Theoretical physicists have a lot in common with lawyers. Both spend a lot of time looking for loopholes and inconsistencies in the rules that might be exploited somehow.
Valeri P. Frolov and Andrei Zelnikov from the University of Alberta in Canada and Pavel Krtouš from Charles University in Prague probably couldn’t get you out of a traffic fine, but they may have uncovered enough wiggle room in the laws of physics to send you back in time to make sure you didn’t speed through that school zone in the first place.
Shortcuts through spacetime known as wormholes aren’t recognized features of the cosmos. But for the better part of a century, scientists have wondered if the weft and warp instructed by relativity prescribe ways for quantum ripples – or even entire particles – to break free of their locality.
At their most fantastic, such reconfigurations in the fabric of the Universe would allow human-sized masses to traverse light-years to cross galaxies in a heartbeat or perhaps move through time as quickly as one might move through their kitchen.
At the very least, exercises that probe the more exotic side of spacetime behavior could guide speculation over the mysterious meeting point of quantum physics and the general theory of relativity.
Wormholes are, in effect, little more than shapes. We’re used to dealing with single-dimensional lines, two-dimensional drawings, and three-dimensional objects in everyday life. Some we can intuitively fold, mold, and poke holes in.
Physics allows us to explore these changes in situations we can’t intuitively explore. On the smallest of levels, quantum effects give distances and time some wiggle room.
Hellbound and Down 