Is the space travel described in 'Babylon 5' and 'Star Trek' plausible at all?

No. There is nothing in physics that even weakly suggests that wormholes can be artificially manufactured, that they can be traversed by humans, or that their entry and exit points can be controlled. I enjoy science fiction as much as the next person, but as a realist, I can see where reality ends and fantasy begins. We will be very lucky if we manage to explore much of our solar system, but star travel itself will cost more, and be less spectacular, than anything we dare imagine today to sell science fiction stories.

I know that some physicists toy with cosmic strings, wormholes and black holes, but none of these form the basis for realistic expectations for star travel. They are just the deus ex machina we currently use in our story-telling. In the next century, authors will find something else to write about after star travel has played itself out as a genre.


Return to Ask the Astronomer