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By Discovery.com News

April 13, 2000 -- Star Trek fans and other visionaries dreaming about the possibility of intergalactic "wormholes" may be vindicated by a new study in the current issue of New Scientist. The hypothetical space-time tunnels, which would allow people to travel vast interstellar distances in short periods of time, may indeed exist. This is the conclusion of a new set of calculations based on Einstein's general theory of relativity.

The possibility of universal shortcuts through space was first proposed in 1915 by German theorist Ludwig Flamm, who found hints of their existence in Einstein's equations.

While quantum theory suggests that wormholes may exist on an extremely tiny, subatomic scale, most experts suspect that large wormholes are physically impossible. Their existence would lead to a perplexing array of contradictions. For instance, they would make it possible for a person to go back in time and prevent their own birth by accidentally killing their parents.

But now, a Russian scientist has proposed a new kind of wormhole that would be large enough and stable enough for extended space-time travel. According to Sergei Krasnikov, a relativity expert at the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg, one of the biggest arguments against wormholes is that they would need to be filled with a large enough supply of some sort of material that pushes the walls apart gravitationally to keep them open and functional, New Scientist reports.

Theory suggests that such matter can be formed on its own due to fluctuations in space and time, and in some cases can actually be created by the wormhole itself. But many have doubted whether it could be made in sufficient quantities to keep a large wormhole open for significant periods of time.

Krasnikov's equations may change all this. "This new wormhole, like every other, needs matter for it to form, and like some others can produce it by itself," he tells New Scientist. "What's new is that this wormhole actually generates enough to make it arbitrarily large."

Kraskinov admits that there is no way to experimentally test whether the validity of his scenario, and other theorists remained cautious.

"My feeling is that the matter is still open," Paul Davies of Imperial College, London, tells New Scientist.