Wormholes, time machines, and the weak energy condition
Abstract
It is argued that, if the laws of physics permit an advanced civilization to create and maintain a wormhole in space for interstellar travel, then that wormhole can be converted into a time machine with which causality might be violatable. Whether wormholes can be created and maintained entails deep, ill-understood issues about cosmic censorship, quantum gravity, and quantum field theory, including the question of whether field theory enforces an averaged version of the weak energy condition.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- September 1988
- DOI:
- Bibcode:
- 1988PhRvL..61.1446M
- Keywords:
-
- Interstellar Travel;
- Space-Time Functions;
- Weak Interactions (Field Theory);
- Cauchy Problem;
- Quantum Theory;
- Space Sciences (General);
- 04.60.+n;
- 03.70.+k;
- 04.20.Cv;
- Theory of quantized fields;
- Fundamental problems and general formalism