Travelling through a wormhole in space

[freyar]

If anyone on EN World other than freyar, myself, or a couple of others are going to engage in any such experiment... I will be pleasantly surprised.

I'm mildly offended -- I am a theorist, and it is my inalienable right to break experiments by looking at them funny!

 

[Umbran]

Umbran's "you must not understand science" approach is not helpful because it doesn't convince, and just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they don't understand. Frex in my case, I've participated in research so it was a bit insulting.

Right. So, let me get this straight....

I questioned whether you were well informed about how this research was conducted, and I'm being insulting.

But this line started when you questioned the professional skill and approach of tens to hundreds of professionals. That wasn't insulting?

I am not sure how your critique of my approach is particularly valid, unless you also apply it to yourself.

 

[Umbran]

Scientists are marketers in a sense (some more so than others). I just got back from a presentation by a Canadian MP (who is a PhD physicist), who made a pretty clear case that scientists are way behind most other groups in terms of marketing to the public, developing a clear constituency, and influencing policy. This is an important issue, because it influences how much money goes into science overall and to some big earmarked projects in particular. Outreach, or explaining things to the public, is something that I feel is also part of the job in a sense, since the public is generally who pays for science.

All true. But...

(there is always a but)

You (the general you, not freyar, here) shouldn't by any means expect *every* practitioner to be engaged in public outreach. The skill and talent set for actually doing the work of science is a pretty specific one. It is not the same skillset as is used for marketing, or even education. There are tons of spectacular researchers out there who should never be allowed in front of a lecture hall full of undergraduates!

We are slowly building out the ranks of scientists who also have the charisma and communication skills to do proper public outreach - folks like Phil Plait, and other science-literacy writers, bloggers, and the like. Neil deGrasse Tyson took Star Talk to TV for a good reason.

Communications are always tailored to the expected audience. As Morrus noted, I'm speaking here just as a guy who knows about a topic, speaking to an audience already known to be mostly interested in what I have to say on the matter, and positively engaged. This is entirely casual, and I'm not really engaged in "convincing" anyone that the science in question is valuable - for the most part, I've been given sufficient evidence to think the audience already thinks so. If you need to be convinced that physicists know how to do their jobs, that's really a different discussion than we are having here.

Yes, science is done by humans, and humans have flaws and foibles, and certainly social trends impact science. But, we have processes and mechanisms that combat this - this is what peer review and reproducible results are about. In the long run, science filters out the flaws and foibles. It can take a little time, but it does so consistently. The computer you are currently using owes its existence to that fact.

 

[dragoner]

A long flashy tunnel or an instantaneous popover?

I agree with Kip Thorne and Morrus that it would be most likely an instantaneous movement from one location to the next. The rub lies in that if the entry and exits have different velocities, one could travel into the future. I have a near future sci-fi campaign where the primary way of interstellar transit is by wormhole, where they create a Einstein-Rosen Bridge (wormhole) using a Thorne-Ellis Event Generator, travel is instantaneous from the occupants subjective viewpoint while it is 1d6+1 days objectively.

 

[MarkB]

I agree with Kip Thorne and Morrus that it would be most likely an instantaneous movement from one location to the next. The rub lies in that if the entry and exits have different velocities, one could travel into the future. I have a near future sci-fi campaign where the primary way of interstellar transit is by wormhole, where they create a Einstein-Rosen Bridge (wormhole) using a Thorne-Ellis Event Generator, travel is instantaneous from the occupants subjective viewpoint while it is 1d6+1 days objectively.

For some really weird continuity effects, you could make it 1d6-2.

 

[dragoner]

For some really weird continuity effects, you could make it 1d6-2.

Like on Futurama: "OK Mister: I'm my own Grandpa!"

Going back in time would be weird, you would arrive before you left, though the interval is short enough with 1d6-2 that it would be hard to cross your own path. ISTR Thorne or Ellis said that going backwards in time wasn't possible, just for the record; but in a game, there is no limit.

 

[Janx]

I miss these interesting discusssions on EN World.

 

[Umbran]

I agree with Kip Thorne and Morrus that it would be most likely an instantaneous movement from one location to the next.

You know, this thread is years old, so I cannot remember if this got said, and I'm not going back to read the whole thing for just this point...

A wormhole is a shortcut through a curved space. To go through normal space from points A to B, you travel some distance X. Go between points A and B through a wormhole, and you go some distance Y.

Now, you have three cases. Y=0 is the "instantaneous travel" option. The wormhole is a portal, and there is zero distance between its ends.

But zero is a very specific number. All in all, you'd kind of expect Y to have some value, but one that specific? That would have to be a specific result of the math, to come out that elegantly.

The more realistic idea is that Y has some non-zero value. If X>Y, we travel some distance through the wormhole, and it is a shortcut. But that doesn't mean it is actually short, on human scales. It is ~4 light years to Alpha Centauri. A trip of only 2 light years to get there would be a shortcut, but still a long distance on human scales.

There's also the possibility that Y > X, that the wormhole trip is *longer* than the trip through normal space. It would be kinda dumb to spend all the effort warping spacetime and taking a longer trip, rather than a shorter one, but I think the math allows it. We just aren't interested i this, so we disregard it.

The rub lies in that if the entry and exits have different velocities, one could travel into the future. I have a near future sci-fi campaign where the primary way of interstellar transit is by wormhole, where they create a Einstein-Rosen Bridge (wormhole) using a Thorne-Ellis Event Generator, travel is instantaneous from the occupants subjective viewpoint while it is 1d6+1 days objectively.

Um, the whole point is that there is no "objective" time. That's why it is the Theory of *Relativity*. If there's objective time, wormholes are not possible!

The best you can get is, "it is 1d6+1 days with respect to some specific location in normal space". I would imagine that best to be the point of departure, so if you take a round trip out and back, the total time you are gone is at least 2d6+2 days.

 

[dragoner]

This is an old thread, agreed, it just appeared as a recommended discussion at the bottom of the page in another discussion, and I found it to be interesting.

Time in this instance, I mean inside and outside the wormhole, and the acceleration, or gravitational effect on the mouth causes time dilation. So point of departure would be objective.

For path distance, a non-zero number could still be a few meters, and for a longer path in a traversable wormhole, it might not be realistic to make it too much longer, because that could create a schwarzschild wormhole with a event horizon and ultimately a black hole, by warping spacetime even more.

 

[tomBitonti]

For simulated images, check out this:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03809
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.03809.pdf

Lots of math, but you can ignore that and just look at the simulated pictures. (But the math is good, too!)

I particularly like the simulated images on pages 10 and 11 of the PDF.

Thx!
TomB