Thorne

One day in the early 1980’s Kip Thorne, a professor at CalTech, was ready to pack his bags. It had been the end of a long semester and he was looking forward to a great vacation. Then he got a parcel in the mail from his pal Carl Sagan. Sagan explained he was working on a sci-fi novel called Contact, where he wants to send his heroine on a space mission to the star Vega, 26 light years away, via a black hole. Can it be done?

As Thorne rode in his car, he calculated equations on a few sheets of paper and concluded black hole travel would have a few problems, not the least of which the young lady would be crushed by the singularity. But Thorne had an idea. Though a black hole would not work, Sagan could use a passageway through space called an Einstein-Rosen tunnel, or wormhole. A wormhole is a proposed “short cut” through 3 dimensional space where many light years can be traveled in a short distance at a sub-light speed.

Wormholes, if they do exist would have one problem. Sagan’s astronaut would still have to be very fast. As soon as a wormhole forms, its outside pressure would pinch off the throat instantly. Sagan’s used this approach and his book become the start of lively discussions across campuses in America interested in wormhole research. And it resulted in a hit film for actress Jodie Foster.

By 1988, Thorne’s mathematics paved the way for a bright idea. Improbable though it may be, Thorne believed a wormhole could it least form on paper, if 2 black holes form in different places or maybe even different universes, and their cores collapsed so deep into hyperspace they break off into another dimension. If the cores meet some where/when in hyperspace they could annihilate each other and briefly form a tunnel between the 2 former black holes. If someone fills the tunnel with exotic matter, (a hypothetical type of matter with negative mass), its antigravity properties could hold the tunnel open.

OK. So do I have a novel?