helps to defend the gate from unwanted incursions. Stargates are also only capable of sustaining an artificial wormhole for 38 minutes. It's possible to keep it active for a longer period, but it would take immense amounts of energy.
For Additional Information see: Stargate (device).
Doctor Who
One can infer that the Time Vortex which the Doctor often referred to was indeed a temporal wormhole. This means wormholes are a primary component of the series.
- The Rift which appears in the long-running British science-fiction series Doctor Who and its spin-off Torchwood is a wormhole. One of its mouths is located in Cardiff Bay, Wales and the other floating freely throughout space-time, it is the central plot device in the latter show.
- In Planet of the Dead, a wormhole transports a London double-decker bus to a barren, desert-like planet. The wormhole could only be navigated safely through by a metal object, and human tissue is not meant for inter-space travel, as demonstrated by the bus driver, who is burnt to the bones on attempting to get back to Earth.
Star Wars
In the book Handbook 3: Dark Empire, and in other books, appeares wormholes created by Palpatine, with a Force Power called "Force Storm". Using the Force is the only way to make (or see) a one.
Wormholes in music
In Universal Migrator Part 2: Flight of the Migrator, an album by Ayreon, a soul is sucked into a black hole in the song "Into the Black Hole", goes through a wormhole in the song "Through the Wormhole" and leaves from a white hole in the song "Out of the White Hole".
Wormholes in games
- The games Portal and Portal 2 are centered around the "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device" aka. "Portal Gun", a gun-shaped device that can create a temporary wormhole between any two flat surfaces.
- Wormholes are a common feature in the computer game Elite in which they are short-lived constructs created on-demand by the hyper-drive as a means of interstellar transport.
- The science fiction computer game Space Rogue featured the use of technologically-harnessed wormholes called "Malir gates" as mechanisms for interstellar travel. Navigation through the space within wormholes was a part of gameplay and had its own perils.
- In Freespace and Freespace 2 space-faring races use subspace nodes to travel between star system. They resemble wormholes in almost every aspect.
- Artificially-created wormholes are the main method of interstellar travel in the PlayStation video game series Colony Wars.
- Wormholes are also seen in the computer game Freelancer, commonly referred as "jump holes". They are supposed to be black hole-like formations with ultra-high gravity amounts, that work like 'portals' for players to travel instantly between different star systems.
- In the PC Computer game EVE Online, a science fiction MMORPG set in outer space, humans arrive at the game's setting through a natural wormhole. The humans expand and colonize in all directions, until the wormhole collapses destructively for unknown reasons, stranding all colonists. In 2009 the game expanded the usage of wormholes to act as temporary gates between solar system that exist for under 24 hours and can be collapsed by exceeding the mass limit.
- In the Massively Multiplayer Online Game Darkspace, a player-versus-player starship combat game, players can create short-term stable wormholes to traverse the game's universe instantly, rather than use the game's concept of FTL travel to move from point A to point B. Wormhole Generation Devices are only available on ships with higher rank requirements, usually Vice Admiral or above, and are most common on Space Stations.
- In the on-line fictional collaborative world-building project "Orion's Arm" wormholes are used for communication between the millions of colonies in the local part of the Milky way Galaxy. In an attempt to make the physics of the wormhole travel at least semi-plausible, large amounts of ANEC-violating exotic energy are required to maintain the holes, which are never-the-less large objects which must be maintained on the outermost reaches of the planetary systems concerned.
- In the X computer game series by Egosoft, wormholes were established using Jump Gates, created by the Old Ones. These Jump Gates connected to many systems but not the Solar System. Humanity advanced to the technological level to create Jump Gate technology and discovered the already established gate network. Hundreds of years after cutting themselves off from the network to escape the Xenon, they created a Jumpdrive, allowing for travel between systems not connected directly via a gate. Different versions of Jumpdrives emerged with some being limited but stable, others being dangerously random.
- In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Phazon-based organic meteors called Leviathans create wormholes to travel from Phaaze (the living planet they are "born" in) to other planets. They do this to "corrupt" the planet and any beings able to survive the Phazon into Phazon-based creatures. The planet would then progress into changing its environment until it becomes another planet like Phaaze. The Galactic Federation took control of one with Samus Aran's assistance, and used it to travel to and destroy Phaaze.
- In Spore, the "Wormhole Key" item allows the player's spacecraft to travel between pairs of black holes, through a wormhole effect that resembles that seen in the Stargate movie and TV series.
- In Final Doom, the fourth level of the Evilution episode is called Wormhole. Half way through the level, the player encounters a curious looking teleporter (the wormhole itself) which when stepped through, warps the player into another section of the level which is identical to the first, but with re-spawned enemies.
- In Primal Jen and Scree used so called rift gates to travel which show wormhole properties and appear as wormholes.
- Wormholes are used incredibly frequently in Far Gate, as a means of transporting spacecraft across interstellar distances.
- In World of Warcraft there is a device called Wormhole Generator: Northrend that allows you to travel throughout Northrend that can be constructed by those who have the Engineering skill.
- In Sins of a Solar Empire There are wormholes that can be used to traverse either between two wormholes or a wormhole and a planet.
See also
Notes