## Wednesday, 19 August 2020

### Einstein-Rosen bridges: Wormholes in Schwarzschild spacetime

Nearing the end of section 5.7 Carroll discusses wormholes connecting regions IV and I of the Kruskal diagram. These wormholes are also called  Einstein-Rosen bridges.

It was supposed to be impossible to travel between regions I and IV of the Kruskal diagram and here Carroll shows us how it can almost be done. He is very brief, his diagram is wrong, but luckily I found a paper by Peter Collas and David Klein which goes into much more detail and helped me understand. I was even able to plot diagrams of the wormhole which takes you from the depths of region IV to the depths of region I. Sadly there is never enough time and my plot is, admittedly, a bodge. The real calculations would be too complicated.

There is another way for an intrepid explorer from region I (where we live) to get a glimpse of region IV. After they cross the event horizon (the dashed line $r=R_s$) they could look 'down and to the left' and they could see light coming in from region IV. They could even meet another explorer from region IV. However they could never tell us back in region I what they learnt and would eventually perish in the singularity.

Read it here Commentary 5.7a Wormholes.pdf (3 pages).