Cheer up, Star Trek fans, looks like string theory may allow for universe-bridging "wormholes" to cross the cosmos.

A favorite of science fiction since the 1950's,wormholes are shortcuts through space and time theoretically allowed by Einstein's theory of gravity that would permit rapid travel across many light years' distances. (One of our readers notes that they are vital to the Stargate science fiction series.)

However, "the dream of interstellar travel short-cuts was shattered," begins the newly-released arXiv study by Burkhard Kleihaus and Jutta Kunz of Germany's Universtat Oldenberg and Panagiota Kanti of Greece's University of Ioannina, when physicists later concluded that wormholes connecting far apart distances in space would likely collapse before something traveling even as fast as the speed of light could pass through them. (In the late 80's physicists such as Caltech's Kip Thorne, revived the idea by suggesting that wormholes built of exotic forms of matter might be stable)

No need to go to such lengths, suggests the new study. Reanalyzing the problem using string theory techniques used in the past to analyze black holes reveals a range of wormhole diameter-to-energy ratios that appear stable. String theory, or more properly "superstring theory", broadly envisions subatomic particles as strings or loops of vibrating energy rather than point-like particles described in more standard physics theories.

Introduce the cosmological possibilities opened by this description of reality, add in a few equations, and the study finds that wormholes suddenly acquire stability, even if constructed of normal matter. "The wormholes can be arbitrarily large," concludes the paper.

arXiv: Read the study

Good news for science fiction writers, at least, who can take solace that some science supports their stories. It might be awhile before anyone gets around to testing the idea, though, so don't start packing.

And string theory does have its critics, such as physicist Andres Gomberoff of Chile's Pontificia Universidad, who on Twitter replied, "actually it may allow for anything!," to news that the theory may allow for stable wormholes.