Travelling through a wormhole in space

[Bullgrit]

Movies and other visual media always show travel through wormhole-like portals as being a psychedelic trip through a long tunnel. I understand that no one knows for sure what wormhole travel would actually be like because it isn't possible at this time, but from what science does know/theorize, what is more likely:

A long flashy tunnel or an instantaneous popover?

Bullgrit

 

[Morrus]

I'm sure Umbran will provide better info, but to my most recent reading about the subject in popular science literature, there isn't a theoretical way to travel as any wormhole collapses as soon as matter enters it (and wormholes have never been observed, of course - they're just a solution to an equation).

I wonder if time dilation and other weird effects would take place? Would your perception of time be even relevant?

The Interstellar depiction of a wormhole is - as far as I know - what Kip Thorne (physicist) says one would look like. A shiny sphere, rather than the funnel you see in Deep Space 9.

 

[Scott DeWar]

I'm sure Umbran will provide better info, but to my most recent reading about the subject in popular science literature, there isn't a theoretical way to travel as any wormhole collapses as soon as matter enters it (and wormholes have never been observed, of course - they're just a solution to an equation).

I wonder if time dilation and other weird effects would take place? Would your perception of time be even relevant?

The Interstellar depiction of a wormhole is - as far as I know - what Kip Thorne (physicist) says one would look like. A shiny sphere, rather than the funnel you see in Deep Space 9.

Since I am curious what he would say, then [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]!

 

[Deset Gled]

Assuming sci-fi style wormholes ever become a physical reality, I think travel-able ones would just be black. They shouldn't emit their own light, since that would mean they're undergoing some high energy process that makes them unsuitable for human travel. They shouldn't reflect light, since that would mean incomplete energy transfer through the wormhole. And there would be light that comes through them, but if that light is being refracted/distorted in any artistic way, matter traveling through the wormhole probably wouldn't fare much better.

 

[Joker]

I always imagined them as not having a visual representation. Like one moment you're in galaxy A and then you move a bit forward and you're in galaxy B. Or walking into a cave system on one planet and exiting on another planet in a different part of the universe.

Of course, I have nothing to back this up with.

 

[Scott DeWar]

I have to admitt, I am watching Dr. Who; Collection 2, Episode 1: The mind robber part 1 and tho opening of the show looks to be something of what I have heard to be an acid trip.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Let me just pop through this wormhole and I'll let you know ...

 

[GMMichael]

I always kind of pictured a Subway restaurant, filled with sumo wrestlers giving you high-fives as you walk through.

More scientifically speaking, if a wormhole is a tunnel from one point of a universe to another, then one the one hand I don't see any special time effects on the grounds that time is not a separate element from space (each universe marks only one point in time). On the other hand, if your position changes so radically that the time you spend traveling is time the rest of the universe spends aging, then wormhole travel could look like traveling into the future.

 

[freyar]

I'm sure Umbran will provide better info, but to my most recent reading about the subject in popular science literature, there isn't a theoretical way to travel as any wormhole collapses as soon as matter enters it (and wormholes have never been observed, of course - they're just a solution to an equation).

I wonder if time dilation and other weird effects would take place? Would your perception of time be even relevant?

The Interstellar depiction of a wormhole is - as far as I know - what Kip Thorne (physicist) says one would look like. A shiny sphere, rather than the funnel you see in Deep Space 9.

From a not-quite-insider's view, that's what I have heard about wormholes as well, Morrus, ie, all the ones we know about are unstable. Time dilation would almost certainly happen, but of course that's relative to someone who doesn't go through or too near the wormhole. That means, like always, you see one second as being one second. It's just your seconds are different than someone else's.

I haven't seen Interstellar, but I thought that Kip Thorne provided the equations describing light going around a black hole rather than specifically a wormhole. Many mathematical descriptions of black holes do include wormholes, which is probably what the movie uses. But those are "eternal" black holes --- ones that just sat around from the dawn of time, rather than forming by the collapse of a star or something. So that's still sci-fi. Also, I think the shiny ring around that black hole is light from the accretion disk behind the black hole that gets bent around to our view by gravitational lensing. If you just had a wormhole (or black hole) hanging around in space with no matter nearby, it would be like Deset Gled says. Just black.

 

[Morrus]

I haven't seen Interstellar, but I thought that Kip Thorne provided the equations describing light going around a black hole rather than specifically a wormhole.

Both feature in the movie. He provided consultancy on both.