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Could We Find a Door To A Parallel Universe?

Posted by Zonk on from the alternate-me-is-posting-this-in-esperanto dept.

p1234 writes "Though no direct evidence for wormholes has been observed, this could be because they are disguised as black holes. Now Alexander Shatskiy of the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, Russia, is suggesting a possible way to tell the two kinds of object apart. His idea assumes the existence of a bizarre substance called "phantom matter", which has been proposed to explain how wormholes might stay open. Phantom matter has negative energy and negative mass, so it creates a repulsive effect that prevents the wormhole closing. 'US expert Dr Lawrence Krauss, from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, points out that the idea rests on untested assumptions. He told New Scientist magazine: "It is an interesting attempt to actually think of what a real signature for a wormhole would be, but it is more hypothetical than observational. Without any idea of what phantom matter is and its possible interactions with light, it is not clear one can provide a general argument."'"

32 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Yes, it's called the "portal" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Geesh, this isn't new news, it happened back in the 1960's... as I recall it was on stardate 3134.0
    we sent a captain, a doctor, and a scientist through the portal. Geesh, people have been talking about it for 40 years now.

  2. Sorry guys, can't resist by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    In Soviet Russia, the door to a parallel universe finds us.

    --
    God spoke to me.
    1. Re:Sorry guys, can't resist by Namlak · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually, in Soviet Russia, the parallel universe find a door to YOU!

  3. Most useless press release ever by Wonko+the+Sane · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about publicizing actual discoveries instead of random speculation?

    1. Re:Most useless press release ever by An.+(Coward) · · Score: 5, Funny

      Evidence schmevidence, I for one won't believe in any of this black hole nonsense until I actually see one.

    2. Re:Most useless press release ever by PinkPanther · · Score: 5, Funny

      I for one won't believe in any of this black hole nonsense until I actually see one

      I was going to post a Google Images link, but without SafeSearch the result list isn't exactly what you might expect...

      --
      It's a simple matter of complex programming.
    3. Re:Most useless press release ever by omega_dk · · Score: 3, Funny

      Maybe with *your* saved search history. What? Google has to use the information they save from your browsing somehow :-)

      --
      Just because you don't like the truth, does not make it false.
    4. Re:Most useless press release ever by farkus888 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      this post being modded insightful bothers me, because it is actually a perfect example of having no insight into the situation.

      1. Define the question
      2. Gather information and resources (observe)
      3. Form hypothesis
      4. Perform experiment and collect data
      5. Analyze data
      6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
      7. Publish results
      8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)

      taken from wikipedia those are the steps of the scientific method. I remember them from middle school, so I imagine most of this crowd should have been over them at some point. This article is a perfect example of step 3 in my opinion. step 2 is all of the already observed behavior of matter in the universe. here in step three we form a hypothesis about some detail that is unexplained or not understood. step 4, which these people have not gotten too yet, is to figure out a method to perform tests to prove or disprove their hypothesis and perform those tests. then they will analyze the results of their test, step 5. skipping over this step would leave them with no direction to take in their research, so they would probably never figure out anything.

      --
      thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
    5. Re:Most useless press release ever by ptbarnett · · Score: 4, Funny

      Evidence schmevidence, I for one won't believe in any of this black hole nonsense until I actually see one.

      Warning! Do not look into black hole with remaining eye!

      http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080131

    6. Re:Most useless press release ever by farkus888 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "I have an idea, but have no clue how to test it yet" is a perfect time to spread the word that you are looking for anyone with an idea how to test.

      --
      thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
    7. Re:Most useless press release ever by thrawn_aj · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I am a physicist and I agree 100%. The essence of the article was summarized ages ago by Hawking in his first book. Nothing new at all. It was speculation then and it remains speculation now. To make USE of these speculative conjectures about the universe requires a technology on a much grander scale than we presently have. To wit - imagine particle accelerators girdling the globe or actual probes dispatched to the neighborhoods of black holes. Yeah, we ain't there yet, and until we are, expect more empty articles as the one above and more mathematical masturbation than experimental observation.

    8. Re:Most useless press release ever by discontinuity · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Absolutely. I wish I could mod you up, but I've already posted in this discussion. :(

      I think some people are quibbling with Step 1: Define the Question. Their complaint is that this is just a silly question that doesn't really matter (since we don't have proof that these things exist, why bother trying to figure out how they could exist...). I'm not of that mind, but clearly many people think that new theories must arise strictly from unexplained observations (I observed the apple fall down rather than up, but I have no theory to tell me why...). This is a rather limited view of science, IMHO (especially for phenomena we can't observe in a lab or nature). If scientists never are able to connect this theory to observation, it simply will fall into the dustbin of history. But that doesn't preclude it from being part of the scientific discussion until it is refuted conclusively.

    9. Re:Most useless press release ever by arminw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ......einstein started out with thought experiments.......

      I was under the impression that experiments were real, not something imagined in some brain, even Einstein's brain.

      Nobody has ever directly observed a back hole. Here is a different thought experiment:

      Suppose it were technically possible to drill a hole clear through the Earth. If then a rock were dropped into the hole, would it not eventually come to rest, floating right in the center of the planet? Would that not mean that in the exact center there is no gravity to cause pressure on the material in the center either?

      Would this canceling out of the gravity also then preclude enough pressure from happening to squeeze matter to anywhere near the density to eliminate all space between atomic constituents? Would this canceling of gravity be reversed if enough matter were piled together in one place? It seems to me, not, that in any sphere of matter of any mass, the gravitational pressure on the material in the center should always be zero. Would this not preclude the formation of a real physical object, a so called "black hole" as described in the purely mathematical constructs that postulate the real existence of such things? Of course if there are no real physical black holes, then there wouldn't be any real physical "worm holes" or any other kinds of "holes" either.

      Does this canceling of pressure in the center of the sun mean that there isn't such a huge pressure there, even enough to allow atoms to fuse?

      We know from real experiments and everyday experience, that heat always moves for the hotter place to the cooler place. Why is it then that we actually MEASURED that the outside of the sun, the corona is thousands of time hotter than than its surface? Why are sunspots, apparent holes in the surface of the sun, significantly cooler than the surrounding surface?

      Could it be that the idea that atomic fusion with its requirement of million degree temperatures in the interior of the sun is just plain wrong? Maybe the sun is powered neither by an ancient wood campfire nor by a modern thermonuclear camp fire.

      Maybe it is time to base science solely on experiments and observations, rather than fanciful math that has little if any semblance to reality as we can observe it. I think that real science, based on experiment and observation should be well separated from science fiction even if the fiction is very beautiful mathematically, or makes for intriguing and exciting movies.

      --
      All theory is gray
  4. Sounds like science fiction by geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's like proving something exists buy using something that doesn't exist. I admire the guys imagination though. Just seems like he wants it to exist so he's making it so. IMHO science should be about working with the facts, which isn't what's going on here.

  5. Sqrt(Negative energy) = head hurts by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IANAP, but most "energy" variables can be thought of as the square of some other physical properties (kinetic energy is related to velocity squared, electrical energy is related to voltage or current squared, etc.) So to get "negative energy", it would seem that we need imaginary (as in the number i = sqrt(-1) ) values of velocity, voltage, current, etc. So now my brain hurts (and the real physicists on slashdot can enjoy ripping me to shreds or educating me as is their wont)

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
    1. Re:Sqrt(Negative energy) = head hurts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You don't even need to be a physicist for that - being an electrical engineer is enough. Things like imaginary current etc. *do* appear in electrics; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_part for instance.

    2. Re:Sqrt(Negative energy) = head hurts by jonnyfish · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Negative kinetic energy happens all the time in quantum mechanics. That's what tunneling is. In classical physics, the total energy is E=T+V, where T is the kinetic energy and V is the potential energy. In tunneling, a particle can pass through a "barrier" where V>E, so that the kinetic energy E-V is negative.

      I still think the claims in the article are ridiculous though.

    3. Re:Sqrt(Negative energy) = head hurts by rasputin465 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      IAAP, although not in this field (and actually I don't know anything about "phantom matter"). The idea of imaginary physical quantities isn't actually as forbidden as you might think. The best example I can think of are tachyons. Non-physicists invariably hear about these particles in sci-fi (I seem to recall multiple references to them in star trek), but actually a number of current theories predict their existence. They are particles that travel faster than the speed of light, which means that their rest mass is imaginary. You need not worry, however, because they never travel slower than the speed of light. One example, supersymmetery, predicts a number of particles whose mass^2 is positive at high energies (read: very soon after the big bang), but goes negative at lower energies; hence their rest mass is imaginary and are tachyons.

      Less esoterically, in the realm of electronics, the electrical impedance of capacitors and inductors is imaginary. However, one could argue that this is just a mathematical trick to aid computations.

      I might also note (and probably other commenters have too) that Lawrence Krauss, who's mentioned in the summary, is the author of the famous The Physics of Star Trek, which is a great read.

    4. Re:Sqrt(Negative energy) = head hurts by Manchot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The set of complex numbers is no less "real" than the set of real numbers. Both are simply definitions arising from some set of mathematical axioms, usually those of an axiomatic set theory like ZFC. In fact, the definition of i as sqrt(-1) that you learn in high school is mathematically unsound: the correct way to define the complex numbers is as the set of ordered pairs of real numbers. When combined with an expected addition (a,b)+(c,d)=(a+c,b+d) and a funky multiplication (a,b)*(c,d) = (ac-bd,bc+ad), this allows you to define a+bi as shorthand for (a,b). (Note that i*i=(0,1)*(0,1)=(0-1,0+0)=(-1,0)=-1, as expected.)

      Neither the real and complex numbers are "real" in the sense that they physically exist, but are on equal footing in the sense that they represent real, physical quantities. Complex quantities simply appear when dealing with pairs of real quantities. Take the (complex) wavefunction representing a quantum state, as an example. Sure, you could formulate the Schroedinger equation as a pair of coupled differential equations, but why bother, especially when it's much more elegant to express it as a single, complex equation?

    5. Re:Sqrt(Negative energy) = head hurts by aminorex · · Score: 3, Informative

      Cayley sedenions are a 16 dimensional field. But zero has divisors in sedenion algebra. Octonion multiplication isn't associative, though. Nor is quaterionion multiplication commutative. It just depends on what characteristics you require for the purpose at hand, really. Froebenius' theorem tells us that only real, complex and quaternionic algebrae are associative division rings over real scalars. But if you only need finite fields (as is often the case in practical applications), an Artinian ring is often iteratively solvable for any given application, of arbitrary dimension.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
  6. It's the Beard. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "possible way to tell the two kinds of object apart"

    It's the beard. We've known this for some time.

  7. Does any of this matter really matter? by Stanislav_J · · Score: 4, Funny

    We had "anti-matter," "dark matter," now "phantom matter." Jesus, is there anything substantial and real in physics anymore? As the years go on, physics starts to sound less and less like science and more and more like "Alice in Wonderland." Everything seems to hinge on things we can't see, or can't measure, or can't prove. Unless some of this mumbo jumbo can give me eternal life, make women throw themselves at me, or build a better and more luscious cheeseburger, I'm not interested.

    --
    "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
    1. Re:Does any of this matter really matter? by ilikepi314 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well hold on, anti-matter is real, as long as you mean in an anti-particles sense. Positrons (anti-electrons) have been observed and I want to say some team in Europe made anti-hydrogen atoms. I wish I had links, but I know I read about it.

      As for the rest, I pretty much agree with you.

      I had the wonderful opportunity to see a talk by one of the experts of (and I think original proposer of) dark matter. He said he was starting to feel dark matter is not real and that a possible better explanation of it can be made by modifying Newtonian/Relativistic mechanics. That seems more satisfactory to me, if for no other reason than we can use a correction in the equations to make predictions about other things, and see if we observe that effect.

      That's much better than assuming something exists, but you don't know any of its properties except that it fixes this one problem in your other theory. That's pretty bogus. Science is all about observation, and seeing if our predictions based on current research are true. If you can't do either, it really doesn't qualify as science.

    2. Re:Does any of this matter really matter? by Mr_Huber · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are you really that surprised? We worked out how most of the world around us works over three hundred years ago. We put electromagnetism to bed over a hundred years ago. We've known enough about atoms to make them go *boom* real good for over eighty years. Everything left to work on is far, far outside our day to day experience. Our common sense is calibrated for temperatures between about zero and one hundred C in a thick nitrogen/oxygen environment with a 1 g gravitational field. Of course it fails miserably when confronted by absolute zero vacuums or temperatures and pressures extreme enough to fuse matter or places with gravitational fields strong enough to capture light.

      Hell, I'd be more surprised if someone announced "Black Holes: Just Like Detroit" or some such.

      And as for that eternal life and women throwing themselves at you, we've already given you healthy diets and pheromones. Why not try meeting us half-way?

    3. Re:Does any of this matter really matter? by Xelios · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Physics has been running into a wall for decades now. I think the problem is gravity, we still don't know what it is or how it operates. We say it warps space, but does it really or is that just a mathematical abstraction that lets us model its effects? Physicists have gotten something fundemental wrong, and it's leading them to shape ridiculous explanations for things we don't understand.

      That's my speculation, do I get an article in New Scientist now?

      --
      Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
    4. Re:Does any of this matter really matter? by rasputin465 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I had the wonderful opportunity to see a talk by one of the experts of (and I think original proposer of) dark matter.

      That's not likely, or if it is true, it's not very relevant. Fritz Zwicky first proposed dark matter (in it's current incarnation) back in the 1930s. However, no one else in the field started to consider this idea until the 1970s (Zwicky died in '74) when other independent bits of evidence started to come in that hinted at dark matter. At that time, people in the field were particularly mindful that the problem could be resolved by either dark matter or by modifying our theories. But as time went on, more and more independent pieces of evidence came in which addressed the same issue. Now, the problem is that if you want to account for each of these observations by modifying our dynamica/gravitational theories, you have to do a different modification in each instance. On the other hand, ALL of these observations are resolved by introducing dark matter. The door was virtually shut on modified theories with the analysis of the Bullet Cluster, which simply cannot be explained by modified gravitational theories. And actually, dark matter is not so esoteric; there are many current theories in particle physics that [independently] predict the existence of a particle that would meet the characteristics that we observe and would also be naturally produced in large quantities during the big bang.

  8. Phantom matter, eh? by MOBE2001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds more like crackpot physics to me. Only physicists can get away with crap like this. In any other field of science, this sort of voodoo bullshit would not be tolerated. I tell it like I see it. Mod me down and see if I care. ahahaha...

  9. Don't lump them together by SEE · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Antimatter is something real, observed, understood, and which we can actually make, albeit in tiny quantities.

    Dark matter is a shim used to make our theory of gravity and the motion of the observed universe match.

    "Phantom matter", properly called "exotic matter", is a purely hypothetical construct, not necessary to explain anything in the universe which has been observed; it's just something the laws of physics don't rule out.

  10. If you can get there from here by Dorceon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    isn't it part of the same universe?

    --
    What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
  11. We published this already by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is interesting, but looking at the article, i can't see that it's much different from work that we published over a decade back in a paper where we pointed out properties of wormholes, and noted that they might be visible by the signature of the negative effective mass on the bending of light: Natural Wormholes as Gravitational Lenses, John G. Cramer, Robert L. Forward, Michael S. Morris, Matt Visser, Gregory Benford, Geoffrey A. Landis. U.C. Irvine even wrote a press release about this paper, which I've put on my website.

    It's a little hard to tell from this very brief article, but what he calls "phantom matter" is what other physicists call "exotic matter" or sometimes "negative matter," which violates one of the positive energy-conditions, and thus has negative energy (in some reference frame). Matt Visser's book Lorentzian Wormholes has a lot more technical details about the various formulations of the positive-energy conditions.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  12. This theory by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This theory assumes that the difference between universes (or as they may be called multiverses) can be quantified.

    <Speculation>

    If not, if the difference is the same as time or length in a dimension that we aren't able to consciously manipulate or see, then it is possible that we all are floating in roughly the same direction, but since the differences are very small it's impossible to recognize if we are in the same sector as when we started our lives.

    All this since there are in theory dimensions that we can't see. Why they are invisible is a different question. It may be that we all are mentally and physically unable to "see" the dimensions or that they are "curled up" or "flattened" in a way that makes them immeasurable. This is just about the same question as if you are on a board (like our universe) on a completely friction-less surface where there is no perception of wind and no reference points. You have every perception of everything on the board, but you can't tell if the board is still or if it's actually drifting at the speed of sound with the wind. If you can't even "see" outside the borders of the board (the universe) you can't really tell if there are other universes out there.

    And it's not even possible to say if the laws of physics are general or specific for a universe. It may well be that the laws of physics are the same in any given universe, and that we just are inside a bead of glass. (watch the end sequence of Men in Black to catch this idea...). Just "infinity" is hard to catch up, but it's like living on the surface of a globe - where is the end of the world? And if you walk a straight distance on the surface of a globe large enough - will you ever come home again or will you even recognize that as home?

    I think that there is no straight answer, and that Keith Laumer in the "WORLDS OF THE IMPERIUM" may have one approach, and Robert Anson Heinlein had another in "Number of the Beast" (among others), but I think that Douglas Adams got really to the point in the statement "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.". At least his statement will explain a lot.

    But this is still in the area of speculation, and I think that it's hard for the human race to get outside the universe. But I don't say that it's impossible - there may be a discovery around the corner waiting to happen!

    </Speculation>

    What is most important is that we try to keep our minds open - there may be a grain of truth in every theory that at first sight may appear ridiculous. Notice that the continental drift was considered completely outrageous by many until the end of the 1950's. The continental drift is now a widely accepted fact (but there may still be those that doesn't accept it).

    Gandhi once said "Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it.", and this still applies. If you do nothing nothing will be accomplished, and you will be sure that you are unimportant, but if you do something you may have the force to provide a stepping stone for something that will prevail for generations to come.

    The End.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  13. Re:Caution is indicated... by SEE · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Where's the violation?

    The first law states, "The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy added by heating the system, minus the amount lost as a result of the work done by the system on its surroundings."

    Accordingly, since no energy is being added to the system, its internal energy must not increase. That's fine, because in you example, the total energy does not increase.

    Energy is usually measured in joules. 1 joule is, reduced to base units, 1 kg * (m^2/s^2). So the total energy of your system is defined as:

    Joules = (1000 * [x^2/y^2]) + (-1000 * [x^2/y^2])

    Now, if x is 0 and y is 0, (the system is at rest), then the energy of the system, in joules, is

    Joules = (1000 * [0^2/0^2]) + (-1000 * [0^2/0^2])
    Joules = (1000 * [0/0]) + (-1000 * [0/0])
    Joules = (1000 * 0) + (-1000 * 0)
    Joules = (0) + (0)
    Joules = 0

    If x is 10 and y is 1, then the energy of the system, in joules, is

    Joules = (1000 * [10^2/1^2]) + (-1000 * [10^2/1^2])
    Joules = (1000 * [100/1]) + (-1000 * [100/1])
    Joules = (1000 * 100) + (-1000 * 100)
    Joules = (100000) + (-100000)
    Joules = 0

    If x is 500 and y is 2, then the energy of the system, in joules, is

    Joules = (1000 * [500^2/2^2]) + (-1000 * [500^2/2^2])
    Joules = (1000 * [500/4]) + (-1000 * [500/4])
    Joules = (1000 * 125) + (-1000 * 125)
    Joules = (125000) + (-125000)
    Joules = 0

    If x is 1 billion and y is 1, then the energy of the system, in joules, is

    Joules = (1000 * [1E9^2/1^2]) + (-1000 * [1E9^2/1^2])
    Joules = (1000 * [1E18/1]) + (-1000 * [1E18/1])
    Joules = (1000 * 1E18) + (-1000 * 1E18)
    Joules = (1E21) + (-1E21)
    Joules = 0

    Since 0J = 0J = 0J = 0J, no matter how fast the two-ball system accelerates, there is no violation of the first law of thermodynamics.