Wormhole

[Seraph-7]

What is a wormhole and is there such a thing?

[TeleMad]

A wormhole (or, more properly, an Einstein-Rosen bridge) is a theoretical tubelike passageway that links two different regions of spacetime, separated by vast distances normally but because of dramatic warping of spacetime, being brought close together. To get an idea, take a regular piece of 8.5x11 printer paper and draw a dot at each end: they're 11 inches apart. Now fold the paper in half to bring the two dots very close to each other, and then use a pencil to punch a hole through the two sheets near the dots. Now, instead of having to travel the full 11 inches to get from one dot to the other, one could travel only an inch or two by using the shortcut. So, using a wormhole, one could supposedly enter through one side of the bridge and come out the other side, thus using a shortcut to travel great distances through space in short amounts of time.

 

One problem with the hypothesis of using them for traveling is that the throat of the wormhole must be enlarged to a size capable of allowing something at least the size of a human through, and, the throat must be maintained at that diameter while passage is occurring. This would require huge amounts of negative energy.

[Bo]

This would require huge amounts of negative energy.

What do you exactly mean by that?

 

Bo

[TeleMad]

It was a few years ago when I read the article in Scientific American. All I can remember off the top of my head is that negative energy exists - in the vacuum of empty space, energy fluctuates and it's average value is 0; but to have an average of 0 and have maximums greater than 0, there must be times when energy is less than 0. How they plan to harness it I don't remember.

 

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PS: Here's a link: http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.cfm?sequencenameCHAR=item2&methodnameCHAR=resource_getitembrowse&interfacenameCHAR=browse.cfm&ISSUEID_CHAR=82D7E940-CBFE-4BD2-989F-A47BDEAACE1&ARTICLEID_CHAR=03823A25-5B45-4ED5-B5C9-7AED8F03975&sc=I100322

[Aki]

Do we have any proofs that wormholes do exist, or are they just "science-fiction"?

[Bo]

As far as i know: no.

But [if our current theorys are somewhat correct]: The existence of a wormhole is a possibillity; And since anything that can happen will happen, we might see one one day. (but probably on very low scales, see 10^-15 m or so; )

Bo

[Freethinker]

If wormholes would occupy an extremely small area of space, how do we know that they are not relatively common? Could Quantum pairs be spit out of them? Perhaps that is where QP's come from?

 

I had also wondered (aloud on another thread here) about what that intersection would really be. It seems assumed that a wormhole "interface" would be a 2D planer hole with some tunnel between the two time/space locations. Perhaps the "interface area" would actually be some 3D area. A Boolean logical operator. Perahps a non-destructive AND area.

 

Thus rather than an "interface", it is a COMMON space in which BOTH time/space's co-exist.

 

This wold mean that rather than travelling down a tunnel between two time/sapce locations, you would be in both at the same time.

[Uncle Martin]

Freethinker, I like the way that looks. Now my curiosity is piqued. I'll have to dig in and do some reading on this.

[Aki]

Could a blackhole be a wormhole? Because we don't know what is on the other end of the black hole, maybe it might be another place in the universe. Just because we can't see what's inside a blackhole, it doesn't mean it can't be a wormhole

[sanctus]

I remember having read somewhere that black-holes are some kind of worm-hole, but not from one point of our space-time to another point of it, but actually a gate to another universe. To me it sounds a bit like science fiction, but maybe its true.

[sanctus]

freethinker,

I like very much your idea of the wormholes explaining quantum pairs, actually i've got nothing to add, but I think it's an possibility to eventually approach general relativity and QM, something which (for what I know) hasn't been done yet

[GAHD]

I had though of wormholes a 7 dimentional matrix; 2 areas where the 3 'normal' dimensons exist sharing the 4th dimension of time(should it indeed be a dimension). WHat bothers me about the 'hole' part of wormholes is the idea of actually forcing space-time open. if only for a brief instant, I think the forces released would be akin to an atomic bomb, only to a much higher degree. Even if it just end up that the two areas of space interact and form a stable 'wormhole' the initial formation is something I'd only like to see through a camera or telescope. o.O

[TeleMad]

I am not sure what is being referred to as quantum pairs...virtual pair creation in "empty" space? If so, these are explained simply as quantum fluctuations. The only problem seems to be that such events could be viewed as violating the law of conservation of mass-energy, but Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that the energy<->time account be unbalanced temporarily: energy can be "borrowed" to make virtual pairs if it is "paid back" soon enough (by their destruction)...the more energy "borrowed", the sooner it must be "paid back".