Travel through wormholes is possible, but slow

Post by p1esk » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #103

xvector wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is missing the obvious solution. If we're talking about tech this fantastical, the best idea is to ditch our ephemeral biological bodies, jump onto a synthetic medium, and call it a day. Hit pause so the journey takes a fraction of a second, or spend 1000Y in a VR - do whatever you want. I don't see a future where we're this advanced yet still content with our frighteningly fragile bodies.

Perhaps it's because building a giant ship that can carry countless generations of inhabitants many light years is really more of just an engineering problem. All the challenges (of which there are plenty) all have reasonably known solutions. There's not really all that much novel technology required. Just better tech than we have, and a lot of it, to be sure. Uploading a consciousness into a computer and have it rem…

Post by olemartinorg » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #105

eigenschwarz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm kind of relieved by this. The last wormhole conversation I had with someone, I imagined a weapon using a short-distance wormhole with the ends opposed 180 degrees, and using a star's own gravity to tear chunks out of it. Everybody dies from massive solar flares. Of course time travel books, wormhole researchers, and myself all make the same mistake over and over: If you made a wormhole or traveled in time, why do…

Post by Andrex » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

nikofeyn wrote: post #67

ben_w wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the point of view of something falling in you are correct. From the point of view of something further away watching the thing falling in, it takes forever. I think. Time dilation is easy to lose track of.

that is my understanding as well. it feels almost meme like that from an observer’s point of view, a black hole will have a bunch of stuff “stuck” on its horizon. i haven’t ever seen elaborations of how it would actually look though.

Post by krastanov » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #71

I'm not sure if this is the researchers' issue or is an issue with the scientific press, but it would help if the "discoveries" theorists made with their hitherto unestablished and untested theories like various string and QG based theories were not touted as discoveries about the real world.

Post by ben_w » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #59

Filligree wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a neat demonstration of the holographic principle. From the point of view of an outside observer, there's no difference between the surface of the black hole and its volume; they're two different ways to describe the same thing, of varying usefulness. Reaching the 'surface' of the event horizon is equivalent to reaching the infinite future of the hole. However, you'd still be spaghetti.

For a large enough black hole you could theoretically pass the event horizon pre-spaghettification since the radius between the singularity and the horizon would be large enough that the tidal force wouldn't be unbearable. You may have enough time to realize that you've now passed the ultimate barrier before you're eventually torn to shreds by the singularity.