Monday, March 19, 2007

Wormhole

Anyone who has more than a passing interest in science fiction will be aware of "wormholes". They linked the Stargates in the series (and movie) of the same name. They sucked John Crichton and Farscape 1 through to some "distant galaxy". They even appeared in some of the eleventy-billion episodes of Star Trek, putting the Gamma Quadrant in Deep Space 9's back yard. In other words, they're a standard response to the problem of covering interstellar distances. Intriguingly, they may actually exist.

A black hole is a produced when a particularly heavy star runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself. Every object exerts a force, called gravity, on every other object in the universe (although because it follows an inverse square rule, unless the object is particularly massive, or you're very close to it, that force is essentially negligible). In order to escape from an object's gravity, you need to be going very fast - and that speed, called the "escape velocity", is a function of the size and gravity of an object.

A black hole is black because it is so small and heavy that the escape velocity required to escape its gravityish grasp exceeds the speed of light. Because Einstein's theory of General Relativity says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s), it is impossible for anything to go fast enough to escape from a black hole. At the centre of the black hole is a singularity, but the distance at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light is called the event horizon (no, not the movie), and it's impossible to see past the event horizon.

No one has actually seen a black hole (because, like space, it's black), but there are plenty of spots where effects are seen which are consistent with the presence of a black hole. But the research linked above suggests that a wormhole may actually produce an effect similar to a black hole, so what we think are black holes may actually been wormholes.

Wormholes essentially punch a whole through space, and may link two distant bits of space (or even time), so they may be a way to explore the galaxy. Or they may just rip your atoms into bits and turn you into singularity soup. So they may one day aide space travel, but much like the first person to eat an oyster, the first person to attempt to travel through a wormhole is going to be taking one hell of a leap of faith.

The article linked above suggests that the new generation of particle accelerators may actually be able to create tiny little wormholes, which may be able to be distinguished from black holes by the absence of Hawking radiation. It's times like this that I wish I was good enough at maths to have contemplated following a career in physics - instead of sitting here at a boring desk I could be creating black holes and laying the foundations to future human exploration of the universe (or possibly destroying the world - either is cool with me).
Originaly posted at Anyone who has more than a passing interest in science fiction will be aware of "wormholes". They linked the Stargates in the series (and movie) of the same name. They sucked John Crichton and Farscape 1 through to some "distant galaxy". They even appeared in some of the eleventy-billion episodes of Star Trek, putting the Gamma Quadrant in Deep Space 9's back yard. In other words, they're a standard response to the problem of covering interstellar distances. Intriguingly, they may actually exist.

A black hole is a produced when a particularly heavy star runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself. Every object exerts a force, called gravity, on every other object in the universe (although because it follows an inverse square rule, unless the object is particularly massive, or you're very close to it, that force is essentially negligible). In order to escape from an object's gravity, you need to be going very fast - and that speed, called the "escape velocity", is a function of the size and gravity of an object.

A black hole is black because it is so small and heavy that the escape velocity required to escape its gravityish grasp exceeds the speed of light. Because Einstein's theory of General Relativity says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s), it is impossible for anything to go fast enough to escape from a black hole. At the centre of the black hole is a singularity, but the distance at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light is called the event horizon (no, not the movie), and it's impossible to see past the event horizon.

No one has actually seen a black hole (because, like space, it's black), but there are plenty of spots where effects are seen which are consistent with the presence of a black hole. But the research linked above suggests that a wormhole may actually produce an effect similar to a black hole, so what we think are black holes may actually been wormholes.

Wormholes essentially punch a whole through space, and may link two distant bits of space (or even time), so they may be a way to explore the galaxy. Or they may just rip your atoms into bits and turn you into singularity soup. So they may one day aide space travel, but much like the first person to eat an oyster, the first person to attempt to travel through a wormhole is going to be taking one hell of a leap of faith.

The article linked above suggests that the new generation of particle accelerators may actually be able to create tiny little wormholes, which may be able to be distinguished from black holes by the absence of Hawking radiation. It's times like this that I wish I was good enough at maths to have contemplated following a career in physics - instead of sitting here at a boring desk I could be creating black holes and laying the foundations to future human exploration of the universe (or possibly destroying the world - either is cool with me).
Anyone who has more than a passing interest in science fiction will be aware of "wormholes". They linked the Stargates in the series (and movie) of the same name. They sucked John Crichton and Farscape 1 through to some "distant galaxy". They even appeared in some of the eleventy-billion episodes of Star Trek, putting the Gamma Quadrant in Deep Space 9's back yard. In other words, they're a standard response to the problem of covering interstellar distances. Intriguingly, they may actually exist.

A black hole is a produced when a particularly heavy star runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself. Every object exerts a force, called gravity, on every other object in the universe (although because it follows an inverse square rule, unless the object is particularly massive, or you're very close to it, that force is essentially negligible). In order to escape from an object's gravity, you need to be going very fast - and that speed, called the "escape velocity", is a function of the size and gravity of an object.

A black hole is black because it is so small and heavy that the escape velocity required to escape its gravityish grasp exceeds the speed of light. Because Einstein's theory of General Relativity says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s), it is impossible for anything to go fast enough to escape from a black hole. At the centre of the black hole is a singularity, but the distance at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light is called the event horizon (no, not the movie), and it's impossible to see past the event horizon.

No one has actually seen a black hole (because, like space, it's black), but there are plenty of spots where effects are seen which are consistent with the presence of a black hole. But the research linked above suggests that a wormhole may actually produce an effect similar to a black hole, so what we think are black holes may actually been wormholes.

Wormholes essentially punch a whole through space, and may link two distant bits of space (or even time), so they may be a way to explore the galaxy. Or they may just rip your atoms into bits and turn you into singularity soup. So they may one day aide space travel, but much like the first person to eat an oyster, the first person to attempt to travel through a wormhole is going to be taking one hell of a leap of faith.

The article linked above suggests that the new generation of particle accelerators may actually be able to create tiny little wormholes, which may be able to be distinguished from black holes by the absence of Hawking radiation. It's times like this that I wish I was good enough at maths to have contemplated following a career in physics - instead of sitting here at a boring desk I could be creating black holes and laying the foundations to future human exploration of the universe (or possibly destroying the world - either is cool with me).
originaly posted at
http://thekillfile.blogspot.com/2007/04/wormhole-extreme.html

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