On Friday, 21 August 2020 at 14:27:49 UTC+5:30, Frank Scrooby wrote:

Hi all,

I was trying to find out how what the theoretical trip time would be for a interstellar journey via an ancient network of artificial wormholes left behind by a god-like race of Builders (who also terraformed planets in their spare time and did stuff to

stop stars from going nova, or burning through their fuel too soon). I'm exploring a story universe where the wormholes and solar controllers are the only real non-hard sf elements lying around. Humans and those that they share this universe with are
restricted to realistic hard sf tech that seems doable from the perspective of accepted science and technology of 2020.

According to the articles my google-fu ("how fast can we theoretically travel through a worm hole") turned up:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190415090853.htm https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/if-wormholes-exist-could-we-really-travel-through-them
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-wormholes.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole#Faster-than-light_travel

All except the wikipedia article seem to think that FTL is impossible using a wormhole. Now I don't pretend to understand the math involved (my head gets sore when people talk about calculus and the term 'polynominals' is likely to make me see blood).

I have the vaguest layman's idea of why General Relativity prevents FTL, or even AsFAL. And my game time in Kerbal Space Program has impressed upon very clearly how the Rocket Equation works. Even if I don't do the math I understand how the mass ratios
change when the you want to send a payload anywhere faster or bigger than before.

So are Wormholes an FTL dead end, even assuming that the people using them are saved the cost of constructing (and maintaining them).

Now I'm not bound to the idea that Wormholes offer FTL. Even if they offered AsFTL travel without the need to accelerate to 99% C they would be a tremendous advantage for civilizations that would otherwise have to communicate and trade via solar-sail

or mag-sail ships. And those would still take millenia to make the trip unless they were boosted by massive lasers or huge solar concentrator arrays or particle beams to boost them to speeds that make a voyage doable within the lifespan of a
significantly longevity extended human species.

Just getting cover (for example) 4 light years in six years, without having to expend the colossal amount of energy needed to boost you and your cargo to 90%C is a huge win.

According to at least one of the articles (I forget which one) sending a laser beam through the worm hole would still be faster than sending a ship. So would that make FTL communication possible, and what are the implications for Causiality?

Oh, and don't worry, the Builders aen't coming back.

Regards
Frank

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)