# Wormholes for Space Travel Created in Lab



## Mad Alice (Nov 25, 2015)

Step right up folks and see the marvel of the future! A pocket singularity that can be magnetically created at will. 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/magnetic-wormhole-created-in-lab/

Now who is working on the Millennium Falcon?


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## Droflet (Nov 25, 2015)

1975 here I come.


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## Venusian Broon (Nov 25, 2015)

mmmm, yet another magnetic/EM analogy demonstration of something that would be better if they could do it really with spacetime. These articles always promise so much...but at the end of the day disappoint 

I notice as well you have to construct physically something very complicated from the entrance to the exit - not really practical for light year jumps!


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## Mad Alice (Nov 25, 2015)

It is magnetic in form. A repurposed star at both gates would cover it.


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## Droflet (Nov 25, 2015)

Now if Scotty could do a time swing around the sun he'd be able to whip this puppy into shape. Just saying.


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## SilentRoamer (Nov 25, 2015)

That article title is so misleading as to be disingenuous - it really annoys me.


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## SilentRoamer (Nov 25, 2015)

On of the comments in the article sums it up quite well for me:

"If I blow air through a straw, thus concealing the flow of air from an outside observer, did I make a wormhole?"

Essentially this is magnetic field shielding and nothing to do with an actual wormhole...


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## Mad Alice (Nov 25, 2015)

SilentRoamer said:


> On of the comments in the article sums it up quite well for me:
> 
> "If I blow air through a straw, thus concealing the flow of air from an outside observer, did I make a wormhole?"
> 
> Essentially this is magnetic field shielding and nothing to do with an actual wormhole...


What I find intriguing is the possibility of magnetic displacement that it offers.  You do realize that this could direct the placement of electrons in a given medium. It could turn Schroedinger's dilemma upon its ear. With this you could see and place the electron exactly.
If you can herd electrons to your exact design, you could direct the manesfestation of matter at a given point. And you would control the given perimeters of their manesfestation. 
Remember that neither time nor distance matters to electrons.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 25, 2015)

This is NUTS!
I had a 1950s Oscilloscope with a Mumetal shield. The described device is NOTHING to do with wormholes (Einstein-Rosen bridges or ANY other kind) or invisibility. It's just an improved shield using a material related to miniature "rare earth" magnets that allow in ear earphones instead of giant external cans.
"Rare Earth" (not actually Earth or Rare!) material at cryogenic temperatures as a magnetic shield.

Nothing new and nothing special to see here.  Nothing to do with space travel or teleporting.

This is PR puff badly reported.


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## SilentRoamer (Nov 25, 2015)

That doesn't make sense because what you are saying is:

1. Even though Electrons ignore spacetime if we can put them where we want (ignoring Schroedinger) then we can
2. get them to go exactly where they were on the other side of a theoretical wormhole and
3. they will recreate the same field on exit (also ignoring Schroedinger).

You're arguing quantum entanglement backwards. You have to break Schroedinger (1) in order to then say you can ignore it (3). Whilst also ignoring the fact that this is going to require infinite amounts of energy (along with exotic materials that may or may not exist).

I like your ideas but its not like a proper Einstein-Rosen bridge is the next logical step here, it would be like saying "cavemen lit a fire so in essence they could build an efficient fission reactor!"

Although I do like your optimism.


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## SilentRoamer (Nov 25, 2015)

Popolularist science usually tends towards the "Wow with this idea we could travel the galaxies" type of story.

Brian Cox, as much as I like the guy, has some questions to answer with regards to some ludicrous statements he has made over the years. Especially as they come across as being authority. An example he stated (as a matter of fact and not a possibility) that Liverpool won the Premier Leagus one year - which to me was such a ridiculous statement about MWI that I had to switch the TV off. All he had to say was possibly...


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## J Riff (Nov 25, 2015)

Have you calculated how long it would take a worm to crawl to Mars? And it has to take food along, there are no McDonalds in space, yet.
Wormholes don't work because space is not dirt. On a serious note - doesn't this smash headon into the conservation of energy law?


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 25, 2015)

J Riff said:


> On a serious note - doesn't this smash headon into the conservation of energy law?


The news as presented is total nonsense and misleading. This is just a better magnetic shield, the sort of thing that was done badly probably 100 years ago.
So there are no laws broken, because this doesn't really do anything different (just better) to a magnet at one end of magnetic circuit screened with mumetal and a compass needle to show field at other end of pipe, but very little at sides. It's just an improved version.

I've no idea why it's dressed up as something new, or like a wormhole. It's neither.


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## PartialMitch (Nov 25, 2015)

Yeah, this is totally not the same thing as a spacetime wormhole, and they really shouldn't describe it along those lines. It's particularly annoying to me because this process has potential for practical real-world benefits, but they choose to describe it in such a way that many people will be misled. This process _looks_ like a wormhole, but that is something of an illusion caused by "hiding" the electromagnetic field. At no point is the electromagnetic field taking a short cut through space.

For the record, I do not think that traversable wormholes are possible. Exotic matter with negative mass/energy would be required to create a real wormhole, and as far as we can tell there is no such thing. Even dark energy possesses positive energy density. Particles with negative mass/energy would violate conservation of momentum (at the very least) and therefore cannot exist. Plank scale wormholes have a higher probability of existing (and some quantum effects are occasionally interpreted in such a way by some physicists), but they are likewise not proven, and they would not be usable for travel. Virtual particles can have negative energy, but they are useless in this regard, though they do help generate Hawking radiation from black holes. "Squeezed light" manifests negative energy, but it is balanced by positive energy and not applicable to this topic. The closest thing to useful negative energy* that I know about is the Casimir effect, but that would also not help make wormholes due to its incredible weakness and ridiculously short range.

These limitations also prevent "warp drives" like the Alcubierre drive. Miguel Alcubierre has expressed his own disbelief in the possibility of such a device, saying, "from my understanding there is no way it can be done, probably not for centuries if at all."

That said, there's no reason to avoid wormholes in sci-fi (unless you're writing hard sci-fi, of course). I use them in my novels, but I wave away the limitations of reality with pseudoscience and technobabble; the trick is trying to make it convincing. In short, write what you want, don't worry too much about reality. The story one wishes to tell matters more than realism, IMHO. 

*Yes, gravity can be considered negative energy, but not the type that can be used for wormholes.


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## J Riff (Nov 25, 2015)

And, if they can ever do it, the energy requirements will be astronomical. Plus- the word 'wormhole' is inaccurate at best... isn't it originally a SF term?
Let's go back to 'folding space'.


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## PartialMitch (Nov 25, 2015)

J Riff said:


> And, if they can ever do it, the energy requirements will be astronomical. Plus- the word 'wormhole' is inaccurate at best... isn't it originally a SF term?
> Let's go back to 'folding space'.



The term was actually invented by the physicist John Archibald Wheeler in the Fifties, but it has been (mis-) appropriated by sci-fi since Sagan wrote _Contact_.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 26, 2015)

PartialMitch said:


> This process _looks_ like a wormhole, but that is something of an illusion caused by "hiding" the electromagnetic field. At no point is the electromagnetic field taking a short cut through space.



It's a magnetic field. Not Electromagnetic.

Electromagnetic is MUCH easier to hide and move "invisibly" from A to B:

Coaxial cable
Waveguide
fibre optic
Though really those are all much the same thing, but for different frequencies. They are all SLOWER than a vacuum! I suspect as well any signal put down a shielded magnetic connection will also be slower than a magnetic field signalling in a vacuum.

So the experiment is nearly the opposite of a "worm hole" or folding space or a bridge. It's just shielding, like a pipe to hide falling water (which if filling the pipe will flow slower than water falling without a pipe). Not a perfect analogy, but good enough.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 26, 2015)

This is a  stupendous breakthrough , It  will enable scientists to get from one side of the lab to the other instantaneously, saving valuable time in the process .


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## Parson (Nov 26, 2015)

*Baylor... LOL ... *Actually the break through is a way to be published as a non-fiction article while blowing great clouds of fiction. (Isn't fiction an interesting but not literally true story?)


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## Mad Alice (Nov 26, 2015)

SilentRoamer said:


> You're arguing quantum entanglement backwards.


They can't seem to make the stuff work forwards, maybe backwards would work better?


SilentRoamer said:


> Also ignoring the fact that this is going to require infinite amounts of energy


Neutron star as gating source.  Though I suppose you could renovate a volatile gas giant as a stopgap.
 I like the idea of magnetic virtual electron transfer tubes ordering the universe. 
Maybe you couldn't stuff a ship with living organisms in at the get go, but I see no reason why you couldn't shoot a cannonade of radio waves through the thing. It would relay messages without the lag.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 27, 2015)

Mad Alice said:


> but I see no reason why you couldn't shoot a cannonade of radio waves through the thing. It would relay messages without the lag.


I can see lots of reasons. It won't stop me writing SF.

For a start, any "tube" structure actually slows radio waves. For two reasons. One, the EM waves propagate slower. Two, the radio waves may have a LONGER path as they "bounce" of the sides.
Light is "slower" in glass than air.
Radio travels about 3/4 of light speed (radio speed in a vacuum) in a coaxial cable. Some cables slow the signal to 2/3rds.
Signals in fibre optic cables are much slower than in air or vacuum.

Unless you have folded space / true wormhole etc, the sending of signalling or objects down a tube is SLOWER than a vacuum. For light or radio (same things) the advantage is range. Free space has the inverse square law. Waveguides, fibre optics, coaxial cable etc increase range 100 to 10,000 times due to conservation of energy, for same power. They also block out extraneous interference (noise) allowing faster data rate or more range (or a compromise combination). 

This is all basic physics and thermodynamics. The original article is worthy of a Marvel comic or Star Trek episode for misleading irrelevant nonsense.


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## SilentRoamer (Nov 27, 2015)

Mad Alice said:


> Neutron star as gating source.  Though I suppose you could renovate a volatile gas giant as a stopgap.
> I like the idea of magnetic virtual electron transfer tubes ordering the universe.
> Maybe you couldn't stuff a ship with living organisms in at the get go, but I see no reason why you couldn't shoot a cannonade of radio waves through the thing. It would relay messages without the lag.



I suppose a Magnetar would be better choice for any sort of SF story, a more magnetized Neutron Star - generally spinning more slowly and resulting in a higher magnetic field output. Of course allowance would need to be made for the immense tidal forces anywhere near any such "gate".

As an energy source they are as close to Infinite energy as a mouse on a wheel. The idea being that to create a wormhole capable of spacetime distortions mass can travel along (which in essence we could just say FTL) you need the entire energy output of the entire universe - assuming it is unbounded and spatially infinite and even then you still don't have enough energy. What is infinity minus infinity or infinity plus infinity - still infinity.

Look we have all seen Event Horizon! We do not want to get out of a gravity well where the spatial distortion is so extreme all world lines lead inwards!


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## Mad Alice (Nov 27, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> I can see lots of reasons. It won't stop me writing SF.
> 
> For a start, any "tube" structure actually slows radio waves. For two reasons. One, the EM waves propagate slower. Two, the radio waves may have a LONGER path as they "bounce" of the sides.
> Light is "slower" in glass than air.
> ...


 
I was speaking of a bullhorn effect. In combination with echoing. Directed waveforms with limiters such as mountain peaks to bounce off of actually possess more strength and therefore energy then those allowed to randomly disperse.
The bounce actually increases the energy available. The tube would act as a resonance chamber. 
It would vibrate adding energy to the wave forms.  With a triangular field of displacement upon the mini tubes, the signal collects together and returns faster and louder.  
Whisper in the mountains and it echoes back as a shout.  Same sort of thing. 
By the way, thinking of space as an empty vacuum that has no influencing factors upon magnetic wave forms or particle dispersement, would only work outside of the solar system, in the areas past the kuiper belt, barring any other spatial matter convergences unknown by us at present. 
There has been identified a magnetic corona present in that area as well as the asteroids and comets and mini planets.  A signal must fight past all that to get to the noninterference vacuum. 
And without the containment of the waveform, the wave would be expanded in dimensions until it is slow and losing energy with every up and down curve. With any resistance at that point, where it would meet the most resistance, it would dissipate. 
Maybe there would not be appreciable atmosphere to affect it, but there would be the sun and gas giants magnetic corona. 
Think of a crystal radio. Now make it a virtual magnetic crystal radio.  You wouldn't need the actual crystal only the vibratory medium.
Tiny bits of an involved message reassembled by all the mini transfer tubes.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 27, 2015)

Mad Alice said:


> The bounce actually increases the energy available.


No, some is lost on ANY reflection (bounce). It's a passive system. Otherwise you have invented free energy, perpetual motion and proved Thermodynamics wrong. You CAN focus a signal and thus lose less. See below.

There is no free lunch.



Mad Alice said:


> Think of a crystal radio. Now make it a virtual magnetic crystal radio.


A tuned circuit connected to an aerial system (which converts Electromagnetic waves (EM Waves) to Electricity)  with a semiconductor rectifier (of ANY kind) to convert AM RF to Audio frequency for the earphone.

A short wire aerial will not sense local magnetic fields, but distant or local EM waves and local Electric fields.
A loop aerial can be immune to local Electric fields (thus less sensitive to local interfernce than say a whip or car aerial on Medium wave), but is very sensitive to local magnetic fields and distant or local EM waves.



Mad Alice said:


> Now make it a virtual magnetic crystal radio


What is that meaning?  Any crystal radio with a loop aerial picks up magnetic fields. A "virtual" anything isn't a physical thing.

Only EM waves propagate any distance, and best in a vacuum. Pure Electric or Pure Magnetic fields are local without a special medium.

A tube of suitable materials CAN transport EM waves, Electric current or Magnetic Flux. But slower than a vacuum. No such device is as efficient as waveguide for microwave EM waves. A fibre is less efficient, but very very much cheaper, and needs IR or visible EM waves. A pair of wires or coaxial cable works for Electric current / signals. If super conducting, then the distance can be immense. A tube for magnetic flux (described in original article) is least efficient and most costly way to transport a signal. Electricity is better. EM Waves better still.  ANY "tube" to concentrate the signal (EM waves, Electric current or Magneti Flux) slows the transmission compared to a vacuum and has higher loss. That's why in a vacuum, the best scheme is a pair of parabolic dishes (one each end), to concentrate the signal. Then the Radio, IR or visible Light loss is related inversely to cube of frequency or square of diameter of dish. The speed is then maximum, "c" the speed of light in a vacuum.

The ONLY use for a "magnetic" signal "tube" is in a device, a machine, a gadget. Other than a hypothetical wormhole (which this experiment isn't), the best interstellar signalling method is a pair of very large parabolic dishes pointing at each other. Or a phased array of smaller dishes, less efficient, but a load of small dishes are very much cheaper to make and there is a lower limit to how large a single steerable dish can be made.


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