RocketMan on 27/5/2008 at 18:57

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Sorry. Ok I'm going to backtrack a bit because I clearly didn't say what I was thinking....or maybe I was just trying to run with the folding paper example.

As you both mentioned the distance would not change even if you folded the paper. Imagine instead that the universe is a big ball. To make a short tunnel between the 2 poles of the ball you'd need to squash the ball and then create the short tunnel connecting the poles. This implies changing the shape (in 4D space) of the entire universe to accomadate the wormhole. Since wormholes are local distortions only, I just meant to illustrate that you wouldn't compress the ball. Instead the tunnel would stretch between the poles and though it might look long (it'd look like it had a length equal to the ball's diameter), it's really a very small piece of space, stretched to bridge the gap, so any mass in that space would distort equally and by relativity, would not percieve an increase in distance travelled. To the mass traversing the hole, the distance would be the same as the small piece of space around the wormhole that distorted multiple times it's original length to span the distance to the exit point.