Are there any paradoxes involved in using worm holes for faster-than-light travel?

There could be if you could bring the two ends of the worm hole together, but if you leave them apart, I personally do not see how any paradoxes in time could result, although I am not an expert in such things. If you imagined opening a worm hole in the solar system whose other end was in the Alpha Centauri system, and entering this end would take you to Alpha Centauri in 1 minute, you would exit the other end and send two signals back to Earth. One would go through ordinary space and arrive in 4.3 years after you entered the worm hole. The other directed back through the worm hole would reach earth in under 1 minute assuming there was no additional 'funny' physics involved in the space-time inside the worm hole. This signal would arrive at Earth about 2 minutes after you had left, and again it would arrive in the future, not before you made the journey.

Paradoxes only occur if a space-time or portions of it, can have what are called 'closed time-like world lines' and the very simple space-time diagram of this single worm hole do not seem to allow such things to be set up. Again, I am not an expert, but so far as I understand, it is only when you bring the two ends of the worm hole back together that the possibility arises for paradox. I have never fully understood the details.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
Return to Ask the Astronomer.