Wormholes - Science fiction or science?

You've probably heard of wormholes, shortcuts through spacetime, while watching an episode of Star Trek or some other sci-fi favorite. Well it turns out that wormholes are actually an accepted theory among many astronomers and physicist. The term wormhole was coined in 1957 by an the American physicist John Wheeler although the idea was conceived in 1921 by the German mathematician Hermann Weyl. Wormhole theories range from intra-universe, a passage that connects two points in the same universe, to inter-universe, a passage that connects two different universes. The two main types of wormholes are; Lorentzian wormholes and Euclidean wormholes. The Lorentzian wormholes, also know as Schwarzschild wormholes or Einstein-Rosen bridges, are the most studied because they work within general relativity. In most cases, for wormholes to function there would need to exist exotic matter, which is a theoretical matter which has negative energy density. However exotic matter has not been proven to exist yet. The Morris-Thorne wormhole was the proposed traversable wormhole, a wormhole which one could travel through. It was introduced in 1988 by Kip Thorne and Mike Morris. In this type of wormhole, the opening is held open by a spherical shell of exotic matter. There also have been theories that state that wormhole could be used as a method of time travel as it cuts through space and time.


Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole