Wormhole

**Wormholes** are structures that bend space-time to connect two separate places in space-time. They are commonly described or depicted as "tunnels," however, this is an oversimplification. In actuality, there is no space inside of a wormhole, entering and leaving a wormhole is instantaneous. The only limit being how fast the object can move through it. Wormholes are often used as a form of faster-than-light travel and are common used when other methods are impractical.

## **Technology**

### **Wormhole Gates**

A **Wormhole Gate** is a large (usually elliptical) mega-structure capable of linking two another gate. These gates are commonplace in the universe, with the average star able to accommodate several (although the smallest red dwarfs do not have the energy output to create a wormhole in a reasonable time-frame). These structures typically orbit the home star or accompany the planet they are meant to lead to. When a wormhole gate is first constructed, it is linked to another wormhole gate. These two gates cannot be separated without entirely replacing the structure. These two gates will always lead to each other. In most star systems, there exist seven wormhole gates to the nearest star systems, and two to the nearest major planets.

As mentioned above, two wormhole gates need to be created for each destination one would like to go to. Transferring through half-a-dozen wormholes to get to a location takes a lot of time, especially considering how long the queues are to get into the busier wormholes. What's more is that they are very unstable, requiring the operators to "cool" them down every so often, which basically means shut down. This is because particles at the edges of the gate can absorb its energy, gradually becoming faster and faster until the whole generator is undergoing a sustained fission event (as many of the particles accelerated are neutrons). "Meltdowns" caused by insufficient shutdown time have been disasters rivaled by few single events in history.

#### **Wormhole Networks**

Most major civilizations have created **Wormhole Networks** linking together major planets in their galaxy. These networks end up taking up the largest portion of the energy budget of most civilizations that construct them. Along with the wormholes to the nearest systems, an average system has at least two wormholes to the nearest major worlds.

### **Wormhole Communication**

**Wormhole Communication** is an advanced way of communicating with sending signals through a tiny wormhole. It usually consists of creating a tiny artificial wormhole, beaming a signal through it with a small satellite dish to the destination. The charge time for these tiny wormholes is almost nonexistent, as they do not need as much energy as larger wormholes. This technology allows for near-instant communication between many star systems.

## **Simple Concept**

One could imagine the universe as a balloon. Everything exists on the surface of this balloon (of course, the universe actually has three dimensions, but this two dimensional explanation will have to suffice). Travelling along the surface of the balloon takes a large amount of time compared to travelling in a straight line through the balloon. This is what wormholes do, linking two places directly through the metaphorical balloon. It is like pushing two portions of a balloon closer together to allow for a faster path. Now, the universe is actually more malleable than a balloon is, making this process fairly easy for even type II civilizations. This is essentially how wormholes work, except instead of the universe being on the surface of a 2D balloon surface it is 3D and wormholes rely on travel through four-dimensional space (which can be thought of as the interior of the balloon).

Wormholes are not tunnels, they are quite like a hole in a piece of paper. The travel time is instant, the two places they link might as well be right next to each other. Whether the wormholes are a few astronomical units apart or across the observable universe, travel time is only limited by how fast an object can pass through. Although many representations of the concept portray them as tunnels, which are admittedly easier to understand, the true nature of these devices are more analogous to pinning the two ends of a sheet of paper together. The hole does not bridge the areas, it links them as though they were next to each other.