Abstract

Would-be wormhole engineers face the challenging problem of how to stabilize a wormhole, a topological shortcut from one part of the universe to another. Wormholes have a strong tendency to pinch off and disappear. It is well established that a sizable quantity of negative mass-energy is needed to overcome this tendency. That requirement has been perceived as a "show-stopper" because our universe does not seem to contain "exotic matter" objects with negative masses. The only known way of producing negative mass-energy in the laboratory, the Casimir Effect, can only make it in exceedingly tiny quantities