Could Black Holes Be Portals to Other Universes?

David Shiga writes "Astronomers have identified many objects out there that they think are black holes. But could they be portals to other universes called wormholes, instead? According to a new study by a pair of physicists, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They have discovered that wormholes with the right shape would look identical to black holes from the outside. But while a trip into a black hole would mean certain death, a wormhole might spit you out into a parallel universe with its own stars and planets. Exotic effects from quantum physics might produce wormholes naturally from collapsing stars, one of the physicist says, and they might even be produced in future particle accelerator experiments."

Comments

Into the Unknown: The Circle

[HTH NE1]

In fact, theorists say one variety of wormhole wraps back onto itself, so that it leads not to another universe, but back to its own entrance.

I'm expecting others to beat me to referencing The Black Hole and Dr. Hans Reinhardt's line, "In, through, and beyond," or even Farscape and Rigel's bored, "Wormhole. Normal space. Wormhole." So instead, and considering slashdot's current technical problems, how about something more obscure.

Wasn't this an episode of the original The Tomorrow People, except that transit time felt like it took much longer than it really did, whereas the reality of time dilation would likely be the reverse?

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[IthnkImParanoid]

Wasn't this an episode of the original The Tomorrow People, except that transit time felt like it took much longer than it really did, whereas the reality of time dilation would likely be the reverse?

That also sounds like a Steven King short story called (IIRC) The Jaunt, where teleportation to Mars was nearly instantaneous for outside observers, but if you were awake when you traveled your consciousness perceived the transit time as nearly infinite.

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Pollardito]

a wormhole that's a loop and leads back to itself reminds me more of European Vacation: "Hey look kids, there's Big Ben, and there's Parliament."

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[aled]

Farscape rules!

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Event Horizon??? Think about that before you go through it!

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Anonymous Coward]

Technical Problems?

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[rasputin465]

Black holes are where god divided by zero

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[ThePengwin]

In fact, theorists say one variety of wormhole wraps back onto itself, so that it leads not to another universe, but back to its own entrance.

I think they should call these "Scenic Tours"

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Anonymous Coward]

No, No, NO!

It was a Steven King story, but Alfred Bester coined the word "Jaunte" in The Stars My Destination. Bester also developed the whole idea of almost-instantaneous space travel in the very same.

I love SK, but the canon is still the canon, dude - credit where it's due.

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[le_lotus_604]

"The Worm Hole" tadaaaa... sounds like a great Hollywood title !

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[deepvoid]

There is only one, but rathe debilitating problem with the idea of a wormhole, and is the following.

A wormhole to be connected must be the prodict of two black holes since a "white" hole has never been observed. A black hole connecting to this universe, has to connect to something here that we can see, or in the the case of a black hole, detect. Matter falling into a wormhole would either come out of the other end in a blinding display of energy, or it would remain trapped in a singularity shared by the two defects in spacetime. It is more likely that the blackhole is not bottomless, and does not represent an infinately deep sack, but is instead mitigated by something we have yet to determine. Maybe quantum physics plays a much greater role and prohibits the certainty of both position and momentum found within the spacetime bubble. Maybe the energy trapped in the blackhole is not trapped at all but is instead radiated in all directions about the blackhole itself, due to the uncertainty principle.

A traversable wormhole would have to be constructed of something that wouldn't provide an inconvenient landing place for incoming objects, e.g. The ephimerical dark matter we hear so much about, that drived the money machine to make so many of the expensive toys in Illinois and Geneva, Switzerland. You would have a hard time constraining the dark matter since it wouldn't respond to to anything other than gravity, and if even if you made a darkmatter black hole, you would still get torn into tiny little bits at the event horizon. Foremost of all is the fact that anything, and I mean anything, stong enough to create a wormhole, is also strong enough to prevent easy escape to the far event horizon. It would be more analogous to what would happen if there was a hole through the Earth. To traverse, you would have to get a running start and hope your momentum would carry you far enough out the other horizone to safely escape falling back in.

If you wanted to make a safe wormhole that is not connected gravitationally, then you would need to use a stronger force capable of making sharper deformations in spacetime, and allthough, all of the known forces are stronger, none of them appear to deform spacetime so far. If it turns out that electromagnetic energy actually deforms spacetime in any way, then it would be the ideal candidate.

If, and that's a big if, we ever learn how to bridge different points in spacetime or even other universes, it woun't be done with blackholes, it will probably be done with EM and exotic matter, because the creation of blackholes of any size is not only dangerous, it is stupid as well.

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Hal_Porter]

In fact, theorists say one variety of wormhole wraps back onto itself, so that it leads not to another universe, but back to its own entrance.

I think they should call these "Scenic Tours"

"Greetings Crew. Our esteemed leader, Star Captain 91805, will explain the reason for this meeting, and then the view screen and instruments panel will be unveiled."

"Esteemed crew members. I checked the calendar this morning and it is Earth Day 2,345,621,341 of our voyage. We have been in the wormhole for 6,426,359 Earth Years. After many generations of no readings in the void between the universes our instruments have recently picked up energy signatures of a star system. Curvature readings indicate we are approaching the mouth of the wormhole. Many generations ago, our distant ancestors set forth on this great journey, and they predicted this day, Emergence Day, even though they thought the journey would only take 867 days, or just under two and a half Earth Years. Luckily, we have a food generator, and our medical bay was able to clone members of our all male crew when they became too old to work or were executed. The first captain's clone became the new captain when he died of old age, and that pattern has been repeated 91805 times for all crew members. We have, I think you all agree, made sacrifices to complete this journey. I found that before the voyage, the food generator could make any known food. Unfortunately, Science Officer 23 accidentally erased most of the its memory crystals whilst attempting an experiment to turn the ship around, and we have since all lived on a rather limited diet of "condensed milk", "dog biscuits" and "toothpaste", the only meals the food generator can since produce.

Crew morale has improved since my ancestor, the Lawgiver, Captain 25 reprogrammed the maintainance droids to keelhaul crew members for violating His Law or disrespecting His Person but we still felt that the Date of Emergence be kept secret to keep the ship functioning smoothly. But according to our instruments we will reach the wormhole throat in five minutes time. I will therefore ask Science Officer 92843 to unveil the instruments and viewscreen. For comparison, he will have a picture of the wormhole entrance displayed on another viewscreen with, in an ultra rare trinary star system, so you can see how different the two star systems are. He will also calculate the time/space coordinates of both the entry and exit, and the distance between them"

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to drop by and thank you for the pointer to that short story. I've just read it and it's excellent !

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[LS]

Idiot, the Stephen King story IS called the Jaunt, regardless of who coined the word.

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Anonymous Coward]

>> "In, through, and beyond,"

The Proctologist's Code?

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but you're an overrated dumbass. There is nothing remotely wrong with grandparent's post, whereas your arrogant attack is actually incorrect.

Re:Into the Unknown: The Circle

[Grauert Brief]

You mean: Where Chuck Norris divided by zero.

Space cowboys

[biocute]

I'm pretty sure there are at least a space-shuttleful of people willing to have a go at one of these black holes, but how far is the nearest black hole?

What happens if after-life is a fact, and while all black holes cause death, some of the "faithful" ones are taken to the after-life paradise, and they thought they are in a parallel universe?

Re:Space cowboys

[eebra82]

I'm pretty sure there are at least a space-shuttleful of people willing to have a go at one of these black holes, but how far is the nearest black hole?

That would be a waste of resources. How about sending a drone with a robotic AI?

Re:Space cowboys

[joshier]

Possible.. maybe it's karma?.. I think it's pretty evident that if you're generally harsh to everyone in your life, you will get it in return, and I don't mean some special forces.. I mean, some people would treat you how you treat them.. and if you treat everyone like a douche, you'll be treated as such.ipp

Re:Space cowboys

[Hal_Porter]

If you could find a way to design a self replicating spaceship, you could send them off programmed to replicate and occasionally fly through a black hole that was likely traversable. If they survived, they'd work out what the rules for traversal, and then fly off to find the right kind of blackholes to make their way back to the spacetime coordinates they started from. Essentially, they'd solve the problem of flying in a closed timelike curve back to their point of origin via lots of wormholes by a sort of evolutionary brute force - lots would fail, but that doesn't matter since the only ones you care about are the survivors.

If it all worked, you'd send one ship off, and then lots of it's distant descendants would come back, with the data you need to travel in space and time using blackholes.

Then you could do all sorts of cool stuff. E.g. ship that travels somewhere millions of light years away at 0.9999c but make a detour via a wormhole. Sure decades or centuries of ship time would pass for the crew members, but you could probably put them in suspended animation. But the big problem of millions of years of time passing from the POV of an observer at rest could be fixed if you could make a wormhole journey that takes the ship millions of years back in time somewhere along the way.

So from the POV of a crew member, they get in the ship, get frozen or whatver and wake up millions of light years away.

From the POV of someone on Earth the ship arrives at it's destination quickly maybe even instantaneously, and it could come back quickly too, since unlike a normal relativistic rocket it doesn't arrive millions of years in future from a rest observer's POV.

From the POV of the ship itself, millions of years pass each journey, but that's no big problem.

Re:Space cowboys

[rts008]

"No Dave, I do not think I can do that."

Better make it a probe with A.D. (Artificial Dumbass) instead.

Re:Space cowboys

[kalirion]

'm pretty sure there are at least a space-shuttleful of people willing to have a go at one of these black holes, but how far is the nearest black hole?

If these wormholes are indistinguishable from black holes to outside observers, then they have enourmous gravity as you get closer to the center, right? At the very least this means you'd have to find a black hole so massive the space-shuttlful of people isn't ripped apart by tidal forces before entering the event horizon.

Event Horizon

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't travel through wormholes, hasn't everyone seen Event Horizon?

Re:Event Horizon

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can travel through wormholes, but you risk opening a portal to Hell. Hasn't anyone played DOOM?

Or read the book?

Or saw the movie?

Could Black Holes Be Portals to Other Universes?

[XnavxeMiyyep]

A question that was never asked before today!

I can only imagine

[wmwilson01]

"Err... Captain, are you *sure* that's a wormhole and not just a blackhole?" "Shush! If there's one thing I learned at Starfleet Academy it's the difference between a wormhole and a

Re:I can only imagine

[suv4x4]

"But while a trip into a black hole would mean certain death, a wormhole might spit you out into a parallel universe with its own stars and planets."

Err.. something's gotta be wrong here. First of all, let's face it: you'll be dead never mind if it's a portal or not. The fact that my energy will somehow exit on the other end offers little comfort, knowing that to be alive, I need to also have my structure preserved.

The idea about wormholes was introduced when experimenting (mathematically) what would the opposite of a black hole be, using just the known laws of physics and math.

The thing is, most objects in the universe have their exact opposite version (the most trivial example being matter and antimatter), so scientists thought the same might apply to black holes. Lots of new object classes were prophesied this way.

Thus, the concept of a while hole was born, which is not like a black hole at all: instead of only sucking in matter and energy (ignoring Hawking radiation for a moment), white holes can only emit matter and energy. Naturally, this posed the question, where is this matter coming from? And the obvious answer was: from a blackhole that's elsewhere. So a wormhole is in fact the whole mechanism where a black hole is tied to a white hole, and whatever falls in a black hole, comes out the white hole.

So I don't know what those scientists are talking about, but either is the article written very poorly, or the term "wormhole" is being used totally inappropriately here.

A "wormhole" can't look the same as "blackhole". It's like saying that a computer (the whole thing) may look to a keyboard (the input only). A wormhole isn't some sci-fi generic space warp where you put your ship to go to Degoba.

And you're definitely dead either way, but if you're brave, up on the next shuttle and go try it, in case a wormhole is passing by.

Re:I can only imagine

[jack455]

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=000998FD-65C6-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7/

The word wormhole is being used inappropriately somewhere...

Re:I can only imagine

[Frumious Wombat]

Since we can't actually travel to any suspected blackhole/wormhole-entrance, we need the dudes at CERN to whip one up, then someone can step through and hopefully wind up farther away in our own universe.

You first.

Re:I can only imagine

[Ohreally_factor]

My first reaction on reading this story was, "You go first."

Re:I can only imagine

[UNFAIRMAN]

OK, so it looks like a black hole, but it is just a wormhole; so I go for it. I jump in along with all the other matter swirling around, and I get sucked in. To an observer in my universe, it looks like I got torn apart, but actually I'm just passing through. I'm ok with it up to here (well, not really, but go with it).

So then I pop out the other side. Then what? I'm there with all the other matter that got spit out into the alternate universe. Perhaps there's just a friendly gas cloud there, but more likely everything is spit out into the same point location. In other words, I'm spit out into an alternate universe's black hole.

I don't see the difference.

Re:I can only imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

So are black holes true singularities or is that just a mathematical simplification? I always thought that they were just a large amount of matter compacted into a very small space. If that's true, then, aside from interesting quantum effects, it doesn't seem like a black hole could be anything as dramatic as a "portal to another universe". Perhaps if they are true singularities, then that would give license for some imagination.

Do astrophysicists actually consider this stuff or is it mostly science-fiction run amok?

Re:I can only imagine

[Paradise Pete]

My first reaction on reading this story was, "You go first."

That's from the book Into The Wormhole, by Hugo Furst. Please try to keep your facts straight.

ok, cue the list of corny Title/Author jokes.

Re:I can only imagine

[J44xm]

Rule One: Don't try to go through without the Sisko aboard.

Re:I can only imagine

[Rich0]

Actually, unless the wormhole is very new there, or unless matter is spit out with tremendous velocity, or unless the output of the black hole moves quite a bit over time would be a black hole there regardless. A really big ball of gas will sooner or later end up being a black hole - there are just so many stars you can dump into the same place...

Re:I can only imagine

[suv4x4]

So are black holes true singularities or is that just a mathematical simplification?

It's a true singularity. The "big mass in small space" is the previous stage, "neutron star", where the atom structure collapses and protons merge with electrons. But anyway - black holes have no volume, for real.

Re:I can only imagine

[Dr. Manhattan]

First of all, let's face it: you'll be dead never mind if it's a portal or not. The fact that my energy will somehow exit on the other end offers little comfort, knowing that to be alive, I need to also have my structure preserved.

Well, actually, you could wear a life preserver.

To quote the paper: "It is interesting that, using only normal matter, we may in principle counteract tidal forces encountered in extreme situations. This might also find application in trips near neutron stars or small black holes (without falling in) where an adjustable-radius, actively-oriented life preserver might enable you to venture closer than would otherwise have been the case and still return safely home from the adventure."

Re:I can only imagine

[chris.evans]

Blackholes don't lead to anywhere. they are just highly collapsed hypernovas that turn anything entering the event horizon into componant energy and radiation.

Going into confusion...

[bitRAKE]

What would a blackhole going through a wormhole look like?

(Or is that when the 503 error happens?)

Re:Going into confusion...

[Coucho]

Pfft, everyone knows thats what happens when the universe divides by 0.

Re:Going into confusion...

[njdube]

Creepy fat lesbian porn?!

Re:Going into confusion...

[rs79]

"What would a blackhole going through a wormhole look like?"

Utah.

Re:Going into confusion...

[NeilTheStupidHead]

Sorry, but that's already been solved.

Re:Going into confusion...

[PlazMatiC]

Goatse! ;)

Re:Going into confusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. The fat bitch has left The View.

Re:Going into confusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stargate SG1 already did that! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Matter_of_Time_(Sta rgate_SG-1)

Re:Going into confusion...

[yogurtforthesoul]

"What would a blackhole going through a wormhole look like?"

Utah.

Hey, I live in Utah you insensitive cl... Oh wait, never mind you're right.

Re:Going into confusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but I am pretty sure it would suck.

Life imitates art, doesn't it?

[semifamous]

I always knew that black holes were portals.
I mean, isn't this basic science? You go in one side and you come out the other.

It's kinda like Pac-Man, right?

Wow, what an original idea!

[caywen]

I simply never thought of black holes and wormholes that way. Going to another universe/dimension/time/etc - gosh that's something that I don't think even science fiction has considered. I always thought they were just kind of, um, holes or something.

Re:Wow, what an original idea!

[aled]

I always thought they were just kind of, um, holes or something.

Tubes.

Re:Wow, what an original idea!

[Jarjarthejedi]

Hmm...seems more like a Truck to me...I mean, you get in and may or may not come out...reminds of hitchhiking and it's even dependant on what kind of effects you have on you!

Re:Wow, what an original idea!

[neonmonk]

They're just harmless black-holey-things

Re:Wow, what an original idea!

[ectal]

It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes.

Re:Wow, what an original idea!

[FiloEleven]

Hmm, seems more like a Truck to me.

Re:Wow, what an original idea!

[happypc]

I've always perceived blackholes as being, not holes or tunnels of any sort, but simply points of ultra-compressed matter bearing nearly infinite gravitational force.

Not a portal to anywhere, just a little dot floating through space pulling everything into its infinitessimal self. Now, maybe I'm just proceeding from Hawking (it's been years since I read A Brief History so I'm not sure what thoughts are mine and which are his anymore), but my impression is that once too much matter has become compressed into this tiny point, it explodes into what is referred to in some circles as Big Bang.

Great, so they both look like

[TheAxeMaster]

So they both look like giant instant-death gravity fields. Which makes them useless until we actually understand how gravity works since no amount of probing is going to reveal anything other than how to efficiently kill a probe.

Re:Great, so they both look like

[arminw]

......So they both look like giant instant-death gravity fields........

The solution of course is to figure out how not to be subject to some of the laws of physics. Becoming exempt to the laws of gravity and the constraints of time and space would be a good start. We know that mind, thought, information, whatever you want to call it is not subject to gravity and may not be subject to the limits of time and locality as well. We have certain "religious" or metaphysical terms also: soul, spirit, ghost, demon, angel etc. A pure mind, not constrained by being physical and subject to death, should have no problem exploring black holes or worm holes.

Such a mind could nevertheless have a degree of control over the physical which we humans would call miracles. Being born of a virgin, walking on water, turning it into wine or even coming back from death itself would be an ordinary thing for such an entity. There is one such, person called Jesus, who did all that and more and He claimed to be God, come to earth. Some believe He is truth, but many believe He is fiction. Science of course it limited to the physical, by definition, and thus cannot explore these things.

Re:Great, so they both look like

[kalirion]

We know that mind, thought, information, whatever you want to call it is not subject to gravity

Um, how do we know that?

Re:Great, so they both look like

[arminw]

.......Um, how do we know that?.......

It's an actual experiment YOU can do! Fill a say 300 GB HD with random bits and then carefully weigh it on the best balance you can get.

Now fill the thing with pictures, software, music, whatever information you like and repeat the weighing. Be careful to wipe off dust and fingerprints. Maybe have the whole computer on a scale as you wirelessly transfer the data to it.

Tell me about the results. Hint: There will be no difference in weight.

Re:Great, so they both look like

[kalirion]

Hint: random bits are still information that tells you exactly which of the random bits are 0 and which are 1.

Re:Great, so they both look like

[arminw]

.....Hint: random bits are still information.....

Wrong. Information is a message from a sender which which allows you or whatever entity the information is received by to act upon it. Nothing can react to random bits because there is no way to tell what message these bits carry. The bits themselves are not the message, but their arrangement is. The letters of the alphabet in and of themselves carry no message. It is only their arrangement into the words and sentences of a mutually understood language between the sender and receiver which constitutes information.

You can buy a new disk and the result of the experiment will be the same. Information is NOT subject to gravity or inertia. That's why it can be modulated onto a carrier and travel at the speed of light. Matter, which IS subject to gravity and inertia cannot go that fast. The same information can also be in many places simultaneously. Information CARRIERS are physical and therefore subject to the laws of physics which affect these carriers. Information in and of itself is not subject to physical limitations. Science is limited to dealing with the physical. Thoughts, logic, ideas, inspiration, purpose, intent, motives, truth, untruth etc. in short all activities of mind, are of a higher order, able to control the physical parts of reality, but never the other way round. All that the physical can do is to damage or stifle the expression of a particular instance of information.

It is only by faith, in itself a non-phsical construct, through religion that we attempt to deal with non-phsical concepts. God, soul, spirit, devil & demon, angel, life and death belong into the area that science is not equipped to deal with. When we dream of traveling to other universes through wormholes or whatever we understand the physical limitations to a degree. However we have essentially zero understanding through science of the non-physical dimensions of life.

Re:Great, so they both look like

[kalirion]

Wrong. Information is a message from a sender which which allows you or whatever entity the information is received by to act upon it. Nothing can react to random bits because there is no way to tell what message these bits carry. The bits themselves are not the message, but their arrangement is. The letters of the alphabet in and of themselves carry no message. It is only their arrangement into the words and sentences of a mutually understood language between the sender and receiver which constitutes information.

Information is in the eye of the beholder. The message could easily be an implied or prearranged "hey, look what neat random bits are on my hard drive"! The random bits could also be key to a cypher. Random sequences are generated all the time for various purposes. Whether or not its "information" depends strictly on the use, not on the contents.

ou can buy a new disk and the result of the experiment will be the same. Information is NOT subject to gravity or inertia. That's why it can be modulated onto a carrier and travel at the speed of light. Matter, which IS subject to gravity and inertia cannot go that fast.

Have you done the experiments? And I hope you realize that electrons and photons are subject to gravity. That's why they can't escape black holes. In fact, I would really be surprised if it turned out that a hard drive with all bets set to 0 weighs exactly as much as a hard drive with all bits set to 1. It may be a difference equivalent to the mass of a few electrons, in which case your home scale would hardly be able to measure it.

It is only by faith, in itself a non-phsical construct, through religion that we attempt to deal with non-phsical concepts. God, soul, spirit, devil & demon, angel, life and death belong into the area that science is not equipped to deal with. When we dream of traveling to other universes through wormholes or whatever we understand the physical limitations to a degree. However we have essentially zero understanding through science of the non-physical dimensions of life.

Here we come to the crux. You shouldve stated right away that all your arguments are based on philosophy and religion, and have nothing to do with science.

For the record, I'm an agnostic, but I believe that there is no such thing as the "supernatural." If God(s), souls, spirits, devils, demons, and angels exist, then they follow the same laws of physics as everything else. It would merely mean that the laws of physics are way more complicated than most scientists give them credit for.

Re:Great, so they both look like

[arminw]

.....And I hope you realize that electrons and photons are subject to gravity........

Of course I know that these are physical and therefore are subject to gravity. I was not talking necessarily about the "supernatural", but the "normal" processes of thought, the world of ideas, imagination. These are activities of mind. You say you don't believe in (fill in the blank here) yet belief, a non-physical attribute of mind, shapes your life (and mine) more than you would likely admit.

It is by our minds as humans, that we are able to shape the physical world, more than any other living thing on this planet. Everything we do, every motion we make, every act of creativity first comes as an act of our will to and through our mind. All human laws, rules and regulations arise in human minds. Could you not conceive (in your mind) the possibility that the laws of science first arose in a mind, which itself is not subject to these laws, but outside (transcendent) and beyond them?

Traveling to other universes (dimensions, worlds) seems to be difficult if it must be done under the constraints of the laws of physics (to which science is limited) as we understand them. If of course we choose to classify anything outside of our present understanding as fiction and unscientific, then will never transcend these physical limitations. Someone named Jesus did enter our time-space universe from outside, but the things He told us and demonstrated about that other side, such as heaven, hell and "miracles" for example, are generally dismissed as fantasy, mostly because they ARE outside of our present understanding of reality. We can really only make three assumptions (beliefs). 1)That what He said is fantasy or outright false, 2) that He and his followers throughout the ages are deluded, or 3) that it is true. If they are true, then the travel to other realms is not only possible, but mandatory reality for every being that has a mind.

Re:Great, so they both look like

[kalirion]

I was not talking necessarily about the "supernatural", but the "normal" processes of thought, the world of ideas, imagination. These are activities of mind. You say you don't believe in (fill in the blank here) yet belief, a non-physical attribute of mind, shapes your life (and mine) more than you would likely admit.

It is by our minds as humans, that we are able to shape the physical world, more than any other living thing on this planet. Everything we do, every motion we make, every act of creativity first comes as an act of our will to and through our mind. All human laws, rules and regulations arise in human minds. Could you not conceive (in your mind) the possibility that the laws of science first arose in a mind, which itself is not subject to these laws, but outside (transcendent) and beyond them?

The common scientific thought is that everything that goes on in the mind, actually goes on in the brain - neural impulses, chemical reactions, and all that other neat stuff. Even if there's something beyond that (soul, etc), I'm sure that whatever it is is still governed by laws even if it is laws that today's science is not aware of. When I speak of physical laws, I mean the total set of laws of the Universe (or Multiverse if you want), not just relativity or quantum mechanics or whatever else we have discovered, or think we've discovered, so far. Even if there is an Ultimate Power (i.e. God), It would still be governed by whatever laws exist at that level.

Sure, it's possible that everything Jesus says exists, but even if it does it still obeys universal laws. Think Star Trek's Q - he could easily do just about everything that God is supposed to be able to, but it is accepted that he exists within Star Trek's realm of physics.

And just to get it out of the way, I'm also a determinist. I believe that free will is an illusion, though a good enough that for all intents and purposes it might as well be the real thing. Whatever decisions we (as well as any other sentient being, including God if It exists) make, whether they happen in the brain or the soul on some other plane of existence, are governed by physical laws just like everything else. That means the creation and procession of thoughts and ideas are as well.

Re:Great, so they both look like

[arminw]

Before I get into the reply itself, I want to thank you for a courteous and thoughtful reply, very unlike many here on /.

(.......The common scientific thought is that everything that goes on in the mind, actually goes on in the brain - neural impulses, chemical reactions, and all that other neat stuff. ........)

It is exactly that limiting idea, that mind arises from and is governed by physical processes rather than the other way around, that prevents us from readily embracing concepts and ideas brought to us by someone who came from outside of our fishbowl, the physical universe. Because of unbelief, we fail understand that we are destined to, yes required to, leave here.

I have PCs and Macs. One one of the Macs I can also boot Windows and have also run Linux. The same physical computer behaves very different in each case. Is it not the software the "soul" or "mind" of the computer that gives it a distinct personality? Even a totally different physical architecture, such as the older PPC Mac can run Windows and its programs. One of the concepts taught in the Bible is that the real you, the real me, is immaterial and lives in a physical body.

(....Even if there is an Ultimate Power (i.e. God), It would still be governed by whatever laws exist at that level.......)

If God is ultimate than He could not be subject to any laws that he did not make or were not part of His nature. Otherwise these laws and/or their originator(s) would be ultimate.

(......I'm also a determinist. I believe that free will is an illusion.....)

Theologians and philosophers have debated this for ages. In the end, there can be only one ultimate will, the will of God. In that sense you have come to a logical conclusion in being a determinist. However, consider the possibility that this ultimate power allows free will, as a subset under His will, to operate in a limited domain. We experience this every day with our own children. As they get more mature, we let then make more and more choices. Many of these choices are made on the basis of whether they BELIEVE what their parents tell them.

The question then is: Do we believe what God tells us about our origins, purpose and destiny and then make choices accordingly? As we get more mature and really believe what God tells us, will we not also be given the opportunity to explore realms and places far beyond the wildest imaginations of our fiction writers? We will not need wormholes, spaceships, warpdrives, stargates and all the other fun stuff of science fiction.

The Apostle Paul tell us in 1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard," nor has it entered into the heart of man, "the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."

Re:Great, so they both look like

[kalirion]

I have PCs and Macs. One one of the Macs I can also boot Windows and have also run Linux. The same physical computer behaves very different in each case. Is it not the software the "soul" or "mind" of the computer that gives it a distinct personality? Even a totally different physical architecture, such as the older PPC Mac can run Windows and its programs. One of the concepts taught in the Bible is that the real you, the real me, is immaterial and lives in a physical body.

With computers both the hardware and the software are very physical things. It's the same with people - we have the hardware brains, and the software/userinput stored in the brains.

However, consider the possibility that this ultimate power allows free will, as a subset under His will, to operate in a limited domain. We experience this every day with our own children.

As far as I'm concerned, free will is a logical impossibility. Think about how you make any rational decision utilizing your free will. You weigh the alternatives, and decide between them. There are preexisting pros and cons for each alternative, and based on your nature (or personality, or whatever you wanna call it) you decide which alternatives to go on.

The point is, there are reasons you make the decision you do. Being hungry is a reason to eat. A previous decision to go on a diet is a reason not to, and so forth. Your nature determines which reasons go into your decisions, but at which point is the cause-effect chain interrupted by "free will"? You can't choose your own nature, not ultimately. You can make a decision to better your nature, but that decision is based on your current nature. I forget who said "Man can act on what he wants but man can't will what he wants", but that's the absolute truth.

Now some people will throw quantum theory into the mix and shout about probability and randomness, but even with them there is no room for true free will. Whether a decision is based on pure deterministic cause-effect, a cosmic throw of the dice, or some combination, free will is still left out of the picture.

And I also believe that even if God, if He/She/It exists, cannot have true free will because logically it's as impossible as making 1+1=3 without redefining any of the term. If that goes against the definition of omnipotence, then despite being agnostic I believe that an omnipotent God cannot exist.

The question then is: Do we believe what God tells us about our origins, purpose and destiny and then make choices accordingly? As we get more mature and really believe what God tells us, will we not also be given the opportunity to explore realms and places far beyond the wildest imaginations of our fiction writers?

You forgot a rather important question: Do we believe the people who relay what they claim to be God's words to us? There are too many different versions of the divine message, and I figure that the probability that any of them got it exactly right is vanishingly small.

The Apostle Paul tell us in 1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard," nor has it entered into the heart of man, "the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."

Even if those words are the exact truth, all it means is that we have no idea what's coming, and that includes the Apostle Paul.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

>Could Black Holes Be Portals to Other Universes?

No :-)

Black Holes are not holes, they are black spheres that are super dense. They are not holes in space.

Re:No

[Lane.exe]

My God! It's like you understand science or something!

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree here. I'm bored of all this 'black holes have super duper effects on space and time and logic' they are just really large mass. Same with wormholes.

Space is nothing, it's not a fabric you can rip into. it would be cool if you could but its just not logical. just because theres a load of mass in a small area?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised how many people are confused about Black "Holes" especially after that Disney movie.

Re:No

[arminw]

....Space is nothing...

You are wrong in that. Space is a definite something with measured electrical and magnetic properties. Mass is a property of matter-energy. Matter-energy moving through space takes TIME. Space-time and matter energy is what science can explore according to the laws of physics we know about so far. These laws of physics are in another totally independent realm, the realm of thought, information. It is these immaterial things which are at a higher level. It is they which govern the operation of and interactions of time-space and matter-energy.

Science studies these interactions, but cannot explore how these laws that govern them came to be. That is where faith comes in. Man is ultimately governed by faith, belief, not logic. We humans must not give ourselves airs that this is not the case.

easy to test...

[pedantic bore]

... just send some probes through what seem to be black holes, and then see if any of them come back.

Oh, wait, there's another small problem to address first -- all the known black holes are a bajillion miles away. Maybe we should work on answering the question of how to get there before we start to obsess about what's on the other side. Or perhaps the multiverse is just teasing us, saying "Hey, there's a portal here to another universe -- want to see what's on the other side? Too bad you won't know for a few thousand years! Psych!"

Re:easy to test...

[The PS3 Will Fail]

"and they might even be produced in future particle accelerator experiments."

From the summary on this very page...

Re:easy to test...

[mdahl]

Getting there is no problem. Just have Ballmer fling a chair its way and wait a few seconds.

Re:easy to test...

[pedantic bore]

Hopefully not.

I saw that movie. It didn't end well for the human race.

Re:easy to test...

[aled]

all the known black holes are a bajillion miles away.

No problem, just find a wormhole to go there.

Re:easy to test...

[Zantetsuken]

or collect loads of dense/heavy elements and compact it into an extremely small space and make your own black-hole...

Re:easy to test...

[Ernesto Alvarez]

An easier test, assuming you can turn back while travelling on a wormhole would be to send a probe into a black hole, and once it is past the event horizon, have it turn around and return. If it goes in and then out, it is a wormhole (since it has no event horizon). No need to wait a few million years.

If it doesn't, it was a black hole and you've made some probe spaghetti instead.

Re:easy to test...

[flewp]

Already been tried. It's called the population of Wisconsin.

Re:easy to test...

[pedantic bore]

Once you get to the wormhole, it's easy to test.

The point is that the nearest wormhole candidate is a bajillion miles away. And since it's a black hole, that's really not a bad thing. I prefer black holes that are distant and aloof.

Of Course!

[geekoid]

How else could Steve Jobs have gotten here?

Universal gravity

[Anonymous Coward]

A chemistry teacher of mine in high school (early 90's) of mine had a big, long lecture about the universe and built it all up from subatomic particles and ended with the vastness of space. It was his Xmas gift for his classes every year, and we loved it. Well at least those with half a brain did.

Anyway, his twist at the end resembled this article. He said that everything in the universe has gravity. Well, if everything has gravity, then the universe itself has a gravitational pull. Eventually the mass of the universe would be such that any light trying to escape it would be pulled back inside, which would make the universe appear to be black hole from anyone on the outside looking in...

Re:Universal gravity

[Ambitwistor]

Well, if everything has gravity, then the universe itself has a gravitational pull. Eventually the mass of the universe would be such that any light trying to escape it would be pulled back inside, which would make the universe appear to be black hole from anyone on the outside looking in... It sounds like your teacher may have had the misconception that the universe is an expanding sphere, with stars and galaxies on the inside, and a void outside into which the matter expands.

That's not how Big Bang cosmology works, however. In that theory, all of space is filled with matter, and space itself expands, carrying the matter with it. There is no "edge".

Consequently, it doesn't make much sense to speak of light trying to "escape" the universe, since the universe has no boundary. That's why it's problematic to speak of the whole universe as a "black hole".

For a related FAQ, see here.

Re:Universal gravity

[Anonymous Coward]

the total mass of the universe may seem "important", but the universe density is really low, considering no dark matter and such stuff, big whole of nothing, with some mass here and there.

Re:Universal gravity

[glwtta]

In that theory, all of space is filled with matter, and space itself expands, carrying the matter with it. There is no "edge".

Hang on, I thought it was matter/energy that carried space(-time) with it, not the other way around?

Re:Universal gravity

[Ambitwistor]

Hang on, I thought it was matter/energy that carried space(-time) with it, not the other way around? It's metaphorical: it is difficult to make that statement precise and physically meaningful. I phrased it that way to get away from the incorrect idea of the Big Bang as an explosion of a point of matter inside an otherwise empty space.

Once can say that the expansion of the universe is due to the expansion of space, which means that the distances between spatial points change with time.

As John A. Wheeler said, space tells matter how to move; matter tells space how to curve.

Re:Universal gravity

[Brad1138]

It sounds like your teacher may have had the misconception that the universe is an expanding sphere, with stars and galaxies on the inside, and a void outside into which the matter expands.

It sounds like you may not be familiar with this.

Re:Universal gravity

[Capt'n Hector]

Well, the way the grandparent put it, yes, it doesn't make much sense. But isn't it rather astonishing how similar the edge of our universe and the event horizon of a black hole look? time approaches zero, redshift approaches infinity...

Re:Universal gravity

[Ambitwistor]

There is a cosmological event horizon beyond which no events will be able to influence us, as they expand away from us so much that light from them will never reach us. This is quite different from the event horizon of a black hole, however. The location of a cosmological event horizon is observer-dependent: different observers can receive information from different places. The location of a black hole is observer independnt, because it is defined as a region from which light cannot escape to infinity: a concept that does not depend where you are observing the black hole from.

This article clarifies some of these concepts.

Re:Universal gravity

[radarsat1]

Once can say that the expansion of the universe is due to the expansion of space, which means that the distances between spatial points change with time.

Which is actually something that's been bothering me since I thought of it: I feel like there's a tendency in cosmology to forget that time is also a dimension, and that the big bang is an expansion not of SPACE, but of SPACE-TIME. So if space and time is expanding, how can it be something that is taking time? How can time be expanding along a timeline? It's a recursive definition. Circular logic.

I have yet to hear a good explanation of this. I get the feeling, in all these many multi-dimensional theories of our universe, that it's a mistake to think about "time" as being somehow distinct and "special" as a dimension. But who knows, I've got nothing to base that on, it's just a hunch. All the theories I've seen have been things like, "3 large space, 6 small space, 1 time", or "5 space dimensions, 1 time". I've never seen a theory of physics that unites these two critical concepts of dimensionality. On the other hand, maybe there really is a difference between them, so it's not necessary. But in that case, does time play some special role in the big bang?

Re:Universal gravity

[LionKimbro]

I met a guy once who speculated that time doesn't exist. There's just one ever-present now. His idea was that there are "credits" and "debits" existing in some form, but there's no actual "temporal dimension." We form memories over the iterations of the ever-present now, but there's no actual past or present like there is a here and a there.

It seems reasonable to me. I don't understand what backs up the past and future as (ontologically speaking) existing coordinate spaces.

Re:Universal gravity

[Ambitwistor]

Which is actually something that's been bothering me since I thought of it: I feel like there's a tendency in cosmology to forget that time is also a dimension, and that the big bang is an expansion not of SPACE, but of SPACE-TIME. No. "Expansion" refers to space, specifically an increase of spatial distances over time.

However, it is true that spacetime is curved.

So if space and time is expanding, how can it be something that is taking time? How can time be expanding along a timeline? That's one of many reasons why nobody speaks of "spacetime" expanding. It doesn't have a meaningful definition.

This is an issue of semantics, not of physics.

I get the feeling, in all these many multi-dimensional theories of our universe, that it's a mistake to think about "time" as being somehow distinct and "special" as a dimension. Geometrically, it is distinct and special. It's because the geometry of spacetime is described by a modified Pythagorean theorem (a Lorentzian metric), in which the sign of a (squared) timelike displacement is opposite to that of a spacelike displacement.

Space and time are unified into spacetime, but that doesn't mean that space and time are the same thing. Rather, it means that what is "space" to one observer may be a mix of "space and time" to another. However, all observers agree on whether a direction is overall timelike or overall spacelike.

But in that case, does time play some special role in the big bang? In general relativity, time isn't even defined at the Big Bang; the geometry of spacetime breaks down. In a replacement theory of quantum gravity, who knows ...

Re:Universal gravity

[stonedcat]

In all honesty, time doesn't exist at all. We made it up.

The human concept of time is based on the concept of a day, in which time
the earth rotates showing a specific area of the earth: the sun then following
as it turns the stars and possibly the moon. We put a system of math (which we
also made up for the most part) into this "time" and created a control mechanism
for our "daily" lives. Had the human race never invented time we would have
never progressed and most likely driven ourselves completely insane.

You say to your girlfriend;
"I'll meet you here for dinner when the sun is about right there
((pointing at a spot in the sky)) on the earth's next rotation."

As you can see it would also not work so well for your sex life.

Re:Universal gravity

[ceoyoyo]

I don't see any reason why our universe couldn't be a bubble of space expanding into some OTHER bubble of space.

But our universe doesn't have sufficient density to have an event horizon like a black hole does. At least not using our laws of physics.

Re:Universal gravity

[Trogre]

all of space is filled with matter, and space itself expands... ...into what exactly?

If space is not expanding into anything except itself, then there is no absolute frame of reference on which to determine whether or not it really is expanding.

Re:Universal gravity

[Kuvter]

So the theory is that there is space with no boundary, but the space expands. How can something with no boundary expand?

Re:Universal gravity

[FireFury03]

cosmologists believe that time's arrow was set very soon (split second) after the big bang occurred

I've heard this before and it doesn't seem to make much sense.
- How can you define the start of the existance of time as happening _after_ a certain amount of time has elapsed? In order for time to elapse you need time to exist.
- The big bang is a rapid expansion of space. The word "expansion" requires there to be time since it refers to the distances between points changing over a duration of time. So how can there be any expansion "between" the start of the big bang and the start of time?

Fundamentally I don't understand how there can ever be a "before the existance of time" since the word "before" requires there to be time.

Re:Universal gravity

[FireFury03]

I don't see any reason why our universe couldn't be a bubble of space expanding into some OTHER bubble of space.

Clearly it depends on how you define "the universe"

If the universe is everything that could ever affect us then there is an (observer location dependent) edge, beyond which there may well just be more of the same universe which is expanding away from us faster than the speed of light so can never affect us (assuming we _can't_ just pop down a worm hole and appear at the edge of the visible universe).

If you define the universe to be the entire length of all of the spacial dimensions (even past the edge of the visible universe) then the concept of something being "outside" the universe gets more difficult. I suppose if the containing space has more dimensions than our universe then we could be expanding within it, just like the (2 spacial dimensional) "universe" represented by the surface of a balloon can expand inside our (3D) universe.

Re:Universal gravity

[FireFury03]

How can something with no boundary expand?

This is easilly described by the old inflating balloon model. Imagine you're a 2-dimensional being living on the surface of a balloon. One of your dimensions is east/west around the balloon and the other is perpendicular, making it north/south (for want of better terms). There is no boundary to those dimensions - you can keep walking in any direction forever. However, if the balloon expands then those dimensions are undeniably expanding - 2 stationary points anywhere on the surface of the balloon will always be moving away from eachother at a speed that is proportional to the distance between them.

The same thing can be modelled as a flat rubber sheet extending infinitely in all directions - the sheet can be continually stretched so that any 2 stationary points on the sheet are moving away from eachother at a speed proportional to their distance. Points with a great distance between them will be separating at a speed greater than the speed of light and thus they are unable to ever affect eachother in any way (this is allowed since the points are not moving with respect to space since it is the space between them that is expanding).

Re:Universal gravity

[Ambitwistor]

If space is not expanding into anything except itself, then there is no absolute frame of reference on which to determine whether or not it really is expanding. That's not true; it would only be true if our "meter sticks" (whatever we use to measure distances) were expanding at the same rate as the universe itself. However, they do not.

Re:Universal gravity

[Ambitwistor]

How can something with no boundary expand? We often think of expansion as the movement of matter through space; the expansion is then delineated by a boundary between points that matter has visited and points that it hasn't yet.

In the Big Bang picture, space is uniformly filled with matter. Instead of the matter moving to different parts of space it hasn't been before, matter starts out everywhere filling space, and space itself expands. By this I mean, space has a natural geometry (e.g., Euclidean, or non-Euclidean, or whatever). A geometry defines how far apart different points are. It is this geometry itself that changes: the matter doesn't do anything in particular, but the distances between all points changes. This geometry can be defined completely intrinsic to the universe, without appealing to any "outside" "into which" the universe expands.

Re:Universal gravity

[Ambitwistor]

P.S.:

... into what exactly? It doesn't expand into anything. Internal distances between points in space merely increase.

This may be possible to imagine if you think of an infinite sheet of rubber. The sheet is unbounded, but you can still imagine it stretching in all directions.

If the universe is finite, like the surface of a sphere, you can also think of it as stretching without imagining a higher dimensional space "into which" it is stretching; it is perfectly possible to talk about distances between points in the universe changing without referring to points outside of the universe. It's just not possible to visualize this scenario with a finite space, because we always visualize 2D surfaces as embedded into a 3D space. But it's logically and physically possible.

Another way you could sort of visualize a finite unbounded space expanding, without it expanding "into" something, is to imagine the spherical surface just sitting there, and everything inside of it shrinking.

All of these visualizations, however, are limited, as I said. (Especially since space is not a two dimensional rubber sheet ...)

Re:Universal gravity

[Tickletaint]

You say to your girlfriend;
"I'll meet you here for dinner when the sun is about right there
((pointing at a spot in the sky)) on the earth's next rotation."

As you can see it would also not work so well for your sex life.

So I guess you could also say our perception of time is an evolved trait?

Re:Universal gravity

[radarsat1]

Good answer!
Thanks!

It makes sense to think that even though you can think about space-time, it doesn't mean that they are really unified in a physical sense. I can see how it might just be a shorthand for doing equations since from the mathematical point of view they are similar, but in a physical sense they are different.
Still, I was always under the impression that the big bang involved space-time. I'll have to look it up.. ;-)

Re:Universal gravity

[Ambitwistor]

The Big Bang does involve spacetime: it is a singularity which is essentially a boundary of spacetime ("the creation of the universe"). It's just not an "expansion of spacetime". Big Bang cosmology in general (not just the Big Bang itself) involves a curved spacetime with expanding space. (Space itself may be flat.)

Re:Universal gravity

[ceoyoyo]

According the original poster's idea about our universe being a black hole in another one the observer dependent edge doesn't cut it.

So we have to go with the second idea. Using "edge" very loosely, by the way. So to get "outside" we'd need extra dimensions, but the other universe wouldn't necessarily have to have extra dimensions itself. Ours could intersect it as opposed to being surrounded by it. I think we could even be contained by another universe without extra dimensions, but it's making my head hurt this early in the morning so I'm going to stop thinking about it.

The idea doesn't work anyway though, because it rests on the idea that our universe is dense enough to appear to be a black hole from the "outside."

Re:Universal gravity

[mr_matticus]

How is time measured, though? Every clock we have is relative to something else in the universe. The time it takes me to get to work is equal to x movement of the sun or y rotations of an atomic clock.

If the entire universe is expanding, and everything in it is expanding, wouldn't it both speed up and slow down consistent with that rate? Time *COULD* be expanding, but we'd have no way of perceiving it.

The problem isn't one of physics, and unlike the excellent and appropriately modded-up reply in this thread, it also isn't necessarily semantic. It's conceptual.

If the universe is speeding up, our cognitive understanding of that is like a car engine going from 2000 RPM to 3000RPM or something (or 40 to 50 mph, etc.). Well if time is expanding, too, a "minute" would expand to match. That's because according to our understanding of physics, acceleration includes a time vector, and we assume time to be a constant in that model. But if the universe (and time) are expanding, 2000 RPM would stay 2000PRM because "minute" would keep pace with rotation. What we would need is an EXTERNAL TIME reference--a "multiverse" time--before we could evaluate it.

Time isn't necessarily special as a dimension, but our cognition of time as a clock may well be flawed, since a clock is bound to our own universe and is only a measure of relative speed (one second=x vibrations). As the earth's rotation slows, solar time will slow to match. Perhaps "time" performs the equivalent--but we'd have no way of knowing without having a relative comparison from outside our universe.

Just like putting

[geekoid]

a portable hole into a bag of holding!

Re:Just like putting

[Paradise Pete]

a portable hole into a bag of holding!

I never quite understood that term. Aren't all bags pretty much "bags of holding"?

Re:Just like putting

[fotbr]

You didn't play DnD did you?

Re:Just like putting

[trentblase]

But not all bags hold as well as other bags. Bags of Holding hold infinitely well, and are thus the holdingest of all bags. Compare: All apples reflect some red light, but only the reddest apples are called Red Apples.

Re:Just like putting

[Kuvter]

If you're not enough of a geek, what happens is they destroy each other.

Re:Just like putting

[Paradise Pete]

I see. So it has some special meaning. I thought it was like an "all new" TV episode, said as if most of the time they contained some old parts.

hell yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

in all prollibity, they COULD be portals...

I'll just let my grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-children to find out themselves when they are spacefearing. :-)

Boxes?

[eggman9713]

But, but, Professor Farnsworth's boxes are the gateways to other universes!

So what you are saying is that

[geekoid]

they do give Riker a command?

Special Wormholes

[MSTCrow5429]

These must be special wormholes. Typical wormholes, if they existed, would create a shortcut in space-time within the same universe. Or maybe these hypothetical constructs are not wormholes, but something else?

Re:Special Wormholes

[glwtta]

If years of watching sci-fi TV shows has taught me anything, it's a that a wormhole is a convenient plot device able to accomplish absolutely anything. They are rather like the deflector array polarity in that way.

Clearly these guys are drawing on the same source material in their "science".

what would happen on the other side?

[radarsat1]

Well, I'm no physicist, but it seems reasonable to me to assume that if the formation of black holes can rip through to another universe, or perhaps another part of a curved universe, then an event would take place on the other side: the formation of a matching wormhole mouth.

We have to assume that if blackholes can form in our universe, then they can form in the "other" universe. So we would be seeing the spontaneous formation of black holes occurring here that are the result of collapsing stars on the other side.

So my question is, what does this event look like from the perspective of the other side, and have we observed it happening here?

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[radarsat1]

An additional question comes to mind: If black holes have an event horizon beyond which no matter can return, and there is a wormhole with a black hole on each side, then if you went into the black hole and try to get out the other side, you'd find that you're behind the other black hole's event horizon and are unable to escape. So... you'd be in a tunnel from which there is no escape. So... you'd stick in a wormhole... which doesn't seem all that different from a black hole... what was the point of this thought experiment again?

Perhaps wormholes just don't exist then.

I think the thing that differentiates worm holes from black holes is that they DON'T shrink to a singularity, but instead attach to a hole on the other side of the universe through a tunnel that has a finite radius. So they're not the same thing... the difference between having a singularity and NOT having a singularity is pretty staggering. Is the point of the article just trying to say that wormholes have an event horizon?

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[Cylix]

The opposite of a black hole...

A sun!

That's right folks, traveling into the black hole means you will undoubtedly be used a fuel to warm the bodies of some lovely 3 breasted alien hotties.

(Yeah, my theories have no basis in this world...)

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[B3ryllium]

Well duh ... a WHITE hole! :)

As to whether we have observed it, who knows. Maybe some celestial phenomenon has been mistaken for something it isn't, instead of being seen as a gateway from another universe. :)

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[suv4x4]

We have to assume that if blackholes can form in our universe, then they can form in the "other" universe.

Let's just be clear that without more details, the claim that wormholes open in some "other" universe appear quite random. The original theory of wormholes doesn't claim any other universes, just different points in the same (and only) mother universe we know.

There are two types of "other" universes currently science theorizes about: parallel universes as found in quantum theory (all possibilities of a super-state), and the universes formed by the additional dimensions suggested by the string theory (where "sliding" along the additional dimensions may create alternative universes where laws of physics change and even Pi might change as a constant).

Again, maybe just the article is written poorly, but it seems they're talking about some kind of Star Trek -style "other" universe, and we should expect lots of aliens with rubber foreheads. It's hard to take any of this seriously when all of the substance and coherence was sucked out (if it ever existed) in the process of turning it into an article.

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[RuffRuff]

So my question is, what does this event look like from the perspective of the other side, and have we observed it happening here? Well, all things considered, the Big Bang currently looks like a promising candidate for a singularity, don't you think?

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[Razed By TV]

If the wormhole is created by a collapsing star on one side, the event that occurs on the other side of the wormhole may be the collapse of another star. Perhaps stars that collapse in pairs have a chance of becoming wormholes, while individual stars that collapse become black holes. Also, the article mentions that the shape of the wormhole may determine the length of time it takes an object to travel through it. It may be that wormholes are not created whole but instead require time to propagate, to create the wormtunnel, which might allow for two stars which do not simultaneously collapse to become connected. The implication of this is that any star that collapses to form a worm hole may actually be on the second side and not on the first.

Please note IANAP and I am largely talking out of my ass : ) (But hey, it sounds good in theory, right?)

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[maraist]

I can't remember the original source.. But in the book 'The God Delusion', there were references to several official big-bang theories.. One of which was the hypothesis that black-holes represent spontaneous synthesis of isolated sub-universes. Where information doesn't leak-back-in to the source universe.. Each sub-universe could have potentially deviant quantium properties such that the mass, charge, force-strenght, etc of various quantum particles would differ ever so slightly.. That by this process, universes actually evolve - ones that have unstable quantum characteristics quickly devolve (perhaps expanding too quickly, or collapsing back into itself, etc).. By virtue of the fact that our universe survived long enough to spawn life, this would represent a successful set of quantum characteristics - though there may be alternate sister, parental or child universes with more ideal states.

But, it stands to reason that such evolutionary universes don't allow cross-talk, that you wouldn't be able to worm-hole back into your neighboring universe. If nothing else, the difference in quantum properties would cause your physical person to become highly unstable.

Of course it's still conceivable that the sister universes have identical properties (that there is only one set), that perhaps only the differing ratio of particles (such as the over-abundance of matter v.s. antimatter in our universe). To which we may still survive in the alternate universe - just have to watch out for our alter ego.

Though, to me, an identical universe, or even a sister universe is kind of boring to me.. Just seems like infinity times k. whop-ti-doo. The only interesting cases to me, are the evolving universes or the true singularity of our universe.

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[FridayBob]

One possibility is that you'd get a white hole on the other side -- something that would be spew out the same matter that fell into the black hole on the other side. However, astronomers have never seen anything like this in our universe. It seems unlikely.

Another theory is that the Big Bang itself is an example of a white hole, which would lead to the possibility that the formation of every black hole gives birth to a new universe, separate from its parent universe. In that case, it may be that the increased rate of expansion of our universe is due to more matter falling into the associated black hole in our parent universe. If we imagine that this theory is correct, then I can think some more questions:

1. What happen to the associated child universes if two black holes merge?
2. Do child universes inherit the physical characteristics (laws, constants) of their parents?
3. What are the consequences for the child universe if the black hole that created it begins to lose mass due to hawking radiation? Does it contract?

If the third one is true, then perhaps a Big Crunch is inevitable. But, if our universe collapses before any of its own black holes have a chance to "dry up", what happens to our child universes? Are they destroyed? Do they get orphaned and then never contract/collapse?

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[instagib]

> I am largely talking out of my ass

Which proves that sound waves come out of black holes ...

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[Jugalator]

I've thought of this too, it was also discussed here:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/011030a.html

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[termigan]

I don't see how pi could change. It's a geometric constant for circles in two dimensional space, not a physics constant like c or e. If you have a projection (repositionning?) of a circle in a third (or even 4th or nth) dimension, and then observed as a two dimensional figure from an oblique vantage point, it becomes an ellipse or other figure, and pi is not related to this non-circle figure.

It's true that all the quantum constants could change, even gravity. If have to measure figures in more dimensions I'm pretty sure you just have to come up with different formulas to describe them.

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[Tablizer]

Do child universes inherit the physical characteristics (laws, constants) of their parents?

Yoik! I find a way out of this universe and still cannot escape OOP

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[Mr2001]

e isn't a physical constant, it's a mathematical one, and it can be related back to pi.

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[bjorniac]

You're assuming a background euclidean geometry. This doesn't have to exist. Now, if we allow space to curve (eg surface of the earth) we can form triangles whose angles don't add to 180 - eg you can do a triangle with three right angles on the earth - start at north pole, go to equator, turn 90 degrees, got 1/4 of way around earth, turn 90 degrees, back to north pole. You can say that it isn't a "triangle" in your common notion of the word, but from a non-euclidean geometry perspective it actually is - three straight lines on a sphere (called geodesics) joined by three angles.

Now, Pi is a constant for circles drawn in our euclidean space. But that presumes that we can measure a circumference and radius and take a ratio. There's nothing in maths to stop Pi being any value you like, it just happens to be what it is in our geometry. If you like, you can define Pi as being the circumference to diameter ratio of the most efficient way to capture area with a given length of rope. That is a perfectly good definition of a circle in our standard geometry. But if you make some changes to geometry there's no reason that it shouldn't change - the radius of a circle drawn on the surface of the earth, measured along the surface, compared to its circumference measured in the same way may in fact vary. Suppose you put a rope around a large mountain - the radius measured across the mountain (sticking to the surface) will be very large, as will the area contained, even though the circumference (measured around the base of the mountain) will be relatively quite small.

Oh, and as a side note, e isn't a physical constant, it's a mathematical one. It's Sum (n=0 to infinity) 1/n! To some extent you could argue it's just as fundamental as Pi.

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[vertinox]

If black holes have an event horizon beyond which no matter can return, and there is a wormhole with a black hole on each side, then if you went into the black hole and try to get out the other side, you'd find that you're behind the other black hole's event horizon and are unable to escape.

Of course the other universe could be one that time is reverse and everything is made of anti-matter in which the black holes spew instead of attract.

Of course, if you some how survived the trip, as soon as you touched something you would be annihilated considering you are made of matter and now exist in a universe full of anti-matter.

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[Xyrus]

Then of course, you have to assume that even if you did get out to another universe, whether or not the physical laws are similar to ours, or even if it is stable or not.

For instance, let's say you wind up in another universe where the Coloumb constant is only 1/10th what it is in ours. You, your ship, and all matter that came along ith you would explode apart.

Plus, travelling inside a black hole has some strange consequences. If a black hole is large enough then the gravitational differential would be small enough for someone to survive. But inside a black hole both space and time are distorted, so you may be travelling in both (and not necessarily the same "direction" we do in normal space).

~X~

Re:what would happen on the other side?

[elrous0]

Not only that, but you'll probably also crash into your goatee-wearing counterpart on the way through.

This remembers me of something

[cmoerz]

Anyone seen that movie? So, why not just send a ship to check it out and let them come back totally cocoo... procrastinating is for the anonymous cowards! I for my part welcome our new wormhole-journey-returning-overlords!!

Slight problem

[Turn-X Alphonse]

The problem is how would we test such a theory? Do we throw a probe into a black hole and wait to see if it returns? (Isn't time ment to pretty much stop at some point in a black hole?)

I'm all for theories and such, but how the hell do we test this?

Re:Slight problem

[yoprst]

The problem is how would we test such a theory?
It seems that some MS executives developed a sudden liking to spaceflight. Perhaps we should send them there. You know, if they're lucky there'll be some innovation... finally... And if they aren't... well, that's the whole point.

Telepathic aliens say it is so...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is totally off the edge of most people's reality map of possibility. But several people who claim to channel messages from extra terrestrial entities/aliens/inter-dimensional beings/whatever, have made this claim. I throw this out there FWIW. I'd be intrigued/tickled to discover some of these people having a string of lucky guesses that end up being confirmed by science. I'm too lazy to go find some references and link to them... But in my excursions to the fringe material I've come across the concept. But then again, sci-fi/fantasy/real science/imagination/etc all kind of overlap in different places...

how come...

[williamyf]

We have identified plenty of objects that appear to be black holes, or wormholes, or whatever... and yet no single trace of an object spitting out matter like the end of those wormholes. Until a working wormhole is created, or a matter spitter is located, I'll leave this to Stephen and his ilk

Salud!

Re:how come...

[philpalm]

Yeah if there is a wormhole there should be an exit to a wormhole somewhere in this universe. When tons of matter appear out of nowhere, then I would believe in the existance of a wormhole. Until then all the black holes are really just black holes and not wormholes. Now where does all that matter that enters a black hole goes to? If the gravitational field increases as matter is added then that means the matter is still there. However if rays and energy is shooting out of that area then that means matter is being converted into energy.

No need to get there

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look in the universe for places where material appears out of nowhere (if wormholes exist, some wormholes should have traffic from other universes to ours.)

Let's throw the hardened convicts in there

[atari2600]

You know, the really really bad guys. Give them a ship with food, guns and other building blocks for "civilization". If they make it, well we win. If they don't, well too bad but that relieves the load on prisons. What? It worked for Australia didn't it? Ok laugh now - that was supposed to be funny.

Hmmm, come to think about it; not a bad idea at all.

Re:Let's throw the hardened convicts in there

[lpw]

You must be Xenu?

Re:Let's throw the hardened convicts in there

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the back story to Starcraft.

Re:Let's throw the hardened convicts in there

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you could say 'you must be xenu here'...

...hahahah I kill me sometimes.

Re:Let's throw the hardened convicts in there

[Anonymous Coward]

it worked for america too you know :)

503 Service Request Error

[FMota91]

Black holes and Wormholes can also be caused by chaotic traffic on the way to a Slashdot article. After all, the Internet is just a series of tubes.

All ways...

[aled]

But while a trip into a black hole would mean certain death, a wormhole might spit you out into a parallel universe with its own stars and planets.

Yeah, after killing your smashed atoms would travel to another universe.

Falling into black hole?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that bothers me is that earth-based observations show the universe "expanding", and at an accelerating rate - but, um, couldn't *we* just be falling into a really large blackhole - everything getting "further away" because, well, we're sliding down into an enormous gravity well. Like, oh, the sodding GALACTIC CORE ?

Re:Falling into black hole?

[joshier]

For me, I used to worry about s*** like this... death, illness, aliens...

I've naturally desensitized myself from all of it... admittedly, I delved into it more than I should have before and scared myself silly, but I went there.. It was interesting and I learnt a lot of things.. One of the main things I learnt was to not take it to the heart, not to take it overly serious that I would break out from my normal life to study more/worry about... I really am not scared of death, this life, whatever it,/she/him created me and I have a good life, and that's that.. sometimes it's bad but hey, I am still fortunate to experience things, help others... Worrying about silly speculative articles on slashdot is nothing short of silly.. so relax buddy! eat some haagen daz ice cream.. peace.

If this were true...

[AbsoluteXyro]

If this were true... Shouldn't we see some black holes spitting out extradimensional spaghetti noodles?

Re:If this were true...

[TheGratefulNet]

noodles occur on a continuous non-discrete function.

but time is discrete, so actually it would be more like rice than noodles.

Re:If this were true...

[Quaoar]

They do (Although for a completely different reason).

Re:If this were true...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not silly, the spaghetti noodles are invisible

Re:If this were true...

[Dachannien]

Only if His Noodly Appendage wills it so.

Oh, well, that's different

[Deadstick]

But while a trip into a black hole would mean certain death, a wormhole might spit you out into a parallel universe

...dead.

rj

Re:Oh, well, that's different

[Anonymous Coward]

So now all we must do is find this celestial phenomenum that spits out dead bodies and other artififacts from a parrallel universe.

Hmm, I know, Hollywood or whoever it is that comes up with all these slasher flicks and stuff.

Re:Oh, well, that's different

[TheGratefulNet]

given the time distortion, it might even make you pre-dead

Re:Oh, well, that's different

[moochfish]

But while a trip into a black hole would mean certain death, a wormhole might spit you out into a parallel universe ...dead.

...compressed 100000:1 and then sucked back into the wormhole.

Re:Oh, well, that's different

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's all the corpses being spat out into our universe?

I wanna... I wanna corpse.

Re:Oh, well, that's different

[Jeff DeMaagd]

More than that, you'll be probably be turned into a convenient stream of high energy particles.

Re:Oh, well, that's different

[boredguru]

pre-dead Then how do you know if a person who hasn't been born was actually alive 2 minutes back and walked in to this monstrosity right before your eyes and became pre-dead? Seems like the Universe covering up it's tracks well.
The complexity is unfathomable. I have found this level of complexity in only one other universal entity.

Re:Oh, well, that's different

[wolverine1999]

It's the rift in Cardiff!!

The paper

[Ambitwistor]

New Scientist has a link to the paper, which is small and off to the side and easily overlooked (and does not make clear that the whole paper can be accessed, not just the abstract). The paper is here for anyone who may have missed it.

Re:The paper

[onx]

Additionally, as far as I can tell, the paper has not been published.

White hole

[ichigo 2.0]

There is a white hole on the other side which repels matter.

No, I'm not trying to pull a Red Dwarf joke on you, that's actually what it's called. :)

Too exotic

[Dr. Eggman]

Who needs a multi-verse explaination when it suffices to explain a blackhole as vast swaths of time/space condensed to an ultra-hyperfine, darn-near-singular point? That's what I had always thought they were, anyways.

Who knows, maybe a black hole is just an area approaching infinity, shrinking all that comes to the area with it. Why not? And Hawking's Radiation naturally permeates all of the universe but remains unobservable as it's particles are so large that it would fit many solar systems in it's space, but shrinks down at a black hole to a (weakly) observable radiation. It's not as if something that large would be identifiable; it would be discounted to an observation of the basic state of the universe. Our universe is only our observable universe; all this multi-verse and worm-hole stuff isn't any more real science than my silly-sized particle, just imaginative speculation.

is this like saying

[semiotec]

toilets are in fact, gateways to other people's homes? perhaps someone could make a pretty picture to make this argument more plausible.

Re:is this like saying

[ceoyoyo]

Well, actually they are. You've got to be pretty small to fit down one though, and you have to be able to swim upstream.

Logical contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to split semantic hairs here...but we are geeks after all...

The word "universe" logically means "everything." From Dictionary.reference.com:

1. the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm.

An etymological analysis reveals the word to be of Latin origin, the prefix "uni" meaning "one" and "verse" derived from the word for "to turn," implying something to the effect of "all things turned to one." (I also have a beef with the misuse of "uni" in such words as "unisex," but I won't get into that here).

Anyway, if it is possible to get to a "parallel universe" then that means that it exists. If it exists, then that means that it is already part of the universe. Therefore saying that there are many universes is a simple logical contradiction.

So, perhaps these other places exist, and are parallel to the place in which we exist. I am envisioning something like a stack of 4 dimensional space-time continuums all lined up along a fifth dimension, with worm holes propelling objects along the 5d axis between these continuums. That may be possible for all I know, but they aren't parallel universes; they are all part of the universe.

Re:Logical contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

a stack of 4 dimensional space-time continuums

Since you decided to be pedantic about "universe" I think it's only fair that someone go pedantic on you, and point out your mistaken use of "continuums".

It should be "continua".

Arguably, "continuums" is within the universe of acceptable variants, but "continua" is the simpler and far more preferred spelling.

Re:Logical contradiction

[hostyle]

so if i had three everythings and i gave you two what ill house prices in venezuela be like in the next universe ? buy buy buy!

Re:Logical contradiction

[illegalcortex]

You're not just splitting hairs, you're assuming that a word is simply a collection of roots (Latin or otherwise) and it has a fixed and unchanging meaning derived from them.

That's really not the case with language. It's ESPECIALLY not the case with scientific language.

You might also notice that what you posted isn't the definition of universe, it's a definition of universe. Another from the same page: a world or sphere in which something exists or prevails. This is much more applicable to our usage of universe to mean the current cosmology we understand.

I know it makes some people who crave order and stability mad, but language is created, molded, abused and transformed by the speakers and writers with little remorse for whose feelings may be hurt.

Re:Logical contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

If logical contradictions to intuitive concepts meant anything, quantum mechanics would not be around today.

Heisenberg's Epitaph:

"He lies somewhere here"

Re:Logical contradiction

[lipbone]

Oh shut your fucking piehole. BTW, just in case you think that I'm being offensive, I'm not. My language has evolved more than yours. You probably crave order and stability you lite-weight moron.

Re:Logical contradiction

[iminplaya]

Damn! you ruined my Highlander joke! Now I have to wait for the dupe.

Re:Logical contradiction

[iminplaya]

You must be in the process of defining this. Why don't you go cuss him out because the downloads aren't working?

Re:Logical contradiction

[morcego]

Anyway, if it is possible to get to a "parallel universe" then that means that it exists. If it exists, then that means that it is already part of the universe. Therefore saying that there are many universes is a simple logical contradiction.

Be sure that research the etymology of the word "atom" before you make statements like that, please.

atom = "something that cannot be divided"

Re:Logical contradiction

[Hal_Porter]

You must be in the process of defining this. Why don't you go cuss him out because the downloads aren't working?

Fuck me! That's fucking hilarious.

I'm rolling on the fucking floor, fucking laughing.

Re:Logical contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

If universe disturbs you, you should try atom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom

átomos meaning "indivisible" [...] átomos is usually translated as "indivisible" or "uncuttable."

Fermi should by Guantanamed for his terrorist article that led to the apparent contradiction of "atomic fission". In fact, people working in, or using the nuclear milieu should be jailed because every day they use physics properties that commit the outrage of violating our sacro-saint language framework!

Ahem... This means all of us? Sorry... Should we get back to the dark ages, when physics had the decency of never contradicting vocabulary?...

Re:Logical contradiction

[MindKata]

"atom = "something that cannot be divided""

Your definition ignores subatomic particles ... in other words, talking from an Etymological perspective, the definition of "atom" in the context of physics has been redefined over time. Saying an atom is something which cannot be divided is an outdated concept. Etymologically speaking ;)

Re:Logical contradiction

[morcego]

So is saying that "universe" means "everything".
Thank you for reinforcing my point.

Btw, as I'm sure you know, I was not saying AN atom cannot be divided. I was just stating the meaning of the original word (or the original meaning of the word, if you like). Thus, my point.

Re:Logical contradiction

[iaculus]

I am envisioning something like a stack of 4 dimensional space-time continuums all lined up along a fifth dimension, with worm holes propelling objects along the 5d axis between these continuums. Continua.

Re:Logical contradiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually his statements about the evolution of language are correct, and you are misunderstanding the definition of the term 'evolution' in this context.

First, ask any linguist whether the definitions of words are immutably set based on prior etymology, or even original use?
For example, when is the last time you accessed anything?
Originally (IIRC) access was something you had [I have access to the database.], Not something you did [Bob accessed the client database to find billing info.], but common usage changed the definition of the word.
You don't have to LIKE it, but that is reality. Your opinion is at odds with the way language works.

Further, comments about one language being more highly 'evolved' than another are largely nonsensical, since this implies progress toward a goal. This is not the case. In this context, evolve simply means 'change'. So when we say "language evolves", that just means that "language changes" based on its environment and history (or at least the environment and history of its speakers).

Routing...

[harry666t]

I had problems with setting up squid, I can roughly imagine the hell of setting up routing through these wormholes...

Relevant ads

[Anonymous Coward]

- Ads by Google -
The Final Theory
The bestselling book our scientists hope you never read. Find out why!
TheFinalTheory.com
Creation Or Evolution?
Is evolution just a theory? You can prove creation. Order free booklet.
www.gnmagazine.org/evolution
2008 Rolex Awards
Funding Pioneering Initiatives in Science & Medicine. Learn More.
www.RolexAwards.com

watches, creationism and pseudoscience
thank you google, but i think i will just pass on this one.

No event horizon

[suv4x4]

The article claims, that unlike a black hole, a "wormhole" (in the sense they explain it) has no event horizon. If it has no event horizon, it means light can escape it.

So it wouldn't look like a black hole AT ALL. I call bullshit on the whole article.

Re:No event horizon

[Jugalator]

Yes, a big deal of what defines a black hole is its event horizon, so this is about something completely different, and it's of course speculation at that without a shred of established theories pointing in this direction. :-)

Re:No event horizon

[Ambitwistor]

So it wouldn't look like a black hole AT ALL. I call bullshit on the whole article. I think you may want to take a more informed look at their claims before making such strong statements.

The authors propose a wormhole constructed such that light takes so long to escape from its mouth, it's effectively indistinguishable from a black hole, because nobody can realistically wait long enough to see anything come out of it.

They write,

An immediate consequence of the metric (2.1) is that time in the throat is extremely slow from the point of view of a distant observer. Indeed, they are related by lambda, [...] The throat thus mimics what happens at the event horizon of a black hole where time is "frozen" [we recall that the old name (especially in Russia) for a black hole was a "frozen star"]. The only difference from an actual horizon is that time does not completely stop in the throat: if an observer makes observations during a time of order GM/lambda he or she will resolve the processes happening in the throat and thus be able to distinguish a wormhole from a black hole. Reciprocally, this preliminary remark suggests that if an observer only looks at a wormhole during a finite time he or she might not be able to distinguish it from a black hole. We shall see below, in several examples, that this is indeed the case, even for phenomena that are usually considered as characteristically linked to the presence of an horizon (such as no-hair properties, or dissipative properties). However, we shall see that the observing time span needed to distinguish a wormhole from a black hole is not GM/lambda, as suggested by the above naive argument, but rather GM/ln(1/lambda).

We could

[Associate]

throw lawyers in and listen for the sucking sound.

Re:We could

[Dr. Eggman]

Bad idea. I fear the consequences of allowing the two most dense entities in the universe to cross paths:

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

Re:We could

[Bake]

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

That's OK, I've had a good run.

Re:We could

[g1zmo]

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

Or, you could just drop some acid, eat a 'shroom, and do a whippit to get the same idea.

one way to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Just send something is that says "please shove this back in the hole when you get it" and we'll know.

Worm holes in my front yard

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez, everyone around here knows what comes out of worm holes. I got hundreds of 'em in my front yard, especially after the rain. Mmm, maybe that's it! Glad I found this site using the Google thang.

Are you nuts?

[geekoid]

Basically he is saying send all the religeos nuts into a ship and blast them to the nearest workhole. That. Plan. Is . BRILLIANT!

Re:Are you nuts?

[mikiN]

Ah, something like the Golgafrincham B Ark...

off topic?

[geekoid]

damn, I was going for funny...perferable soda spraying funny.

Re:off topic?

[Anonymous Coward]

well you got mah dick spraying in yo mouth funny. you bitch ass whore.

How do you test the theory?

[Dejohn]

So how might you test this theory? You could find some people willing to take the plunge and go into a suspected wormhole. However, if turned out to be a black hole they would certainly die and not be able to report showing up in another universe (or somewhere else is the same universe). However, if it did indeed work and the were instantly teleported to another place, how long could we wait for them to return with the good news before marking it as a dud, a blackhole???

Probably a slow trial and error process... kind of like the first people in Japan that thought there MUST be some part of the Fugu fish worth eating.

the answer is...

[DragonTHC]

maybe.

black holes can power super star gates

[Joe The Dragon]

that can take you to far off places. Or slow down time on the other side of the star gate. Some one call the SGC to test them.

oh start trek fan boys

[netdur]

of course black holes is a portal... to heaven (or hell if you don't believe in superman)

The solution is simple.

[WK2]

Everyone knows that even a one-way wormhole can transmit energy, such as radio waves, both ways. So, all we have to do is send a MALP through. If the MALP sends back data, it is alive, we can go through. If the MALP gets crushed, it was either a black hole, or the Stargate was buried.

String Theory

[kmac06]

This sounds like it's based on string theory. String theory has absolutely no evidence that it is correct--it just sometimes appears to describe some phenomena better than quantum mechanics or general relativity. I think of it more as a interesting mathematical construct rather than anything like a physical theory.

Re:String Theory

[bangzilla]

Well gee - there is no evidence of God, and yet a whole bunch of people believe....from this what do we derive....?

Re:String Theory

[Wizard Drongo]

That a lot of people are pretty fucking stupid, and that if we wish to solve the ever increasing problem we face that is over-population, we need merely to round up all these idiots and use the matter they currently inhabit for a more productive use. Fertiliser's a good one. Can't just burn all the bodies after all; air pollution etc.

**Warning: Parent is a Goatse redirect**

[eternalnyte]

For those of you at work, beware the obligatory goatse reference the parent decided to post

Falling into a black hole is not certain death.

[JesseL]

It depends on the size of the black hole. Small ones will have sharper gravitational gradients that will result in tidal forces that could inflict serious entropy on you, but a large enough black hole could have a surface gravity less than earth and much less significant tidal forces.

Hmm

[Handbrewer]

From what I understand, a black hole compresses all mass into a singularity (mathematically speaking of course), surely this means death. But what about the event horizon? Say I took a nose dive into a Black Hole, wouldn't it in theory take me an eternity to actually get to the point of my body collapsing into the singularity itself. And wouldn that mean I would be traveling in space and time itself? Since from what I understand, and I am clearly no astrophysicist, time is warped around the event horizon and thus acts like a "time machine" if you will, where a second outside the EH might be a millennium inside it. Wormholes are easy to visualize (hell pen+paper, wrap it, push pen through it) - black holes seem pretty complex with what it does with space/time. Except being heavier than yo' mamma, what else it does?

Re:Hmm

[DrJokepu]

No, it wouldn't. It would take a finite time, just like when you would try to dive to the ground from the 40th level of a building, unless your speed approaches the speed of light, but even than it wouldn't take an eternity.

Old news/old theories

[Zantetsuken]

This is old news - how long has this been theory for? and somebody reads Wikipedia and goes "Oh hey this is a ground-breakingly awesome discovery!" I mean, c'mon, I thought everybody that was even remotely interested had heard of these theories already (seriously)?

Not just with this summary, but it seems loads of submissions are like this anymore (seems that way to me anyway).

Now I know I am getting too old....

[Anonymous Coward]

While extremely interesting, the same old stuff rehashed with little new information to add. I thought it was just computer science technology and topics that are continuously being rediscovered here (look at the Burroughs B5000 architecture from the 50-60s for an example).

Clear time to stop looking at /. and spend more time in the journals, or anywhere...

Here's my idea on what a black hole is

[zymano]

The black hole is either two things to me. One it is a giant particle unknown to physics. Maybe something equivalent to the early universe particles. I heard there were alot microblackholes then. Not sure on that. The other alternative to me is a microgalaxy where space is actually condensed but still exist. Yeah,strange. Definitely good for science fiction and better than the dead nothing superparticle.

Quasars

[Anonymous Coward]

Quasars would fit the bill nicely for "something spitting matter out", but you'd have to figure out some mechanism whereby what goes into a black hole travels back in time before it gets spit back out again, since the only quasars we know of are nearly 10 billion light years away and further back to the start of the universe. So either they were only around way back then, or they quit spitting matter between then and now.

There are plenty of theories about why a black hole would radiate in a quasar like fashion that probably explain what we observe as quasars, but you asked...

firewall

[bruthasj]

Hope they got a good firewall when they start creating these holes in the lab. Nothing like tunnelling two systems and security hardening.

Business Idea

[mrbluze]

Staircase of no return. The adventure of a lifetime!

$5 per ride* (conditions apply).

Simply sign on the dotted line and enter.

EULA / CONDITIONS OF ENTRY:

We will not be held responsible for coincidental loss or damage due to black holes, worms or falls from heights. Darkness is expected during parts of the journey. By signing you agree to hand over all assets, including life insurance payments but excluding all debts to the vendors. A discount of $1 per ride applies is you bring a rich friend. Etc..etc..

More like:

[Cadallin]

From the Somebody-started-reading-50's-pulp-sci-fi Dept.

Christ, how is THIS news? People have been speculating about this kind of thing since the theorization of Black Holes. Carl Sagan talks about in one of the more trippy, pot induced segments of 1980's Cosmos!

I think I'm getting too damn old. The entire internet is looking like a dupe to me.

I bet you, the slashdotters in other universes...

[Browzer]

wear their tinfoil hats inside out.

Invader ZIM: A Room with a Moose

[Anonymous Coward]

Invader Zim has used wormholes to try and distroy his enemies. In the episode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Room_with_a_Moose, he tries to send Dib and some other kids he hates to a horrible fate: a room with a moose. Zim tricks everyone using a spaceship disguised as a bus, and he demonstrates what the moose will do by sending walnuts through the wormhole ahead of the bus.

This could easily be the most creative use of a wormhole ever!

huh?

[circletimessquare]

wait, i don't understand

[takes more drugs]

oh, ok, this makes a lot of sense now

Re:huh?

[Glowing Fish]

What are you taking?

I almost am missing DXM. The blood sugar drop sucks, but realizing quite clearly that the universe is a joke is worth it.

They already made the movie

[BlackEmperor]

Anyone remember that old movie The Black Hole. In the (rather weird) ending they emerge into another universe. First thing I thought of when I read this.

And V.I.N.CENT kicks R2D2's ass :)

I wish I could use my moderator points.

[xerxesVII]

I would would mod this whole submission -1 Asinine.

Question about a closed universe and black holes

[dbk25]

This is idle speculation, but I'm really curious about this...

I think that astrophysicists have determined that the universe is open, but for a long time it seemed like it could go either way. Hypothetically, if there were enough mass for the universe to be closed, wouldn't that mean it meets the mathematical definition of a black hole (diameter less than Schwarszchild radius)? Playing with a calculator, they come out in the right ballpark, give or take a few orders of magnitude.

No one, to my knowledge, has used an anthropic principle argument to say that the universe has to be open. So, the consensus is that life is possible inside of a closed universe.

If I haven't fallen on my face so far, then that suggests:
1) life is possible inside of a black hole, and
2) black holes can be nested (since the universe contains black holes)

Fire away...

This really sounds like ....

[3seas]

...Chemistry before it was chemistry as we know it today. But like pre-alchemy potions....guess work, trial and error, etc..

Somehow I think understanding gravity better will lead to flushing out the guesswork theories on such things as black holes and worm holes to other universes...

You misunderstand

[Fallen Seraph]

Black -> White holes was an older theory. That's NOT the theory of wormholes. A Black/White hole system is one way. Matter enters a Black Hole and exits a White Hole. Both are continually connected to one another. Additionally, your history is off, because it wasn't just a thought experiment questioning an opposite. It was an attempt to answer the question "Where does the matter entering a black hole go?" The logical answer (physics aside) would have been a white hole.

Wormhole theory is different. The theory of a wormhole is that under certain conditions, the warping of space-time can be so extreme that two massive distortions can connect to one another. Essentially, that the singularities of 2 black holes touch, and open up a tunnel through space-time, which is shorter than the trip through normal space-time. These connections can last for a single instant or longer, but they are not considered to be permanent, and are, hypothetically, rarely stable last I read.

Whether they connect to other points (black holes) within our own Universe, or within other Universes depends largely on the shape of the Universe and if multi-verse theory is even real. The shape being the major determining factor in a great deal of such very theoretical physics.

Finally, a wormhole looping back on itself would not longer join spans of space, but instead, spans of time. It would connect to it's past or future self, because doing so would involve looping, and a common theory is that the more a wormhole loops, the more it displaces itself within time.


Who knew reading a Brief History of Time so many years ago would eventually pay off? :P

Re:You misunderstand

[kestasjk]

Getting your knowledge about black holes from a book by Stephen Hawking, the guy who recently changed his mind but still contradicts the overwhelming consensus on where information in a black hole goes without any proof, probably isn't the best idea.

Re:You misunderstand

[Fallen Seraph]

I never said it was the only place I got the information from. That was just where I remember first reading about white holes and the differences between them and wormholes :P The rest is mostly other sources.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Unknowable truths

[TapeCutter]

Yes, but let's not confuse the visable universe with the Universe, Hawking's "Breif History of Time" includes a description of the visable universe as a black hole residing in the Universe. The funny thing about universe size black holes is that you could fall through the event horizon of one and not even notice.

The "boundry" from our point of view is the edge of the visable universe, we can never get information from beyond that distance in any direction. We also don't know what happenes to spacetime (or anything else) inside a black hole because of a similar information boundry. Who can say if the inside has a boundry when viewed from the inside, could it not have a similar "boundry" to the one we encounter when we look to the edge of the knowable universe? Perhaps our 4D spacetime "rolls up" inside a black hole and a spacetime using a differet set of 4 higher dimentions "unfulrs"?

Disclaimer: There is no way to test any of this, like god, string theory, parallel universes, branes, higher dimentions, ect, it all boils down to metaphysics and mathematical curiosity. As Godel and Shakespear both pointed out, there are "unknowable truths". My $0.02 is to accept that the Universe "just is", pick a model you like (or mix & match) but don't take it too seriously or shove it down peoples throats. My personal favorite is the multiverse - it means that "somewhere" exists another "me", 30yrs younger and living it up in the playboy mansion.

Re:Unknowable truths

[Ambitwistor]

Yes, but let's not confuse the visable universe with the Universe, Hawking's "Breif History of Time" includes a description of the visable universe as a black hole residing in the Universe. The funny thing about universe size black holes is that you could fall through the event horizon of one and not even notice. There is a difference between "the universe" and "the visible universe". The visible universe is delineated by a "cosmological horizon" which is in some ways similar to an event horizon of a black hole, but there are significant differences. The visible universe is not really "a black hole residing in the universe". See here for more.

Re:Unknowable truths

[TapeCutter]

Yes that's all well and good for what we can observe, which is a black hole in our knowable universe. It tells us nothing about what a BH looks like from the "inside", nor what our knowable universe looks like from the "outside". I was not agruing for any particular idea, mearly pointing out that these ideas are not testable, they are conjecture and will remain so unless we work out a way to cross the information boundry.

Re:Unknowable truths

[Ambitwistor]

I was not agruing for any particular idea, mearly pointing out that these ideas are not testable, they are conjecture and will remain so unless we work out a way to cross the information boundry. We can't know for sure what goes on inside a black hole without going there, but I maintain that we justifiably have a good idea of what goes on there (other than at the singularity itself), because we have good experimental reasons to be confident in the predictions of general relativity.

Re:Unknowable truths

[TapeCutter]

I entirely agree, there are good reasons to assume other "universes" have the same physical laws. But it is also possible that "reality" inside the hole is goverened by unknown laws, for example: maybe there is no singularity just more "boundless" space without a "center".

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

black ho's?

[Anonymous Coward]

college b'ball players: apparently. portals to other universes: just as long as they're one-way-out - we don't need any incoming ones.

Infinite loop

[Anonymous Coward]

What about if a blackhole or wormhole leads to itself?
Or to another one, that leads back to itself?

Then it becomes an infinitive loop...

Something more obscure?

[fahrbot-bot]

Rigel's bored, "Wormhole. Normal space. Wormhole." So instead, and considering slashdot's current technical problems, how about something more obscure.

Ask and ye shall receive...

Towns, rivers, palaces,
all mixed up in an inextricable whirl.

Over there, Miss Honeychurch,
the villa of my dear friend Lady Laverstock,
at present busy with a Fra Angelico definitive study.

And, on your left - no, just there -
Mr. Henry Burridge lives.

- A Room With a View

Merchant-Ivory fans will need no explaination, but in case the relevance isn't obvious, the scene is an open carriage ride through the country with Mr. Emerson showing the sights to Miss Honeychurch, "...and on your left..."

Something more obscure?

[fahrbot-bot]

Rigel's bored, "Wormhole. Normal space. Wormhole." So instead, and considering slashdot's current technical problems, how about something more obscure.

Ask and ye shall receive...

Towns, rivers, palaces,
all mixed up in an inextricable whirl.

Over there, Miss Honeychurch,
the villa of my dear friend Lady Laverstock,
at present busy with a Fra Angelico definitive study.

And, on your left - no, just there -
Mr. Henry Burridge lives.

- A Room With a View

Merchant-Ivory fans will need no explaination, but in case the relevance isn't obvious, the scene is an open carriage ride through the country with Mr. Emerson showing the sights to Miss Honeychurch, "...and on your left..."

I saw something like this happen once...

[nitsew]

I was at a cricket game, and two guys on a sofa appeared out of nowhere... it was the darnedest thing...

I'm such a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the headline as "Could Black Holes Be Portable to Other Universes?"

Black holes tear logic apart!

[spaceguru]

Hey Dotsters! This is my first posting on slashdot, and on one of my fave subjects too! There are so many misconceptions surrounding black holes, and that's mainly because we rely too heavily ('cuse pun), on a 'gravity based' model to try and understand this f**ken amazing Universe we all find ourselves inhabiting, and we tend to exclude the electrical nature of the universe entirely. Electricity and its ever present magnetic fields have far more influence on the dynamics of the Universe than the feeble force of gravity, and until cosmologists realise this they will continue to make up absurd theories, (read fairytales), for things they don't understand. Here's something to keep in mind... When Isaac Newton was pondering his apple and sussing out his laws on gravity, he didn't have a juicer, or an ipod, or even a computer. Why not? No electricity stupid! In fact, he knew almost nothing about electromagnetic fields, plasmas, double layers, electrostatics etc, except that when you happened to rub amber and wool together, or when you were lucky enough to stroke a pussy with certain objects in the dark, sparks would fly! (pussy cat! Don't be so filthy:-). And so, here we are hundreds of years later still using these original gravity models, and not pausing to see where we may have gone wrong, or where we can improve on older theories by including our new knowledge of the electromagnetic forces and plasma fields that pervade all of space. This practice has led to some of the stupidest ideas in astrophysics including the concept of black holes and missing dark matter in our day and age. It seems to me our scientists were more on to it back in the mid to late 1800's with their ideas of an all pervading aether, except they just didn't understand its properties correctly. Anyway, for those interested in getting closer to the truth about this whole black hole biz, check this link out for another point of view. Cheers :-) Spaceguru. http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=tyybhr r8

Re:Black holes tear logic apart!

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay there sparky. Slow down.

Re:Black holes tear logic apart!

[dbk25]

Gee! And I thought Velikovsky was dead!

Re:Black holes tear logic apart!

[spaceguru]

I guess you can't teach some old dogs new tricks! Isn't it better for science to keep an open mind than to 'believe' anything? It's called progress.

Sir, this does not look right.

[eldaria]

"and they might even be produced in future particle accelerator experiments." -Sir I think we got it.... -Let me see.... -You fool!!!, that is not a wormhole, you have started to created a black hole on Earth. Shut it down now!. -Sir, the controls are no longer responding, it is growing!!!! -Aaaargh The End.

black holes are nuts

[friedman101]

the most fascinating thing to me about black holes is how they uniformly increase the order in a system. stephen hawking claims that the arrow of time is only directed by an increase in entropy. that is time goes in the direction of increasing disorder. however in a black hole entropy decreases (things become more ordered). does this mean that time within the event horizon of a black hole reverses? If so would a person falling in forever be a state of limbo, crossing the horizon back and forth?

pass the dutch

Is this what they mean, when they say

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you go black you'll never go back?

Nothing new, see the comic Storm

[Otis_INF]

Don Lawrence's Storm - Legend of Yggdrasil already contained this idea: they use a black hole to travel to another universe where black holes are actually white suns. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_(Don_Lawrence)

Here's a thought

[FluxIntegrator]

Ok, so all we have to do is harness negative energy from the Casimir effect to stabilize several micro black holes produced by the (highly anticipated) LHC. IF they can be produced and stabilized over long periods of time, possibly a bright flash of light would make it through the wormholes in some order. Thus, it would be possible to send signals backward and forward in time. Of course, that's a pretty big IF.

distance to the next black hole

[Anonymous Coward]

depending on the size you mean, many black holes come through our space every minute, but luckily they tend to be smaller than a proton (and are until now only theoretically expected but not experimentally proved, also there are some teams at supercolliders who believe, that they already created these small black holes by themself)

the next "really big(tm)" black hole would be around 10kly away in our galactic center

checking wikipedia for stellar sized black holes, the nearest expected black hole is around 3.5kly away (called A0620-00, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole), but it's expected that there are some more near still undetected

sadly this article dismisses the new fact, that black holes evaporate back into our space time, so that the "information" (matter, light) eaten is not spit out into another universe, but comes back sometime later in a cosmological timeframe, so with our current state of physics this article is already completely obsolete (but i hope that we are wrong on this ;) )

to get a better grip about the inner parts of black holes, you can check out for example gravastars (gravity vacuum stars) as one of the newer theories about those things we call black hole currently (and there are more theories than that)

Bush is working on it too

[gr8dude]

all the known black holes are a bajillion miles away

Donald Rumsfeld briefed President Bush today.

He told Bush that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq.

To everyones amazement, the colour ran from Bushs face, then he collapsed onto his desk, head in hands, visible shaken, almost whimpering. Finally, he composed himself and asked Rumsfeld, Just exactly how many is a brazillion?

Try the Iron Sun by Adrian Berry

[Ringthane]

Fascinating speculative work on the building of black hole to use as a portal to another part of the universe. Comes off as SF, but is fact-based. Here's his website: http://www.adrianberry.net/

      Standard disclaimers apply; read The Iron Sun years and years ago. Don't know how the physics have held up over the years, but it's a rockin read.

Uh oh - that worhs both ways..

[cheros]

If a black hole could port stuff from our Universe elsewhere there's really no argument to stop the reverse being true either.

This would, however, mean that the laws about preserving mass, energy etc. must have a bigger scope, or those holes could cause quite a bit of an imbalance. Or maybe there's always an opposite flow somewhere else, a bit like communicating vessels but in multiple dimensions..

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I got a parking ticket :-/

What the fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

God, you aspies are insufferable.

Politicians take note...

[SirKron]

I heard there are outstanding campaign contributions to be had on the other side of the black^H^H^H^H^H wormhole. They like lawyers there too.

building wormholes

[BRUTICUS]

it would be interesting if we found a way to create a blackhole...like has been posted on this site before. Then we could dump a lot of garbage into it. Nuclear weaponry too. But imagine being able to build wormholes. We could just travel anywhere in the universe instantly.

Right now we think achieving light speed is impossible but somehow I think we are going to find a way to travel places even faster than light speed. Maybe instantly.

Read more books

[snowwrestler]

The word "jaunt" predates Bester by a long shot. Bester didn't coin the word--he's just being clever with an existing one. Might be time to expand your canon beyond sci-fi.

Sorry fanboys

[macdaddy357]

Wormholes are an invention of sci-fi writers to make stories of interstellar and intergalactic travel, which are impractical, seem plausible. Just because you imagine a thing doesn't make it real. Most of the conventions of sci-fi are as unreal as the magic in fantasy, and always will be. Sorry fanboys. Wormholes are not real.

Events unfolding at the Fermilab Hadron Collider:

[node.four]

Scientist #3: holy @#&%! It's all coming true!

Scientist #1: omg, you're right - we've opened a portal to Hell. blaargh, noooooo... we're all doomed!

Scientist #3: chill-out dude of-course i'm right, i clocked Doom1&2 and i know for a fact DoomGuy will save us.

Scientist #2: Er, sorry m8, but the budget didn't include advanced weaponry and ammunitions so we're basically f**ked.

I Know a hole..

[Anonymous Coward]

in which you go in one side and come out the same side..

What if the wormhole

[Anonymous Coward]

inescapably lead to something that would cause certain death? Would that mean it was actually a blackhole with a sense of humour?

Question:

[Fritz Benwalla]

Okay, so if our universe is infinite and has consistent laws of physics throughout, and assuming whatever universe we were spit into has the same laws of physics as our own, how would we know we were in a new universe rather than just some (nearly) infinitely remote corner of our current one?

And yes, I considered GPS, and after a lot of thought and some math decided it wouldn't work.

Penrose in "Road to reality"

[jarek]

Roger Penrose writes that, indeed, a black hole of 1.5 (or so) solar masses would disintegrate a human through tidal forces before he reaches the Schwarzschild radius, thereby preventing any successful dive into it. However, the tidal forces at the Schwarzschild radius of 1 mega solar masses black hole would be quite manageable, hence it's should be quite possible to "experience" it though sharing with your buddies will still be a problem.

Could they be?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Could" they be? Yes. The question is whether they are.

Wormhole/blackhole - subUniverse/Big Bang

[GESUS]

I think this theory would perhaps meen a new approach to the Big Bang and inflasion dilemas.

Theory: The big bang was the otherside/inside of a blackhole/wormhole forming in another universe/dimension. Inflation may be casued by diffrent amounts of matter being transfered/caught in the singularity/wormhole.

Kind of a turtle on a turtle situation.

So, I dont think a wormhole would transport you to another place in our dimension but to a sub-Universe (subVerse?). As sub atomized minced meat. :P

My .2 cents