Two part question:


1. Can it be done?

So basically, I'm wondering if it would be possible to join two random points in the 3D space of the universe together, instantaneously, that is, with no wormhole distance between them.

Just as you can bend a paper's 2D surface area through 3D space and connect two points instantaneously, could you bend 3D space through 4D space and touch those points instantaneously?

And if the 3D space is a hypersurface of a 4D hypersphere, would that bending screw up the hypersphere just as bending the surface of a 3D globe would screw that up?


2. How much energy would that take?

I've heard a supernova's worth of energy to create a wormhole, so maybe even more to just bend space and join?

And it would have to be negative energy right? Would two Casimir plates create negative energy that could bend space like I'm describing, or would they just attract together like magnets?

And if they did make the bend in space, would it be a black hole or would they actually start a wormhole that could then be "shortened", until there's no more distance?

And how much energy would that take?


Yeah I know, it's really off the wall. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

As I understand it, which is admittedly not very well, wormholes don't have to have a mouth and throat. Instead they can just be regions of connected space. A wormhole could possibly have a throat of zero length, and you could just step through without any fuss.

Or, to look at it another way, what you are describing as space connected at a random point without a wormhole is actually a wormhole with zero length.

If you tried to make such a wormhole with zero length you would supposedly need vast amounts of ANEC-violating negative energy; the rule seems to be, the longer the trip through the hole, the less negative energy required. An infinitely long wormhole (which might as well just be flat space) requires no negative energy.

I think Matt Visser has described the geometry and energies required to make a wormhole of zero length; it might be on the 'Net somewhere.

Is any of this possible, or even right? No idea, I'm afraid.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

Paper has a length and width and thickness. Joining two points on a piece of paper is neither instantaneous or without length and width.

I know; I've been wrapping presents over the past couple of days. It takes longer than you think.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

I only by square presents....

__________________
But you're sure the astronauts are lying; you just don't seem to know what they're lying about: Jayutah


I are Learnding.

A 2D surface of a paper has no thickness. You can imagine it that there are only two vectors, x and y. Every object in existence has many 2D surfaces without thickness.

Yes, a sheet of paper has thickness. But the surface of it, does not. Bend the 3D sheet of paper, the 2D surfaces touch.


Please everyone, let's not derail this topic. It's research for the book I'm writing. (Really.) I imagine a lot of the topics in here are by aspiring science fiction writers. So many great minds post here, let's not spam it up.

That's rich!
Can you point to a thread that didn't go off-topic after a half dozen posts or so?

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

If we are going to get back to the non-festive part of the thread, I recommend Adam Getchell's overview of wormhole theory here; it really isn't too far-fetched or maths heavy.
http://www.orionsarm.com/whitepapers...s-Overview.pdf

I would also perhaps mention that curved spacetime could be multiply connected without wormholes in many ways- the universe might curve round upon itself in a hypersphere, or perhaps in a toroid shape or something even more complex.

How about a hyperspatial Klein bottle? You could trace some incredibly complex geodesics in a universe that was connected in that fashion.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

If this could be true, then it would also mean, at least theoretically, that areas separated by an event horizon could be connected, right?

__________________
Neptune, Titan, Stars can Frighten...

Thanks, but if you call that not maths heavy, I hate to see what you consider math heavy. The dilemma of the science fiction writer of the modern age: suitably condensing a math-based concept for the English-major brain.

However, it did shed some more light on the subject, and now I have more terms to learn about, like Cauchy Horizons and exotic matter.

What are those things?


If it was a Klein bottle, am I right in thinking that, assuming it was possible to go that far, you could keep going, end up right back where you started, but everything would be inverted? Would time also be running backwards? I seem to recall that a universal Klein bottle would require 6D.

No gentlemen thats not right. Yes you do well to look for factual information for a novel of fiction in these pages... But very little is actually fact based on good scientific logic and conclusion. Worm holes are for the sake of my view are the cavities created by the Earthworm. As it tunnels its way around my front lawn... Any talk of wormholes in space are just like other universes. Not a single thread of factual information to support it. 'BUT' Do not be discouraged. Many great works of science fiction have stood the test of time well.
What it is that I am attempting to convey is just that. You should not let the facts spoil a good story. cos it would.

Cauchy horizons are mentioned in Wikipedia, and exist to separate places where reverse time travel can occur and the rest of the universe. As Wiki puts it, "One side of the horizon contains closed space-like geodesics and the other side contains closed time-like geodesics."

If they exist and are impassable, then you could never create a set-up of wormholes which allow time travel. But I'm afraid the mathematical reasoning which requires their existence is above my head.

Exotic Matter, and exotic or 'phantom' energy, are just alternate names for the negative energy/matter that seems necessary to create wormholes. I suspect that exotic matter as such, probably can't exist, as it would fly apart or act in some other bizarre and counterintuitive ways. But perhaps negative (a.k.a exotic/phantom) energy can exist, and can even be stored long enough to set up a wormhole.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

Prolly not, I just realized... the singularity causing that event horizon would also just work thru the 'shortcut', as it is 'just' normal space...

__________________
Neptune, Titan, Stars can Frighten...

I am becoming alarmed at the apparent inability of some to separate fact from fiction... Very little of what is written here is factual science.
While it is perfectly acceptable for fiction novels it is not science. nor is it astronomy. Some of the concepts being discussed are little more if not even science fiction. Skipping through time warp unidimensional worm holes is I am afraid rubbish. Do you need to be told? is that not clear? This forum and the questions and answers are not for science fiction writers to gain input. Do some reading and research.
Most of this has been well discussed in other threads in here...

I come here for it because I do not really have time to do a lot of research, but rest assured that I do enjoy reading of these topics. Just finished Rudy Rucker's "Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension". Don't know how credible it is, but it was the area I was after and it definately delivered. I am also reading Brief History of Time for the second time. I don't plan on stopping with that.

However, it will take time, and I figured, why not get a jump on it here.

Yes, I am well aware of the difference between this stuff and established physics and cosmology. I suppose this board is not quite right for it, but what should my reasoning matter, as I am frequenting a board like this for answers rather than some Star Wars fan site.

I'm trying to come up with plausible sounding pseudo science for my work, rather than regurgitating the same tired "sci fi" stuff. If this is also part of that same tired stuff, well like I said, I don't plan on stopping with this stuff. It's all a jumping off point.

This place will have at least some measure of real answers, compared Star Wars or Halo or any of the stuff out there that doesn't even try, and still calls itself science fiction because it's in the future, space, or both, and has robots and computers.

astromark does not speak for all.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Yes Megatarius. Be encoraged... Through a better understanding of science can come some good fiction.
Kaptain K. The first word of my post was, I., and I only ever represent me and my own misguided opinion. By which I will stand.

Actually Megatarius, I think this is probably a great forum for what you want, which is right on the cusp of science and science fiction. But like a lot of forums, you won't get a consensus answer.

As a non-physicist/astronomer, my take on it is that astromark is being very precise, as far as proven, established science. The bending of space-time as you describe it has not been done experimentally, and so there are no facts about how it could be done, what are the consequences, or what are the energy requirements.

But, I wouldn't quite call it fiction either. Serious physicists are speculating about such things. Look, for example, at the discussion in this thread.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Speculation, yes. Usually with zero physical evidence. But it's fun, and it makes for good SF. After all, if you're going to watch Star Trek, you have to suspend your disbelief in FTL drives.

edit: Of course, if you could just manipulate the GR tensors in your local reference frame, then you could . . . sorry, lost the thread there, it seemed like the space around me got warped for a minute.

That paper looks really interesting. I can't believe I didn't look at that thread sooner.

However, at this particular time, it's not really the angle I'm going toward, but it is definitely making the wheels turn.


I had another thought, and it might undo my whole thread.

I'm asking about taking two arbitrary or random points in the universe we know of, and connecting them via a zero length wormhole.

But wouldn't that create a massive bending of space (and time?) around those two points? Akin to bending the surface of a globe inward, so you touch US and China, that would create a massive bending of the surface of the earth. Maybe the poles would be spared.

In terms of space bending, isn't that why black holes have such massive gravity? Because you'd kind of "ride" the bending of space down into it?

So therefore, is my whole concept bogus? Would the connection have to be impractically far out into space to avoid sucking the Earth itself into it?

But what if there was no singularity in the middle? Since I'm imagining there isn't. Now that I think about it, the only way to connect two points of space without bending everything else, is to have a wormhole between them, which would, I'm thinking, be too long of a journey for what I have in mind.

Am I right? Would a zero length wormhole destroy everything around it?

Well, I don't know squat about this stuff, but I don't see how the length of the wormhole (zero or non-zero) changes the amount of bending outside at the "entrance" to your wormhole, but maybe I'm missing something.

As far as bending space without the gradient issue in normal space you discussed, I imagine the bending the piece of paper analogy. The 2D paper represents our 3D (I'll leave the 4th D of time out of this) universe. You bend it through some dimension outside of the normal universe (3rd for paper, 4th for our universe). Now, if you bend your paper carefully enough, the area around the two connection points is still locally perfectly flat, so no gradient at the entrance problems.

So a wormhole is geometrically different from a black hole.

I'm sure someone with more physics will now tear this to ribbons.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Most diagrams of wormholes are misleading, because they show two flat sheets joined by a funnel; in fact a wormhole in 3d space would join two three dimensional volumes together, and a typical shape for the interface would be a sphere. There would still be a funnel-like curvature of space around the hole, but that would be three-dimensional too, and would resemble the curvature of space around a black hole (except, that in some cases, the mass of one of the hole mouths could be effectively negative, causing some strange lensing effects which might detectable at great distances.
see this pdf
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../9409051v1.pdf

Also in that paper is the suggestion that a hole might be just a flat plane, bounded by a loop of cosmic string with negative energy; the curvature around the rim of such a disc would (I think) be extraordinarily acute. In any case I don't know if cosmic strings with negative energy are realistic prospects in physics (but then I don't suppose that wormholes are very realistic prospect in any case).

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

By definition, any joining of 2 points in space (other than those right next to each other, of course!) is a wormhole, even if it doesn't fit one of the current models. I suppose, if it's large enough, and the transition is flat enough, it might not even be recognizable as a wormhole; you'd just look around and go, "Huh? How did I get here?"

(Of course, without actually finding one, we really can't know how visible or large they are, if they exist.)

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort