h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I strongly suspect that using black holes or Singularities as I like to call them it could be possible to create a wormhole. A wormhole is a sort of Tunnel through space which links two points. To traverse these points in "normal space" the distance can be Humongous (100's of light years) but to travel through a wormhole the distance could be a fraction of that through normal space or even istantanious. I would like any comments on how you would create a wormhole.
Personaly I think that a wormhole starts life as two black holes. and if the bottom of the gravety well's link somwhere be it sub-space, hyperspace ect. When they link the black holes merge and form a doughnut literaly holding the walls apart. I think that these types of wormholes are very unstable and consiquently short-lived. I think it is also possible for the exits of a wormhole to be in different timeframes literaly creating a gateway to the past or future. although paradoxies can arise if you travel through them and alter the past or use information gathered in the future to aid you in the past. Who knows? maybe in a few centuries time humans may be able to create wormholes and then be able to traverse the universe in a series of Colony Wars style "warpholes" (any one played the colony wars series? theyre amazing).
I would like some input on this subject please
Fallen Angel (on this site somewhere)

I would not think it would be possible to use singularities to create artificial wormholes, as we currently do not have the theory let alone an actual physical means to manipulate a singularity. Even if we did, I do not think singularities are the answer to creating stable artificial wormholes, just that they are a relative.

To create an artificial wormhole, you would somehow need to split a tachyon, transport one half to each location for the entry and exit termini of the wormhole to be, somehow enlarge that tachyon and pass through it. Doddle. As I understand it, tachyons can exist in two places simultaneously, but are linked between the two distances. (maybe.)
As for using wormholes or indeed any other method for time travel, I know this is impossible for if in some distant future we did somehow create one, we would alter the timeline of the past, and the time machine would be invented throughout our history simultaneously. This would be due to people visiting the past and the earlier people aquiring if not the actual technology itself, the proof needed to inspire the invention to fruition.
As we don't have a time machine now, they will never exist.
At least, not a time machine capable of moving physical objects through time.
Sorry!

Oh, never played the colony series either

Interesting theory on the tachyons, Booce. I am still not sure about the time travel. My theory?
I think that you can go back in time but you cannot POSSIBLY change anything. say if you went back to save a friend from being run over I think that you would get knocked down before saving him.
ps ever played FF7&8?

I am not very knowledgable about this science and sci-fi, so I ask: What is a tachyon?

"Albert Einstein's theory of relativity doesn't preclude objects from going faster than light speed; rather, it says that nothing traveling slower than the speed of light (for example, you and me) can ever travel faster than 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light in a vacuum. However, FTL objects may exist so long as they have never traveled slower than light. Using this framework of thought, we might place all things in the universe into three classes: those always traveling less than 186,000 miles per second, those traveling at 186,000 miles per second (photons), and those always traveling faster than 186,000 miles a second. In 1967, the American physicist Gerald Feinberg coined the word 'tachyon' for such hypothetical FTL particles. The name comes from the Greek word 'tachys' for 'fast.' In contrast, tardyons are the slower-than-light particles with which we are familiar (e.g., protons and electrons). Sometimes tardyons are known as ittyons from the Hebrew for 'slow'. Tardyons have mass, but the very light ones are relatively easy to accelerate to near light speed. For example, the electrons that produce an image on a television screen travel at about 30 percent of Einstein's limit when they hit the phosphor screen. Electrons in Stanford's linear accelerator can be made to lag behind light speeds by only a few parts per billion, less than one mile per hour. Aside from the tardyons, there are also the massless luxons that travel only at the velocity of light. Luxons include photons, hypothetical gravitons, and probably the neutrino. Because they are just lower-frequency versions of visible light, television waves, radio, and radar also travel at light speed as does electromagnetic radiation of higher frequency such as ultraviolet light, X rays, and gamma radiation. (By the way, light travels almost a million times faster than sound.) Why does it seem that objects cannot start at a speed less than light and go faster than the speed of light (and hence make time go backward)? For one thing, special relativity states that an objects mass would become infinite in the process. Thus the Star Trekian idea of starting at a sublight speed and going faster than light contradicts the special theory of relativity. (Tachyons don't produce this contradiction because they never existed at sublight speeds. They do, however, travel backward in time.) We know for sure that as an object's speed increases, a particle becomes heavier and more resistant to further acceleration. This relativistic mass increase is a well-tested phenomenon for high-energy physicists. In laboratories all over the world, the mass increase of elementary particles as they approach the light barrier is well known. However, physicists can imagine bypassing the mass-increase barrier not by accelerating a particle to light speed and beyond, but by putting enough energy together in one placeto create a particle, like a tachyon, that is born traveling faster than light. There is another reason why relativity seems to preclude FTL travel. If you start out moving slower than the speed of light and go faster and faster, time runs more and more slowly until, at the speed of light itself, it comes to a stop relative to stationary observers. You can't go any faster because the speed of light is an impenetrable barrier. In a strange way, if you try to increase your speed there is no time left in which to make the increase. However, while special relativity seems to forbid backward time travel, the general theory of relativity (which includes gravitational effects) may permit it. Remember, special relativity describes how objects move far away from massive objects like stars while the general theory of relativity is more powerful and capable of describing spaceships accelerating near stars and black holes. Note, however, that although Einstein's general rrelativity allows for some forms of time travel, the energies necessary to twist time into a 'circle' are so great that Einstein's equations may break down as quantum theory takes over. This means that significant further research is required before final conclusions can really be made. If time-traveling tachyons are discovered, or if other distortions in space-timecan ever be used for time travel, then the principle of causality, that cause precedes effects, is discarded, and the chief theoretical obstacle to time travel has been removed. (this obstacle, sometimes called the 'causal ordering postulate,' forbids all spacelike causal connections.) Some physicists have suggested that many tachyons were created at the moment the Big Bang created our universe. However, in minutes these tachyons would have plunged backward in time to the universe's origin and been lost again in it's primordial chaos. Possibly they would become isolated from our universe of tardyons and create their universe that is forever separated from us by the speed-of-light barrier."

-extract from Clifford A. Pickover's book, "TIME: A TRAVELER'S GUIDE"

If you enjoyed reading that selection, you'll enjoy the rest of the Pickover's book which deals with the nature of time.

Here is a summary of the book:

"In 'Time: A Traveler's Guide,' Pickover takes readers to the forefront of science as he illuminates the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe--time itself. Is time travel possible? Is time real? Does it flow in one direction only? Does it have a beginning and an end? What is eternity? These are questions that Pickover tackles in this stimulating blend of Chopin, philosophy, Einstein, and modern physics, spiced with diverting side-trips to such topics as the history of clocks, the nature of free will, and the reason gold glitters. Pickover includes numerous diagrams so readers have no trouble following along, computer code that lets us write simulations for various aspects of time travel, and an on-going science fiction tale featuring quirky characters who yearn to travel back in time to hear Chopin play in person. By the time we finish this book, we understand such arcane concepts as space-time diagrams, light cones, cosmic moment lines, transcendent infinite speeds, Lorentz transformations, superluminal and ultraluminal motions, Minkowskian space-times, Godel universes, closed timelike curves, and Tipler cylinders. And most important, we will understand that time travel need not be confined to myth, science fiction, Hollywood fantasies, or scientific speculation. Time travel, we will realize, is possible."

One commonly speculated means of creating a wormhole with black holes involves splitting a blackhole into two or more celestial bodies, sending one or more of the bodies off into space. It is then thought that the singularity space created by blackholes might be "connected" in some manner, creating a "tunnel" or series of "tunnels" or wormholes in space between the massive celestial bodies. By surfing the event horizon, one could quickly jump from one location to the other at nearly the speed of light with little or no enegy expenditure. And if it is possible to enter the event horizon and exit again without getting smooshed, then traveling through the singularity space should take little or no time at all, allowing you to travel great distances without actually exceeding the speed of light.

It has been argued that the great amount of gravitational force required to create such a wormhole would have just as profound a time curvature effect as traveling near the speed of light, however, so unfortunately, relativistically, you wouldn't be going very fast at all and getting anywhere in within a few million lightyears within a few million years is still, probably, imposible. And getting somewhere before you left is, still, an impossibility.

Thats a shame. If reverse time travel were possible i wouldve liked to visit the ancient egyptian civilisation BTW have you read my journal article on the origin of the egyptian civilisation? its at
http://www.h2g2.com/U117187/ and called The twin stars of Hapi.

A tachyon by definition is a particle with mass of imaginary number i. This causes all sorts of problems, such as, like normal matter is constrained to travel at less than c, the speed of light, a tachyon must travel at a greater speed than c.

When a particle travels fast it emits radiation. This means it looses energy. For a tachyon, this means it accelerates. Therefore more energy loss... you can see where this is headed.

Tachyons therefore exist everywhere simultaneously.