Wormhole Hall of Shame – Worlds Under Construction

Skip to content

Wormhole Hall of Shame

Written by

Sedna

in

Uncategorized

Permit me to regale you with my very niche pet peeve: circular, two-dimensional wormhole entrances in science fiction.  (Fantasy gets a pass; unless you’re trying to do science-y magic, the magic portal works however you want.)  Usually combined with the problem where the inside of the wormhole looks like… well, a hole dug by a worm.

Why is this an issue, do you ask?

Because that’s not what it would look like.

I suspect the problem comes from the common depiction of a wormhole using a two-dimensional representation, like so:

An Einstein-Rosen Bridge in 2D, courtesy of Wikipedia. Note that path (a) (direct) is longer than path (b) (wormhole).

Clearly, the wormhole is a tube with openings that look like circles! What am I complaining about???

Well… remember, that’s a wormhole in 2D space. All that “empty space” around the wormhole and above the flat plane… doesn’t exist. It isn’t somewhere you can go. It’s a 2D world: you’re a 2D creature stuck to the sheet. So, what do you see as you approach the wormhole, if you’re limited to two dimensions?

A line segment. You see a line segment from every direction, which would allow you to infer that the shape of the opening is a circle. If you think about how light would move through this space, you see the other location through that line segment… regardless of angle. Finally, if you were actually inside the wormhole, you’d see your origin point behind you, your destination ahead, and to your left and right, the light curves around in a circle… you’d see yourself, distorted and faded, many, many times, like a relativistic hall of mirrors. In other words, the inside of the wormhole lacks an edge for applying dramatic special effects.

Now, bump it up a dimension.

Instead of a line segment, the wormhole entrance appears as a circle. It’ll look like a circle from any angle – side, top, bottom, all the way around. Through the opening, you’ll see different angles on the destination at the other end of the wormhole. On the inside, going through, you’ll see very warped and twisted images of yourself, possibly with parts of your origin or destination depending on the exact angle where you’re looking.

In fact, some lovely folks have simulated this:

We’re going to see some sand dunes! Note the circular distortions and lack of a definite edge. Wikipedia

Of course, a real wormhole wouldn’t look quite like this. If we hand-wave the problem of needing negative energy or matter or something to hold it open, there’s still general relativity at play, so the warping of space-time would also change the colors of the light and have other fun effects. (Where “other fun” is “maybe time-travel.”)

With that in mind, let’s do a rundown on notable wormholes. Fictional, of course, since we’re rather short on real ones. For simplicity, I’m largely sticking to visual media. Please note that a rating here implies nothing about the quality of the show; I’ve watched/read and enjoyed most of these.

Stargate

(Source: Wikipedia)

It’s a flat circle. Fail.

Farscape

(Screenshot from the first episode. The whole series is up on YouTube, apparently legitimately; it’s 100% worth watching if you haven’t seen it.)

Great show, cool puppets, but wormhole fail.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

(Source: Memory Alpha)

Pretty, and a personal fave. Also fail.

Babylon 5

A Jumpgate from Babylon 5. Note the tube structure. (Source: The Babylon Project)

Fail again. Maybe we can handwave this one since the gates lead to another dimension entirely (hyperspace), but, still…

Doctor Who

The Time Vortex. (Source: tardis.wiki)

Not graded, because it’s all wibbly-wobbly anyway. (But that looks like going through a tube, so… not good.)

The Bobiverse (Not Till We Are Lost)

Look at that black hole! Nice!

A rare written example, but one where the author took pains to emphasize that holding a wormhole open requires weird physics and that the wormhole is spherical (it’s a wormhole from any direction). Grade A.

Marvel Cinematic Universe (Thor, Avengers: Infinity War, etc.)

I will concede that it looks cool. (Source: Marvel Wiki)

Too magical to grade, but also, hahaha, no.

The Expanse

The Ring Network of wormholes, one of which leads to Earth. (Source: Expanse Wiki)

Gorgeous and pretty self-consistent, but again, fail.

Interstellar

That circular warping looks familiar… (Source: Interstellar Wiki)

At least they got the doggone wormhole right. And the black hole. The planetary science and the biology and the basic economics of moving everyone off of Earth instead of fixing things, on the other hand… that’s a whole separate rant.

Schlock Mercenary

(Source: Schlock Mercenary; the strip where the Teraport is introduced is rather earlier)

A rare accurate presentation of wormholes: too small for anything bigger than a particle to fit, so you have to deconstruct and reconstruct...