Thread: Worm Holes and traveling through them.

I realize the whole concept of Worm Holes is theoretical and so any answer given to this question will just be an educated guess.

But I was wondering if Humans were able to create or find a worm hole, exactly how much would it speed up our travel times? For instance, I was reading an article talking about Nuclear Pulse drive that could theoretically get us to Proxima Centauri in 85 years. The others Ion Pulse and using the gas giants for a gravity boost, the estimates seem to still take over 10,000 years to travel to Alpha Centauri. So what I am trying to figure out it, What would be a realistic time one would expect the trip would take if a ship or probe were to go through a worm hole? I would appreciate any intelligent discussion.


BYW, the article I was reading about Nuclear Pulse drive is here :

http://www.astroengine.com/2008/07/h...oxima-centauri

Looks like it depends on what places the wormhole connects . Wormhole wont accelerate us it will simply reduce the distance .

see if we move the wormhole to any other place the distance it reduces changes.

So then would you say that the further the distance between two points, the more the worm hole would shorten the journey? Not that it would necessarily take less time to say cross to the other side of the Milky Way than it would to go to Proxima Centauri but that the distance knocked of the trip by the worm hole would be greater? So if for instance, just throwing numbers out. Do you think a worm hole would reduce the distance enough that a trip could be made to Proxima Centauri within a year? Again I am just wanting opinions.

In real life, the technical obstacles of wormhole travel, if even possible, are to great to be seen in either of our lifetimes. Scientists don't even know if going through a wormhole is possible, or if they really exist, or whether we can make them etc. And those are just theoretical obstacles. The technical ones are even harder.

Originally Posted by 15uliane

In real life, the technical obstacles of wormhole travel, if even possible, are to great to be seen in either of our lifetimes. Scientists don't even know if going through a wormhole is possible, or if they really exist, or whether we can make them etc. And those are just theoretical obstacles. The technical ones are even harder.

You are absolutely correct but I am speaking in hypotheticals. I am just trying to figure out exactly how much a worm hole would speed things up if we could use one. I realize that worm holes have nothing to do with speed but with the distance travels. But either way, you are still getting there faster. I am trying to wrap my head around what would be a reasonable amount of time that catching a ride in a worm hole would speed up a journey. Taking a worm hole, do you think we could cross the galaxy in a life time? Could we get to Alpha Centauri in less than a year? I realize nobody has the answers to these questions but I am hoping to get some educated opinions for people more knowledgeable than myself. And I also realize that it still all depends on the drive used so lets say using the fastest… Nuclear Pulse or even Anti-matter annihilation.

In a year? I doubt it . Even if there is a wormhole connecting earth directly to alpha centauri still we would need to cover quite much of a distance even at speed of light.
But one thing , when we travel at speeds near to light than we will suffer time dilation and for the astronauts it would seem as if only weeks have passed while for earth people years would have passed by the time they reach the star.This would allow us to travel huge distances in a human lifetime.

I think that I might have found the answer that you're looking for.

The time delay for wormhole travel seems to roughly
decrease with the density of the exotic (i.e. negative) matter at the wormhole's throat and
increase with the amount of normal used to construct the wormhole.

Here are some traversal times for the wormhole examples that I found in a recent book on wormhole physics ( The Physics of Stargates: Parallel Universes, Time Travel and the Enigma of Wormhole Physics by Enrico Rodrigo, Eridanus Press 2010)

Traversal Times
negative (wormhole functioning as a time machine)
0 seconds ("Visser" or "thin-shell wormholes", no normal matter)
>= 0.7 seconds ("Small Exotic Region Wormhole", no normal matter)
~ 1 hour ("Infinite Exotic Region Wormhole", no normal matter)
>= 7 days ("Large Exotic Region Wormhole")
~200 days ("Medium Exotic Region Wormhole")

In short, you could arrive before you leave, take as long as seven months, or anything in between. It all depends on the matter-induced shape of the wormhole's throat region. Highly curved = short traversal time. Slightly curved = long traversal time.

DavidScott,

That is precisely what I was looking for.

Thank you very much for the information.

You were looking for numbers which someone completely made up, and which lack a stated reference frame?

No.. As I stated in my initial question. I realize there is no way to answer this question with definite answer as the very idea of worm holes is only theoretical. I wanted an opinion that actually addressed my question..... an educated opinion by someone who probably knows more about the theory or worm holes than I do. He did give me that.

inow,

The wormhole traversal times that I quoted from Rodrigo's book are not made up. They are based on the examples in this paper published by Caltech's Kip Thorne and his then graduate student Michael Morris.

This 1988 paper, according to Rodrigo, launched the "Modern Age" of wormhole physics.

Thank you for the clarification, David. I was perhaps too quick to judge when you only cited a book instead of a peer reviewed article in the previous post. I maintain my criticism that you mentioned travel times without articulating the frame of reference. It's like asking, "what's the difference between a duck?" It's missing something, you know?

Example - 200 days... according to which observer? I presume maybe the traveler him/herself?

Example - 200 days... according to which observer? I presume maybe the traveler him/herself?

Exactly.

However, the book says there are velocity-dependent transverse tidal forces (i.e. perpendicular to the direction of inward/outward travel) that limit the speed at which a human being can safely travel through a wormhole. These restrict the traversal speeds to a small fraction of the speed of light. Which means that time dilation can be reasonably ignored.

Moreover, in order to limit velocity-independent longitudinal tidal forces (i.e. in the direction of inward/outward travel), the gradient of a wormhole's gravitational field (due I think to its positive matter) can't be too strong. This means that gravitational time dilation effects aren't important either.

So the round-trip traversal times measured by the traveler probably aren't too different than those measured by a stationary observer at the wormhole entrance.[

My understanding of this is that space-time can be bent so much that the two ends can be extremely close, thus, making the wormhole extremely short. So, it can take from x seconds to x (y unit of time) to pass through it... x and y being whatever you want it to be...

Oh, and I'm sorry if this has been covered above I didn't quite read everything...