voyager bajoran wormhole

Bajoran Wormhole

• Based on cited internal travel time of ~2 minutes per Stellar Cartography , assuming speed is at full impulse, can estimate internal length of approximately 0.06-0.09 AU
• Terminus in Denorios Belt, B'hava'el system, Alpha Quadrant (DS9)
• Prior to 2376 spatial reconfiguration, GQ terminus approximately 4.7 ly from Idran system (DS9: "Emissary")
• Spatial matrix further reinforced by external graviton emissions c.July 2373 (DS9: "In Purgatory's Shadow")
• Immediately prior to visible manifestation, heightened levels of neutrino emissions can be detected (DS9: "In the Hands of the Prophets")
• Inadvertent introduction of small amounts of silithium July 2371 resulted in formation of subspace filament facilitating subspace communication between termini even while closed (DS9: "Destiny")
• Reopened February 24, 2375 upon rediscovery of the Orb of the Emissary (DS9: "Image in the Sand")
• Known as "the Anomaly" to natives near Gamma Quadrant terminus (DS9 Novel: Rising Son ; TNG Novel: Q & A )
• Presumably their creation
• Previously noted briefly c.22nd century by Kai Taluno , but not traversed, not further attested in Bajoran records (DS9: "Emissary")
• Known within the Bajoran religion as the Celestial Temple (DS9: "Emissary")
• Source of the Orbs
• Known within the True as the Fortress (DS9 Novel: Rising Son )

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Star Trek | Traversable Wormhole Physics from Bajor to the Edge of Forever

Physicist Diandian Wang helps explain the science of Star Trek‘s portals, from ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ to Deep Space Nine‘s Bajoran wormhole.

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Portals, wormholes, space-time distortions, time-space disturbances, and other space shortcuts are peppered throughout the Trek -iverse, enabling our favorite characters to travel to different places and times. But what I want to know is: when we venture further into the stars, how likely is it that we’ll find similar glowing gateways and winding wormholes for ourselves?

Portals are central to many Star Trek stories. One of the earliest, and most memorable, shows up in Star Trek: The Original Series . “Are you machine or being?” James T. Kirk (William Shatner) asks the large, glowing ring-shaped thing in front of him in possibly the greatest episode of The Original Series ever written: ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ (S1, Ep28) .

“I am both… and neither. I am my own beginning, my own ending,” replies the ring-shaped thing, which Kirk learns is called the Guardian of Forever, a portal that shows past events on its edges – I like to think of it as one of those Amazon Echo Show smart screen devices but much bigger with added time travel specs.

In a rather dramatic fashion, we soon find out that the Guardian of Forever doesn’t just display scenes from different times and places but can transport people to them. Because as moments from Earth’s past flash before the away team’s eyes, a delirious McCoy (DeForest Kelly) runs through the portal and is whisked off to 1930s New York, soon followed by Kirk and Spock.

Portals in Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and The Next Generation

One of my personal favorite portals is much less showy – mainly because it’s only about 30cm in diameter. It appeared in Star Trek: Voyager’s ‘Eye of the Needle’ (S1, Ep7) when the newly-hurled-across-the-galaxy crew of USS Voyager discovered a blue and green swirling, ancient and microscopic anomaly. I like this portal because it has one major twist. The crew thinks it’s a wormhole from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant, but it was from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant 20 years ago.

The only stable wormhole we encounter throughout Star Trek with few time discrepancies is the Bajoran wormhole in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which connects the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant. This portal looks cool, but it’s also a brilliant plot device, bringing much-needed drama to the space station and introducing a fascinating concept – that extra-dimensional beings can live inside it.

Although not much to look at, the Iconian Gateways are also interesting portals that show up across several Trek series. Like doorways with glittering edges, they provide access to different places. In Star Trek: The Next Generation’s episode ‘Contagion’ (S2, Ep11), we learn that these were created by a race called the Iconians hundreds of thousands of years ago as a method of transport so they could move throughout the galaxy without starships. “Crossing light-years as easily as we cross a room,” Picard says as he beholds one of the gateways for the first time.

Portals in Popular Culture

Those are just a few examples, but they show that portals and wormholes add tension and excitement, allowing characters to instantly travel vast distances and sometimes even take a trip to the past. That’s why it’s no surprise they show up in many science-fiction stories, including the TV show Rick & Morty – who else is desperate to take Rick’s portal gun for a spin? – the video game Portal , Stargate SG-1 , and many, many more.

Similar gateways and portals show up beyond space-faring stories, too. Just take a look at the wardrobe in the C. S. Lewis classic The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (1950); the subtle knife that’s used to carve a doorway from one world to another in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000); or the character Door’s portal-creating abilities in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (1996) .

The Theory of Traversable Wormholes

But is the idea that you could find a glowing ring and step through it to find yourself on the other side of the galaxy or even in another century rooted in any IRL science?

To find out, I spoke to physicist Diandian Wang , who works at the Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara and specializes in wormholes and black holes. Wang said we need to begin by getting clear on the terminology, as there isn’t only one type of portal.

“If there’s a portal where a person can enter from one side and exit from the other, it’s called a traversable wormhole,” Wang explains. But there are non-traversable wormholes, too. “These are also portals,” he says. “But the kind where two people enter from two different sides can meet inside, but neither can get out.” When we’re talking about traveling through space and time, it’s the traversable ones we’re referring to.

There are also different traversable wormholes – both short and long ones. The short ones take you less time to travel through than going around them. In contrast, the long ones take just as long or even longer.

Wang explains the difference in commuting terms. “You would want to use a short traversable wormhole to travel to work because it’s a ‘shortcut’”, he says. “But with long ones, there’s no point unless you just want to enjoy different scenery at the expense of spending longer on the road.”

However, at least for now, this is all theoretical. “There’s no experimental evidence for the existence of traversable wormholes in our universe,” Wang says.

One of the main reasons we don’t know if portals like this exist is because there isn’t a way to produce them – unlike, say, black holes. “Black holes commonly exist in our universe because they form due to very heavy stars imploding onto themselves due to strong gravity,” Wang says. “There is no similar process for traversable wormholes – not one that’s believed to be common.”

Wang has played a part in research alongside a team from The University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Cambridge to produce a paper called ‘Creating a traversable wormhole’. They proposed a theoretical method of making a traversable wormhole. However, Wang tells me: “At the same time, it showed that it’s almost impossible to achieve in practice.”

He says another reason we don’t have evidence of portals is, if they do exist, they’d be tiny – even tinier than the one discovered in Star Trek: Voyager’s ‘Eye of the Needle’ (S1, Ep7). “Even if they are created by a quantum process, like the one described in our work, they’re typically of Planckian scale in size (10^-35 m), which is too small to detect by any realistic experiments.”

Time Travel and Wormholes

Now, the big question: if these wormholes exist, if we found evidence, might they work in the same way we see them working in Star Trek and other science fiction? “Theoretically, short, traversable wormholes allow one to suddenly – or quickly compared to conventional means – travel to another galaxy,” Wang says.

We see this from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ’s Bajoran wormhole or the Iconian gateways. They enable travel through space. But things get more confusing when we’re also dealing with travel through time – like the kind of portal imagined as the Guardian of Forever.

Wang says wormholes may have another added feature: travel to the past. As we learned in our exploration of time travel in Star Trek , the problem is the causality paradoxes that nipping back and forth through time would cause. Like the idea you could travel back in time and kill your grandfather (the grandfather paradox). Because if you could, would that also kill you? And if it did, how did you get back in time to do it if you never existed in the first place? “This breaks physics,” Wang says.

“These wormholes are forbidden in any reasonable theory that respects causality,” Wang says, which is the idea that causes happens before effect.

“Any science fiction that uses wormholes for fast traveling or going back in time is not scientific and inconsistent with current physics theories, like General Relativity, String Theory, etc.”

But long traversable wormholes are a different story. “They are perfectly allowed in theory, although they may be hard to create in practice,” Wang tells me.

“If a sci-fi story claims that an advanced civilization can easily create them using their hyper-developed technology, it does not violate any physics laws, and I would totally believe it.”

But hold up, why would anyone – no matter how advanced – do to the trouble of creating a longer way to travel vast distances? Well, Wang says that these wormholes aren’t all that helpful by their very definition. But did offer some examples of how they might be used – all centered around a Star Trek -worthy heist. “An intergalactic thief might want to use one of these long traversable wormholes to escape after stealing some valuable resources from a foreign galaxy,” he tells us.

“The entrance to the wormholes might be made small so that the local police can hardly locate them – but maybe intergalactic policemen can.”

This article was first published on May 25th, 2022, on the original Companion website.

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Barzan wormhole

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Federation and Ferengi shuttlepods preparing to enter the Alpha Quadrant terminus of the Barzan wormhole

The Barzan wormhole was a wormhole with one end, or terminus , initially located near the planet Barzan II in the Alpha Quadrant and one end that moved unpredictably to points through the galaxy, including the Gamma and Delta Quadrants , stabilized by intense energy fields within itself, until 2373 when its Alpha Quadrant end began to shift as well. ( TNG : " The Price ", VOY : " False Profits ")

The wormhole became visible due to radiation buildup in the accretion disk , whose visible brightness was brief. When reaching the terminus, accretion matter could also be observed. Instability in the wormhole could be observed by increasing meson and lepton fluctuations as well as exponentially-increasing gravity fields.

• 2.1 See also
• 2.2 Appearances
• 2.3 Background information
• 2.4 Apocrypha
• 2.5 External links

History [ ]

The inside of the Barzan wormhole

The wormhole provided the Barzans with their first true natural resource, an opportunity which they decided to capitalize on by opening up negotiations for use of the wormhole in 2366 . Present at the negotiations were representatives for the Federation , the Caldonians , the Chrysalians (represented by Devinoni Ral ), and, later, the Ferengi .

During the time that the wormhole's Barzan location was stable, the wormhole became visible every 233 minutes. A Barzan probe sent through the wormhole discovered that the Gamma Quadrant terminus was located beyond the Denkiri Arm , a distance that at warp 9 would have taken nearly a century to cover.

Ral and the Federation's proposal

Premier Bhavani of the Barzanian Planetary Republic hosted the bidding parties aboard the USS Enterprise -D . During the negotiations, Mendoza represented the Federation's interests and presented their proposal, including: a lump sum payment of 1,500,000 Federation credits would be made upon conclusion of agreement, 100,000 credits per Barzanian year thereafter, the Barzanian Planetary Republic would be an equal partner in proceeds of operational revenues of venture, Barzanian personnel would be employed as principal operating staff of ground-based support facility, long-term economic, technical, and educational assistance would be provided by United Federation of Planets, and Barzan II would benefit from increased planetary security due to protection by Starfleet , with a potential agreement term that would have expired stardate 53000 .

During the negotiations, the Enterprise conducted scientific studies of the wormhole, sending Lieutenant Commanders Data and Geordi La Forge through in a shuttlecraft , followed by two Ferengi, Arridor and Kol . Emerging from the wormhole, Data and La Forge discovered that, as opposed to arriving in the Gamma Quadrant as expected, they had emerged in sector 3556 of the Delta Quadrant, 200 light-years away. They quickly realized that although the terminus in the Alpha Quadrant was stable, the other end shifted positions periodically, and that, within a few centuries, both ends would eventually destabilize. Data and La Forge attempted to explain the situation to the Ferengi, who refused to accompany the Starfleet officers back through the wormhole. Data and La Forge returned to the Alpha Quadrant, but Arridor and Kol stayed, and they watched in shock as the wormhole destabilized, stranding them in the Delta Quadrant. ( TNG : " The Price ")

Voyager near a Delta Quadrant terminus of the Barzan wormhole

In 2373 , the starship USS Voyager , which had become stranded in the Delta Quadrant because of the Caretaker's array , discovered Arridor and Kol living on a planet , in a region called Takar , posing as gods by using the religion of the local inhabitants to exploit them. The two lived lavish lives while the people were mostly in squalor. Captain Kathryn Janeway did not want to let the Ferengi continue with their gross exploitation of the inhabitants; at the same time, she and her crew tried to find a way to make the wormhole appear long enough for Voyager —and the two Ferengi they planned to take with them—to go through.

Voyager bombarded the area of the subspace instability created by the wormhole with verteron particles, which they hoped would amplify and polarize the instability, attracting the wormhole so they could travel through it back to the Alpha Quadrant. This was a risky undertaking, however; many different factors could deflect the wormhole from their sector , such as gravimetric shifts or solar flares .

The shuttle flying uncontrollably through the wormhole

Escaping Voyager in their shuttle, the two Ferengi initiated a high-energy graviton pulse , which changed the rotational momentum of the wormhole, destabilizing it. Although the gravitational eddy of the wormhole pulled the shuttle in, the graviton pulse had knocked the wormhole completely off its subspace axis , causing the wormhole to jump around erratically on both ends before disappearing altogether. This once again ended Voyager' s hopeful attempts to return home. ( VOY : " False Profits ")

Appendices [ ]

See also [ ].

• Bajoran wormhole

Appearances [ ]

• TNG : " The Price "
• VOY : " False Profits "

Background information [ ]

"The Price" was the first to use the term "Delta Quadrant" and established its extreme distance as well as the tendency for spatial phenomena located in it, such as wormholes, to be unstable.

According to the script, the pronunciation for Barzan was "BAR-zan". [2]

Apocrypha [ ]

In the DS9 novel A Stitch in Time , Cardassians had suspected the existence of the wormhole nearly a decade before it was discovered, and Elim Garak studied it while he was at the Bamarren Institute for State Intelligence.

External links [ ]

• Barzan wormhole at StarTrek.com
• Barzan wormhole at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 1 Abdullah bin al-Hussein
• 3 John Paul Lona

Bajoran Wormhole

The Bajoran wormhole is the only stable wormhole currently known to exist in the galaxy. The terminus nearest to the Federation is located in the Denorios belt in the Bajor system, and crosses some 70,000 light years to the Idran system in the Gamma Quadrant .

The wormhole is also the home of extra-dimensional beings who are worshipped by the Bajorans as the Prophets , and therefore is also sometimes referred to as the Celestial Temple . The wormhole is also known as "the anomaly" by the Jem'Hadar .

Bajoran historical records indicate that the wormhole has most likely been in existence for at least the past 10,000 years. In that period of time, nine Orbs have appeared on or near Bajor , and are revered as active links between the Bajoran people and their gods.

There were several unexplained incidents that are now attributed to the wormhole, although it remained undiscovered until the 24th century . In the 22nd century , Kai Taluno's ship was disabled inside the Denorios belt for several days, and Taluno reported that "the heavens opened up and nearly swallowed the ship." Also, in 2337 , an unknown, unpiloted alien ship appeared in the Belt, with a shapeshifting being on board.

Because the Denorios belt was generally avoided by all interplanetary traffic, the wormhole remained undiscovered until 2369 , shortly after the end of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. When Star Fleet took over operation of the station, Commander Benjamin Sisko and science officer Jadzia Dax investigated the many reported anomalies in the Belt aboard the USS Rio Grande , and became the official discoverers of the wormhole. Shortly thereafter, starbase Deep Space 9 was relocated to a position near the Bajor terminus of the wormhole.

There is no full understanding of the scientific principles that allow the wormhole to remain stable. Much information, however, has been gained through observation in the past decade. Highly elevated levels of neutrinos are commonly detected prior to the appearance of the wormhole 's event horizon, and as a vessel traverses the passage. It is believed that verteron nodes play a large part in keeping the wormhole stable.

In 2371 , Star Fleet initiated a joint scientific project with the Bajoran and Cardassian governments to establish a trans-wormhole subspace communications relay to make it possible for ships in the Gamma Quadrant to contact home, as well as to provide early warning of any Dominion attack. The mission was complicated by a warning from Bajoran Vedek Yarka, who cited Trakor's Third Prophecy about the potential destruction of the Celestial Temple. This prophecy was unexpectedly validated soon after with the approach of a previously-unknown, long-period comet. This comet was infused with silithium, which had the potential to permanently destabilize the wormhole if it interacted with the verteron particles in the passage. Unable to alter the comet's trajectory, a shuttlepod from the USS Defiant used a deflector shield to prevent the comet's material from contaminating the wormhole. During the transit, trace amounts of silithium inadvertently leaked through the shield. However, the small amounts did not destablize the wormhole, but instead created a subspace filament inside the wormhole that allowed normal communication between the quadrants.

The wormhole had an enormous impact on interstellar politics in the Alpha Quadrant . In the first two years, many races eagerly sent explorers and freighters through the wormhole to open relations with new trading partners, and to establish new colonies. However, the wormhole also brought the powers of the Alpha Quadrant into contact with the Dominion , a powerful government that controlled a large swath of territory in the Gamma Quadrant .

In 2373 , Star Fleet was forced to blockade the wormhole with self-replicating mines in order to prevent a growing Dominion invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. Although DS9 was subsequently lost to the Dominion in an attack, the minefield was successfully planted, preventing further Dominion ships from departing it. The minefield was eventually destroyed during the Federation attempt to retake Deep Space 9, thanks to Sisko appealing to the Prophets themselves for aid, the Dominion fleet currently passing through the wormhole was destroyed by the Prophets, who protected the wormhole from Dominion incursion for the entire Dominion War.

The impassibility of the wormhole made the Dominion introduce a new breed of Jem'Hadar , the Alphas.

Later that year, Sisko was willing to let the Prophets bring about the Reckoning as they had saved the Alpha and Beta Quadrant by destroying the Dominion fleet. They were also blocking any additional enemy ships from coming through.

The wormhole was apparently destroyed in late 2374 , when Dukat , acting as a conduit for the exiled Pah-wraiths, attacked the Orb of Contemplation which was then housed on Deep Space 9 . Following Dukat 's attack, all of the Orbs went dark, and the wormhole itself disappeared. Dukat 's aim was to force the Prophets out and make the wormhole passable again.

The disappearance of the wormhole and the apparent loss of contact with their deities caused great consternation and fear among the Bajorans, as well as the rise of the Cult of the Pah-wraiths. The wormhole remained closed for the next three months, until Benjamin Sisko, acting as the Emissary of the Prophets, discovered the Orb of the Emissary on Tyree in early 2375. Sisko's discovery of the previously-unknown tenth Orb signaled the re-opening of the wormhole.

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Trek Culture shares 10 Star Trek questions that always confused you

By rachel carrington | dec 18, 2021.

Trekculture’s latest video poses some interesting Star Trek questions

We’ve all had questions as we’ve watched each of the Star Trek series like what made that character do that, or why didn’t they just do this? Some of the questions weren’t compelling enough to make us do further research while others have stayed with us over the years like why didn’t Voyager use the Bajoran wormhole to get home. (FYI, this question isn’t answered in Trekculture’s latest video .)

But what is broken down in Trekculture’s latest video are some of the most curious ones we’ve asked ourselves over the years. For instance, why didn’t the Enterprise just send a shuttle to save Lt. Sulu when he and other crew members were trapped on the planet freezing in The Enemy Within. The transporters were broken, and Captain Kirk didn’t order a shuttle to save them. Well, the answer may surprise you.

There will always be questions in Star Trek

Though Trekculture presents some of the most interesting conundrums in its latest video, there are some that weren’t included. Most likely because there has to be a time limit with videos. There is no way to answer or ponder every question Trekkies have about each of the series. Yes, we want to know why Captain Picard who was from France didn’t speak with a French accent (that’s covered in the video, by the way) and if Q Continuum and the Prophets from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine have any connection (that’s not covered in the video). But there will always be questions left unanswered.

Sometimes, though, there are no answers to the questions, or the answers are self-explanatory.  Like why was there an R on Captain Kirk’s headstone when his middle initial was a T. We can ascertain that his middle name hadn’t been chosen yet. Still, there are some deeper questions we would like answered like whatever happened to the aliens from “Conspiracy” on The Next Generation? They sent out a beacon to their homeworld yet, they were never mentioned again. We have the same questions about the aliens from Schisms. They were poking and prodding the crew, but we don’t really know why or what happened to them. And why didn’t Captain Picard demand more answers?

Alas, there are plenty more of these curiosities that will be left dangling in the air. Such is the way when there are so many series and so many episodes in this franchise. It would be virtually impossible to answer them all. Still, TrekCulture poses some interesting answers to some.

dark. Next. Star Trek: Discovery debuts a ship honoring a beloved captain