Wormholes! One of the coolest concepts when it comes to high energy astrophysics, and I am here to tell you exactly why that is. In tonight's thread, I'm going to be discussing the origins of wormholes, the different types, and also some current research on them. #scicomm (1/20)
As always, click here to read the extended blog post version of this thread: joalda.space/post/wormholes (2/20)
Alright, so what exactly is a wormhole? Think of it as some sort of bridge that connects together different parts of our universe. The term was coined in 1957, though it had been studied much earlier than that. The word is perfect because you can easily imagine it as... (3/20)
...a worm that had made a tunnel within an apple or something. It was a concept that was first found while trying to solve some mathematical equations for black holes, and they could also technically be thought of as a black hole. More on this later though! (4/20)
The way a wormhole is most simply visualized is as some sort of tunnel connecting to separate points, though this visualization is slightly misleading. The spacetime continuum, or the universe around us, is 4 dimensions (3 space dimensions + time). So you should actually...(5/20) 
...imagine a wormhole as some sort of sphere instead of a 2D hole in space, kind of like a black hole. In fact, on the outside, black holes and wormholes look extremely similar, which leads me to talk about the two main types of wormholes (yes, there is more than one!). (6/20)
First up, we have Einstein-Rosen bridges or non-traversable wormholes. These are the "less interesting" types of wormholes since you can' travel through them. They were the first ones to ever be studied, and the idea was that black holes could act as a portal and lead... (7/20)
...to different parts of our universe. Particles would be spewed out through something called a white hole, which is a region of dense space where things can only escape from, not enter. There were some theories that these white holes could possibly lead to a parallel... (8/20)
...universe where time ran differently from our own world. The thing is that research showed that these Einstein-Rosen bridges would be too unstable if they linked together places within our own universe, leading them to collapse and not let anything really get through. (9/20)
This leads me to talk about the other type, aka traversable wormholes. These are the ones you'd most likely see within science fiction because they allow you to travel through them, making them a lot more interesting. But wait a minute...how did we solve the issue of... (10/20)
...the wormhole collapsing and destroying itself? Well when it comes to manmade wormholes this issue would be solved through the use of exotic matter. Also known as negative matter, this is a theoretical idea where matter exerts negative pressure, pushing everything away. (11/20)
This exotic matter would be strong enough to push against the walls of a wormhole tunnel and keep it open, allowing particles and moreover people to travel freely within the wormhole without worry. Though currently, this idea violates the laws of physics, so there's that. (12/20)
Beyond these two, there are many subtypes of wormholes, including inter-universe wormholes and also one-way wormholes. Also, something to mention is that even though wormholes can be thought of as shortcuts, they can also turn out to take longer than a direct route! (13/20)
Traveling in a wormhole wouldn't be instantaneous. It would take time to travel through one, and this is where some problems with time dilation and in general time travel can arise. Paradoxes that violate laws of physics can occur and lead many to think they don't exist. (14/20)
This leads me to my last question to answer: how likely are we to see a wormhole in our lifetime or create one ourselves? My answer to that is not anytime in the near future. Wormholes are still just theoretical, though physicists are still doing research on them. (15/20)
There was a recently published paper that focused on how we would go about observing a wormhole. Due to the nature of the wormhole, we’re most likely going to find one at places that have extreme gravitational conditions, such as near a black hole. (16/20)
The researchers focused on a wormhole that could be present near Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Basically, stars on either side of the wormhole are influenced by each other’s gravity, meaning that if we were to detect... (17/20)
...these small deviations in the spacetime continuum, we could probably infer where this wormhole should be. Pretty cool right? (18/20)
Wormholes are definitely something cool to think about for future space travel. Though for now, we're going to have to stick with old fashioned rocketry before we can even start thinking about seeing, traveling through, or even making a wormhole. (19/20)
If you have gotten this far, thanks for reading this thread. Please let me know if I need to fix or correct anything, and definitely stay tuned for next week's thread where I talk about time travel! (cue Back to the Future theme song) (20/20)
