Wormholes Unstable (BBC)

An anonymous reader writes that "The BBC reports on recent theoretical physics research showing that wormholes may not be very useful for space or time travel. Wormholes with smooth or classical spacetimes appear to be unstable and fall apart quickly. Too bad for budding time travelers and space explorers!"

Comments

Duh

[Xshare]

Duh, that's why they have the dampener things on the stargate.

Re:Duh

[metlin]

Yeah, but where are you gonna get the damn Naquadah from, huh?

Huh!?! P3x742!?

Oh No!

[Bob McCown]

A completely theoretical and as-yet-to-be-discovered phenominon is unstable, and unusable for transportation? Say it aint so!

Re:Oh No!

[MarkGriz]

A completely theoretical and as-yet-to-be-discovered phenominon is unstable, and unusable for transportation? Say it aint so

Dammit, and just as my theoretical nanotube space elevator was almost complete.

Re:Oh No!

[jtbauki]

Dammit, and just as my theoretical nanotube space elevator was almost complete.

Were you going to take that elevator to your theoretical girlfriend?

Re:Oh No!

[MarkGriz]

Were you going to take that elevator to your theoretical girlfriend?

Yes, but my mom wouldn't let me cut a hole in the basement ceiling.

Re:Oh No!

[borroff]

I can just see the dialog now:

Captain: I'll give you a ride on my space elevator if you show me your wormhole.

Green-skinned lady-of-casual-virtue: Well if it wasn't a nanotube, maybe you'd get somewhere! It takes exotic matter to keep my wormhole from collapsing.

hmmm

[justforaday]

This work obviously needs to be run by a futurologist for a second opinion.

Escape

[quintiusc]

According to the article theoretically a wormhole that opens to a random place/time is still stable. It would make a great getaway. "You don't know where I'm going and neither do I. *poof*"

Of course they're unstable.

[allanc]

That's why the artificially-created stable one near the Deep Space Nine station was so strategically valuable.

Screwed up plans

[Hoi Polloi]

Well there goes my plans for the summer!

I felt a disturbance in the force...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I felt a disturbance in the force. It was as if millions of sci-fi fan boys suddenly lost their erections and started crying."

You know what's bullshit

[Adult film producer]

That they made jodie foster wear that goofy outfit when she travelled through the wormhole.. come on, I'd like to think todays audiences are mature enough to handle a little bit of nudity, seeing her hotly oiled up and sleek body slips through the cosmic threshold shouldn't dismay anyone.

I'm going with her on the next trip, in the raw baby!

Re:You know what's bullshit

[Colin Smith]

I suspect you may not be her type.

This explains the low-attendance ...

[Kaemaril]

Well, no wonder the time-travel convention was a bust :)

Ten years too late

[Qrlx]

Man, if only we had known that wormholes were unsafe for space travel back in 1995, we could have been spared the agony of seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager

JANEWAY: Chakotay, take us into the wormhole.

CHAKOTY: Aye aye, Captain!

PARIS: (aside to TORRES) Heh, she said "wormhole."

*crunch*

Not true

[barcodez]

The one I was using tomorrow worked just fine, well, it did until it broke yesterday.

Re:Is computational power the only thing missing?

[yotto]

Yeah, I imagine 150 years from now people joking, "10 to the power of 60 ought to be fine tuned enough for anybody."

PHB Mining

[Shadow Wrought]

Exotic matter is repelled, rather than attracted, by gravity and is said to have negative energy - meaning it has even less than empty space.

So how long before they start mining PHB's brains for Exotic matter?

Re:Heisenberg

[daeley]

It's Heisenberg all over again!

...or is it?

Re:Am I the only one...

[stlhawkeye]

It's the blind spot of psychology. There's a spot where your retina attached to your optic nerve (or whatever), and your eye can't actually see that little spot in front of you. Luckily, your other eye covers that ground. What if you close one eye? Then you can actually detect the "blind spot" but it's not straightforward. Your brains "fills in" the missing data, and there are various tricks you can play to make this happen and observe it.

What you've encountered here is akin to that phenomenon, only on a word-association level. You saw "W----s unstable" and your brain said, "WINDOWS!" This phenomenon is especially prevelent in males ages 9 through 120, who readily associate almost anything they encounter with their own genitals or breasts.

Yeah right.

[ChaosCube]

What a load of crap. I mean, if this was accurate science regarding wormholes and time travel and such, how do you explain John Titor?

Fools.

Re:This is hardly news.

[Dogtanian]

Is it just me or do other people also find it disturbing that trekkies consider DS9 to be a reliable and reputable source of scientific information about wormholes?

I agree. DS9 hasn't been on TV for years; anything you learned from that is going to be out-of-date now.

I get all *my* scientific knowledge from 'Enterprise'...

Weird

[hey!]

Speaking of wormholes, there appears to be one in Slashcode that is making comments disappear from one thread and have them appear in another, possibly in a completely different article.

Re:Am I the only one...

[Danger Stevens]

males ages 9 through 120, who readily associate almost anything they encounter with their own genitals or breasts.

As a male, I admit I spend way too much time associating things with my breasts.

Re:Hilarious?

[Danger Stevens]

Apparently everyone at slashdot thinks this is funny. Isn't this supposed to be BAD NEWS?

This isn't the cancellation of Star Trek, this is real space travel. And therefore less important.