What is a wormhole? To put it simply it is quintessentially a "tunnel" that connects two points in space-time that allow travel between them in such a way that travel through the wormhole could take much less time compared to the same trip as in normal space. Look it this way. Your friend lives 200 kilometres from you. You could just drive to your friend's town on a normal highway taking, suppose, three hours to arrive there. But if there was a wormhole between your house and your friend's house , you can arrive at your destination in, let's suppose, 30 minutes.
The concept of wormholes arose from mathematical solutions to the Einstein field equations for gravity that act as "tunnels" connecting different points in space-time that take travel between the points in a short time. Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen were the two scientists who developed the concept of a wormhole. They examined the weird equations and questioned what they actually stood for. These equations are now known to describe the impenetrable region of space known as a black hole. The surface of a black hole may hypothetically serve as a bridge connecting to another region of space, according to Einstein and Rosen. The experience might resemble going down your bathtub's drain and coming out into a second tub that looks exactly like the first one without getting stuck in the pipes.
A wormhole consists of two mouths, the entrance and exit, and a throat that is the passage-way that makes travel between the mouths possible. It is illustrated in the the diagram below:
The path through the wormhole is topologically distinct from other routes one could follow to the same destination. it is possible for wormholes to act as time machines because they are short-cuts through space-time. When someone enters through one entrance and exists through another point, then that person could exit at a time earlier than when they entered the wormhole. This could be a problem of for a traveler. What kind of aging process will occur and what if the traveler ends up in another universe?
So far scientists have not found a real wormhole and we must bear in mind it was a mathematical realisation only and not a real entity proven by science. Some scientists think that wormholes are not an actual possibility because they could be unstable.
Gravity pulls every object in the universe, including the Earth and the rest of the planets in our solar system. Hence, gravity too would exert a gravitational force on a wormhole that will make it collapse as soon as it appears. In order to maintain stability for a wormhole, an unquantifiable amount of energy will be needed. If we follow that Kardeshev scale, perhaps a type four or five civilisation could generate enough energy to keep a wormhole stable . If a wormhole is not kept stable it will inevitably collapse under its own gravity. A powerful external force like a negative energy which would oppose the gravity could keep it stable. However, as far as scientists know, negative energies can only be created in small amounts. They will be much too small to counteract a wormhole's own gravity.
In summary, wormholes are tunnels in space-time that if they are traversable will allow a traveler to enter through one point and leave at the other but in another universe. Wormholes have not been discovered yet. They are mathematical realisations. They could be unstable and cannot be kept open for long before they collapse due to the pull of their gravity. Unless negative energies can be used to keep them stable there is no way that thy can be kept open for long. Negative energies are not possible in large amounts to make this possible . For now, wormholes remain only mathematical realisations only.
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