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Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

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11–20 of 190 posts

Re: Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

#11
post #6

When ever I think of traveling through a wormhole/blackhole, I imagine you would be squished and crushed and come out the other end as pure vaporized energy. This makes me wonder, if there is the potential for our beings (or things) be able to be vaporized and then recreated to original form. If we are just mass and particles, this should be possible?

If you could 3d print things at the atomic level, then you could instantly advance the human race to a post scarcity society. It's the holy grail of 3d printing and of course everyone wants to do it.

Your question has philosophical implications beyond just the mechanics, however.

Re: Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

#13
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the colloquia I watched by Lenny Susskind, the problem is that you can put something into a wormhole, but to get it out the other end, you have to carry the encoding you get to the other end of the wormhole to decode the output. Because the distance to the singularity grows at the speed of light, the length of the wormhole is essentially infinite. It is only the operator you get from putting the object into…

> Because the distance to the singularity grows at the speed of light, doesn't our universe expand at the same speed?

As the sibling poster implies, not only are there black hole horizons, but we are ourselves inside of a cosmological horizon. Objects outside the horizon are impossible to see, and objects approaching it from the inside will redshift and disappear from view the same way they do when entering a black hole from the outside.

Re: Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

#14
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the colloquia I watched by Lenny Susskind, the problem is that you can put something into a wormhole, but to get it out the other end, you have to carry the encoding you get to the other end of the wormhole to decode the output. Because the distance to the singularity grows at the speed of light, the length of the wormhole is essentially infinite. It is only the operator you get from putting the object into…

So we've uncovered the universes version of cyptography?

It's more just the encryption method without decryption.

Re: Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

#15
post #6

When ever I think of traveling through a wormhole/blackhole, I imagine you would be squished and crushed and come out the other end as pure vaporized energy. This makes me wonder, if there is the potential for our beings (or things) be able to be vaporized and then recreated to original form. If we are just mass and particles, this should be possible?

That reminds me a bit of the Star Trek Voyager episode where the a group sends their dead from one dimension to another. Their bodies come through intact but some form of "neural energy emissions" is added to a local energy field.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Emanations_(episode)

Re: Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the distance to the singularity grows at the speed of light, doesn't our universe expand at the same speed?

Things are moving away from us at a speed proportional to their distance. The fastest objects are actually faster than the speed of light.

I thought nothing could move faster than light?

Re: Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

#17

Can someone point out where the article says why it's slower? I'm having difficulty unpacking: "The new theory was inspired when Jafferis began thinking about two black holes that were entangled on a quantum level, as formulated in the ER=EPR correspondence by Juan Maldacena from the Institute for Advanced Study and Lenny Susskind from Stanford. Although this means the direct connection between the black holes is sho…

The Average Null Energy Condition (ANEC) makes it so there can not be a traversable wormhole joining two otherwise disconnected regions of spacetime. So by construction, any infinite null geodesic (a light ray) which makes it through the wormhole must be chronal (causally connected). This means there can be no traveling faster than light over long distances by going through one.

Re: Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are moving away from us at a speed proportional to their distance. The fastest objects are actually faster than the speed of light.

I thought nothing could move faster than light?

Special Relativity states that no two objects may pass each other faster than the speed of light. Space itself isn't bound by this restriction. To wit: no thing can move faster than the speed of light, but space is not a thing.

Space is dynamical. It can stretch and expand and even break, but it doesn't move. The result of this is a cosmological horizon that prevents these objects from communicating, because the distance between them is growing faster than light can cross it. This is the same reason you can't escape a black hole.

Re: Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

#20
post #6

When ever I think of traveling through a wormhole/blackhole, I imagine you would be squished and crushed and come out the other end as pure vaporized energy. This makes me wonder, if there is the potential for our beings (or things) be able to be vaporized and then recreated to original form. If we are just mass and particles, this should be possible?

The philosophical implications of this are the subject of one of my favorite web-comics: The Machine, from Existential Comics http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
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