Want to get away? Far away? There is a way. Maybe.

In science fiction, wormholes — tunnels through space and time — have long been the preferred means of travel across the universe. In the movie “Interstellar,” directed by Christopher Nolan in collaboration with Kip Thorne, the physicist and Nobel laureate at the California Institute of Technology, astronauts venture through a wormhole from our solar system to another galaxy to explore potential replacement planets for a worn-out Earth.

So I was intrigued when a pair of physicists suggested recently that it might be possible to determine if there is a cosmic subway station at the center of our own galaxy. That is where a supermassive black hole — an invisible cosmic tombstone four million times more massive than the sun — lurks, wreathed in mystery and imagination behind the dusty clouds of Sagittarius.

Wormholes are another prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which has already delivered such wonders as an expanding universe and black holes, objects so dense they swallow light. One simple version of a wormhole , called an Einstein-Rosen bridge, consists of a pair of black holes stuck back-to-back, each facing out into its own realm of the universe or universes and connected by a “throat” — the wormhole.

But nobody knows if wormholes actually exist. If wormholes did exist, they wouldn’t let you go anywhere or even send a message. The moment you tried, the wormhole would crinkle up and crush you.