No

No evidence has ever been found for the existence of these curious solutions to Einstein's relativistic equation for gravity. So far, however, his other solutions have been confirmed including black holes, the expanding universe and gravitational radiation. Some physicists feel it is only a matter of time before worm holes are discovered....say a few THOUSAND years! Others like myself think that, based on past experience, even the best theories sometimes predict idealized objects which nature chooses not to allow. Wormholes require a specific set of conditions to form them, and there is no known way that such carefully balanced conditions seem possible in a universe as messy as ours.

What would a wormhole look like from the outside? Probably very much like a black hole, and we know that the nearest one of these is 6000 light years away. Its called Cygnus X-1. It seems to be an 'ordinary' black hole swallowing matter, but until we can travel there we will not be able to tell if there is snother end to this blachk hole somewhere else. The only way to check if a black hole is a wormhole in disguise is to enter it - a potentially one way trip.

Return to Ask the Astronomer