Just when you thought you had some idea about what Star Trek: Deep Space 9 was all about, and you were trying to figure out how you felt about a show about intrigue at a space station that’s also an embassy that’s also a casino, and were kinda worried about just where the Star Trek was in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, the wormhole unfurls. The now-stable wormhole transforms the space station into an intergalactic Casablanca. That is what a wormhole can do to a story: open it up to the universe. Here’s more from The Science Museum:

“Like everything in science fiction, wormholes vary across the genre from rigorously explored phenomenon whose scientific implications are the centerpiece of the story, to simple plot devices,” comments Glyn Morgan, Science Museum curator. “In our forthcoming immersive Science Fiction exhibition, for example, we make use of portals which harness wormholes as a way of transporting visitors to new locations”.

The science of wormholes dates back to 1916, when Ludwig Flamm at the University of Vienna realised that the equations behind a black hole have an equal but opposite solution, a ‘white hole’, which cannot be entered from the outside, although things can escape from them.

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