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Hmm. If an alien race a million years older than humans eventually figured out how to make synthetic wormholes on demand for FTL when no other method existed, c

by ck2 4y ago

Hmm. If an alien race a million years older than humans eventually figured out how to make synthetic wormholes on demand for FTL when no other method existed, can we theorize what the endpoint might look like? (this is a "fun" but not kidding question)

dotnet00 4y ago
One idea is that they'd be one-directional, with a black hole on one end and a white hole on the other end. But considering that we haven't really seen any evidence of white holes existing, such a thing probably isn't possible. Other than that, a simple traversable wormhole entrance/exit would just look like a sphere where you see the other side sort of 'mapped' onto the surface.
- ck2 4y ago
  Oh wow, were the Hollywood versions in Contact and Interstellar vaguely based on that science? Will have to watch them again this weekend and double-check.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    I wouldn't necessarily say they're based on science since I don't really think there's enough concrete science on wormholes to say what they would look like precisely (although Interstellar did put some effort into visual accuracy: https://cerncourier.com/a/building-gargantua/ https://cerncourier.com/a/building-gargantua/). My reasoning is that just like a circle is formed on a 2d surface when 'bridging' two parts of it (the pencil through folded paper analogy), a bridge on a 3d surface should have a sphere as the hole (or maybe since it's technically a space-time bridge, it should be a hypersphere, which would still appear as a sphere to us 3d observers). Then, to not tear apart anything going through, it'd need to conserve 'symmetry' (so something that goes in comes out unchanged), so the light would go through unchanged, making it just appear like the view of the other side is mapped to the surface.
ionwake 4y ago
(I can give you a “short” but not short answer to this)
theGnuMe 4y ago
Imagine this is the end of a wormhole and it fries any planet at the exit.
- hiccuphippo 4y ago
  The Vogons did tell us about the hyperspace expressway in advance but did we listen?

by ck2 4y ago

dotnet00 4y ago

One idea is that they'd be one-directional, with a black hole on one end and a white hole on the other end. But considering that we haven't really seen any evidence of white holes existing, such a thing probably isn't possible. Other than that, a simple traversable wormhole entrance/exit would just look like a sphere where you see the other side sort of 'mapped' onto the surface.

ck2 4y ago
Oh wow, were the Hollywood versions in Contact and Interstellar vaguely based on that science? Will have to watch them again this weekend and double-check.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily say they're based on science since I don't really think there's enough concrete science on wormholes to say what they would look like precisely (although Interstellar did put some effort into visual accuracy: https://cerncourier.com/a/building-gargantua/ https://cerncourier.com/a/building-gargantua/). My reasoning is that just like a circle is formed on a 2d surface when 'bridging' two parts of it (the pencil through folded paper analogy), a bridge on a 3d surface should have a sphere as the hole (or maybe since it's technically a space-time bridge, it should be a hypersphere, which would still appear as a sphere to us 3d observers). Then, to not tear apart anything going through, it'd need to conserve 'symmetry' (so something that goes in comes out unchanged), so the light would go through unchanged, making it just appear like the view of the other side is mapped to the surface.

ionwake 4y ago

(I can give you a “short” but not short answer to this)

theGnuMe 4y ago

Imagine this is the end of a wormhole and it fries any planet at the exit.

hiccuphippo 4y ago
The Vogons did tell us about the hyperspace expressway in advance but did we listen?