Wormholes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the tantalising idea that there are shortcuts between distant galaxies, somewhere out there in the universe. The idea emerged in the context of Einstein’s theories and the challenge has been not so much to prove their unlikely existence as to show why they ought to be impossible. The universe would have to folded back on itself in places, and there would have to be something to make the wormholes and then to keep them open. But is there anywhere in the vast universe like that? Could there be holes that we or more advanced civilisations might travel through, from one galaxy to another and, if not, why not?

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Professor Toby Wiseman No other episodes
  Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London
• Katy Clough No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at Queen Mary, University of London
• Professor Andrew Pontzen No other episodes
  Professor of Cosmology at Durham University

Reading list

• Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines
  Jim Al-Khalili (Taylor & Francis, 1999) Google Books →
• The Universe in a Box: Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos
  Andrew Pontzen (Riverhead Books, 2023) Google Books →
• The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity
  Claudia de Rham (Princeton University Press, 2024) Google Books →
• Contact
  Carl Sagan (Simon and Schuster, 1985) Google Books →
• Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy
  Kip Thorne (W. W. Norton & Company, 1994) Google Books →
• Science of Interstellar
  Kip Thorne (W. W. Norton & Company, 2014) Google Books →
• Lorentzian Wormholes: From Einstein to Hawking
  Matt Visser (American Institute of Physics Melville, NY, 1996) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m00237yt

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00237yt

Auto-category: 530.1 (Physics)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 1957 the American physicist John Wheeler coined the term wormhole, which we understand now as a potential shortcut between two points across the universe.