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Wormholes? Maybe.

Posted by Hemos on from the could-be-possibly dept.

A number of people have e-mailed with the BBC's coverage of the some "new theories" from a Russian scientist that have been unveiled in New Scientist magazine. The theories have been met with some skepticism by the scientific community, so don't go planning your vacation to Alpha Centauri quite yet.

14 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Original article pointer by ckd · · Score: 5

    The original New Scientist article is online, as is the full paper which has much more content.

    This is interesting, but even if it turns out that they can be found (or built), there may be problems. If they can be moved, you can turn one into a time machine (giving causality the finger) by accelerating one end to relativistic speeds and taking it on a trip, as noted in the actual paper (but ignored by both the New Scientist and BBC articles).

    A reasonable SF treatment of this particular idea is in Robert Forward's Timemaster. The characters make cardboard look 3D, and the prose isn't the most beautiful, but the main hook is the physics speculation--and Forward does that quite well.

  2. A while yet... by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 3

    If this were true, it would be most amazing...but unless they were both abundant and local, they wouldn't do us too much good. If there were enough of them, we could use them, but that's a big if.

    The only way for these to be truely useful would be if we could create them - a la science fiction - and use them as we see fit. But who knows, there could millions or billions of them. Hopefully, some day, the space progams will start real missions again, and we might someday know.

    The Good Reverend

  3. Confusion by bozak911 · · Score: 3

    How is this useful?
    That is not a silly or stupid question. If you created a new wormhole everytime you wanted one, have they worked out a way to set the *destination* of the exit?

    Once opened, how much energy would it require to maintain it? Do we just open it for a short while, send a ship out and then abandon it?

    I am interested to read the actual article, not just a blurb or two from it.

  4. Re:Man made wormhole? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    I don't know what it would take... it might not even be theoretically possible. For more information, go to gr-qc archives and do an author search on Krasnikov or Visser. Also check out Visser's superb book Lorentzian Wormholes. There is also at least one regular reader of sci.physics.relativity who knows a fair amount about this stuff if you want to ask questions.

  5. Wormholes... by vinylone · · Score: 3

    It's raining like hell here in Boise, and there's Wormholes all over my lawn!
    Halp!

    Eric Lecht

    "I do what I can, I work in the dark"

  6. Re:Build a wormhole? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    to "build" a theoretical wormhole you would first have to sustain a fusion process and make it grow large enough that it cant sustain its own mass. then you would have an ultra dense mass with such incredible gravity that it would collapse in on itself thus creating a rip in space time. thats assuming you start from scratch, otherwise you can compress an already existing mass in on itself, for example its estimated that if you compressed the earth into a sphere .7inches in diameter that it would create a tear in space time.

    thats what 8 years of working as an astrophysicist will do to you :)

  7. Old idea. by zunger · · Score: 3

    Krasnikov's Subway is an old idea; it was written as a response to Alcubierre's warp drive article, which I think we talked about here a while ago. It is perfectly consistent as a solution to classical general relativity, but the requirement for this is an enormous (about 10^80 times the mass of the universe) amount of negative mass. There are various quantum theorems that tell us that QM prevents anything more than infinitesimal amounts of negative mass from forming, so I wouldn't bother planning any Alpha Centauri commutes aboard this subway. (BTW, the Alcubierre warp drive has very similar problems. Both of these came out in the early '90s.)

  8. Keep Yourself safe from the Cardassians. by zerocool^ · · Score: 3


    In my humnle opinion, its better to NOT know that these things exist - we have numerous examples in history to prove we're better off not knowing about them. Example:
    How about stardate 4378324.8 when Ben Sisko discovers that there's a stable worm hole in his backyard??? DS9 went from a quiet backspace hang out with a bar and a shapeshifter to all the Cardassians in the universe pouring through the wormhole.

    Research it if you want, but if you find G'ul Dukat breathing down your neck don't say i didn't warn you!

    ~zero




    insert clever line here

    --
    sig?
  9. even a tiny wormhole is useful by Frederic54 · · Score: 4

    for communication! if the wormhole is atomic-size, photons that are smaller than an atom, can pass thru the wormhole. We know how to make coherent light (laser), just aim right at the center of the wormhole (once one is discovered) and the laser will reappear at the other side. Using a "blinking" laser we could use some kind of morse to communicate with someone on the other side of the wormhole.
    --
    BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite free!

    --
    "Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
  10. Creating negative energy by wowbagger · · Score: 4
    Creating negative energy is simple: the average management meeting has more than enough to create a wormhole to Hell. I know. I go through one twice a week. Sometimes more.


    My hair is pointing, Dave. I can feel it....

    --
    www.eFax.com are spammers
  11. My problem with wormhole theories by frankie · · Score: 3

    A question for deep physicists in the crowd.

    Wormhole papers always make an assumption that bothers me: that the distance you need to travel inside the wormhole is negligible. Or that if you move the ends of the hole away from each other, the length of the tunnel won't increase as well. Why does anyone consider that reasonable?

    The standard simplification of wormhole illustration is a rubber sheet representing 2-dimensional space. To do a wormhole, the author invariably folds the entire sheet in half, so that Point A and Point B line up perfectly, then pokes a little tube through to join them.

    IMO, the universe is more likely to follow a different geometry -- perhaps a spheroid. The surface distance from Baltimore to Singapore is about 12000 miles. But if you could make a "wormhole" that tunnels direct from here to there, it would be ... just under 8000 miles. Gee, 1/3rd off, what tremendous savings! Now we can travel interstellar distances easily.

    So please tell me why I'm completely off base here.

    1. Re:My problem with wormhole theories by K+space · · Score: 3
      Actually it's a more a question for light-hearted physicists in the crowd; anyone doing serious physics work and without a sense of humor isn't reading this discussion. (I don't have a doctorate yet, so I can talk about them in the third person--and I have the luxury of answering this.:)

      I may not be able to convince you of an answer with just hand-waving, (w/o a mess of formal mathematics) which is really what this all is, but well, neither of the first couple of replies is quite right I think; here's the best I can say:

      It's true that 2D-3D, 3D-4D comparisons are not exactly analogous in every way, but the significant part is more that wormholes create a distortion--locally (you're not "folding" the whole worldsheet/universe)--in spacetime such that the distance along a wormhole's wall is not zero, but pretty short. In your earth/tunnel analogy, the earth hasn't changed/distorted any, and, well, there's really nothing analagous to the dirt dug up. :) The 2D surface of the earth is usually compared to our 3D universe; if you think of the surface as first flat with a grid drawn on it, and then distort it by placing a mass on it, the grid lines will distort or "stretch," if you like. The wormhole is like when the object is so dense it pushes the surface down so far the grid lines on the "walls" of the wormhole are effectively "infinitely" far apart. If this distortion connects up with another place on the surface, you have a wormhole, where just normally going one ("stretched") grid unit gets you really far.

      Supersymmetric theories and their extensions tend to only work if space has, say, 10 dimensions, or 26. Obviously, by looking around, we can tell that these "extra" dimensions don't manifest themselves macroscopically. Where they "are" is a subject of speculation in this theoretical work.

      Anyway, most of this is just hand-waving, which is why most physicists don't even glance at this subject unless they're actually doing formal work in it. Very little in this subject is "reasonable" or makes sense, without the massive formalisms that the ideas are based on. I find it interesting that (almost all) otherwise brilliant coders and the like latch on to some pretty strange ideas about the physical world they live in. I've been coding for long enough to know this; and I've done physics for enough years to know that I don't understand this stuff (theoretical cosmology and the like), and probably never will. You (anyone) may think you are starting to understand a lot of it, but, trust me, you don't. :) (It has nothing to do with you intrinsically.)

      This phenomenon helps explain many of Hemos's strange science posts. :) Not to say that you shouldn't keep waving your hands (you just won't be doing any real/useful physics by it); while this subject itself is not "Stuff that Matters" much, it's fun, and maybe that matters enough.

      $0.02

  12. If you want... by Graymalkin · · Score: 3

    quantum travel look to your nearest electron, they have a funny little ability to tunnel through space to be anyplace they want to be. In an S-orbital an electron is only around the atom 90 some percent of the time, the rest of the time it's off galavanting in the Andromeda galaxy or someplace. Quantum physics is fun!

    --
    I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
  13. An executive summary of the "debate." by Claudius · · Score: 3

    I intend to provide a service to the /. community by summarizing the "debate," if I may be so bold as to characterize it as such, regarding this and every other wormhole-related post:

    There are basically four camps, none of which does anything except rehash old articles from the wormhole post the week before, or the week before that, or the week before that, or.... Any semblance of dialogue is illusionary; apparent polite discourse is actually just one person posting under two different names in an attempt to boost his or her Karma.

    Group 1: (scientists, people who use fancy science-sounding words and appear moderately intelligent, people who have half a clue what physics is) (a) Yawn. Been there, done that. Aren't we stuck in some kind of closed, time-like loop? (b) 'Welcome to the "Wormhole Theory of the Month" club. Thank you for your kind donation. Now kindly leave your critical thought at the door and let's all group hug. Did I mention we are going to go IPO?' (c) If you can make wormholes, you can violate causality, the second law of thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and Robert's Rules of Order. (d) You can't make a beowulf cluster out of these things.

    Group 2: (skeptical laypeople who haven't a clue what the physics is, but are ignorant enough not to realize how little they know, people who try to use big, important-sounding science words but haven't a clue what they mean) This can't work because: (a) Just what the **** is a "closed time-like loop" anyway, you pretentious twerp! (b) relativity is wrong (let me tell you why). (c) Scientists don't know what they are talking about. (d) I saw on the Discovery Channel that this wasn't possible. (e) A beowulf cluster of these things would be lame since there's no Open Source support for wormholes.

    Group 3: (agathistic laypeople who haven't a clue what the physics is, but are ignorant enough not to realize how little they know, people who instinctively distrust those who use big, important-sounding science words) (a) He must be right since a few well-known historical figures were right about something and they were told they were wrong. (Of course I'll conveniently forget about the umteen thousands who were told they were wrong and actually turned out to be wrong). (b) How do you KNOW he isn't right? You don't, do you! You can't prove it so shut up and allow ME to speak about something I know nothing about. (c) Wouldn't it be great if this worked? This is just like Star Trek! It's so cool! (d) Imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!!!!

    Group 4: (trolls, Republicans) (a) JonKatzSux(tm)! (b) OpenSourceSux(tm)! (c) I wonder what would happen if I had a wormhole in my pocket and poured hot grits down my pants. (d) BeowulfClustersSux(tm)!

    Anything that cannot be classified into these four groups may safely be moderated down as being "Offtopic."