Brans-Dicke Wormhole Revisited

Abstract

A basic constraint to be satisfied by Brans class I solution for being a traversible wormhole is derived. It is argued that the solution could be a wormhole analogue of the Horowitz-Ross naked black hole. It is further demonstrated that the wormhole is traversible only "in principle", but not in practice. Using a recently proposed measure of total gravitational energy inside a static wormhole configuration, it is shown that the wormhole contains repulsive gravity required for the defocussing of orbits at the throat.