travel speed IN wormhole ?

[Geronimo]

kel sha,

if u enter the chappa'ai's wormhole u got into a wormhole - what's the speed here u travel at ??
it must be about 50 times of light speed or higher 'cos u complete much lightyears in a few seconds ..

kree sha

 

[the_Brainz]

Well, aside from entering the wormhole when you enter the wormhole, which seemed obvious enough to me, the point of a wormhole is that velocity becomes irrelevant. A wormhole links two distant points by bending the fabric of space-time, thereby drawing them closely together so that it takes only a short time to traverse the distance. Granted that the Stargate wormhole graphics seem to show it as being quite long, but it does naturally have a length. However, since time is relative, and space can be stretched or compressed, the actual travel speed of the molecules of the travellers inside the wormhole would not be very great; certainly not anywhere near light speed. However, if you measured their speed with relation to an object in normal space-time, their "speed" could seem like anything from fifty times light speed (assuming the receiving gate is very close to Earth) to billions of times light speed.

 

[spookypumpkin]

ok here goes...

i have noticed that it takes around 15-20 seconds for an object to travel through the wormhole and reach it's destination (eg- "object arriving at destination in approx 14 seconds, sir" this is stated in children of the gods (box of tissues) and touchstone -- i am sure that there are others i've missed).

and in this time, the team/ object/ whatever could have travelled millions of light years, so an accurate speed is impossible to calculate.

but of course (let me get this right...) time IS space when you get to this wormhole stuff. speed is distance/ time.

and time is space which is the fourth dimension of distance. (not intirely accurate, 4D is not a "tool" as such, but it'll do)

so, no, i can't calculate how fast they are travelling!!!

 

[padders]

stargate is not very accurate in the speed thing in wormholes. The idea that the further you travel away (ie when they come from the Asgard planet) is absurd. A wormhole links to points in space-time together that just happen to be "far apart". The time it takes to go through a wormhole, whatever the distance it is away in our normal view of distance would be the same. This if you want to work out a speed, then it would increase the further away the planet is you are gating to. Even so, speed = distance travelled / time. When you go through a gate you don't travel, it is not like you are running all that distance very very fast you are just moving from one point to another that happens to be far away. My answer to the question would thus be "the speed you walk into the event horizon at"

 

[muzungu]

Padders is correct. A wormhole is a tunnel in which spacetime is curved to such a degree that distance becomes irelevent, ie it bends space so that two distant points are brought close together. Therefore when you step through a wormhole although you travel a long way with respect to an outside observer, to you it would not seem that you have travelled far at all. Thus to an ouside observe you would appear to have a tremendous velocity whereas in your frame of reference you would have the same velocity as you had when you entered.

 

[PTeppic]

Just to agree with Padders and Muzungu, for a different reason, though their's is the primary one; if they were travelling at light speed their arms would drop off with the sudden weight of their weapons, and they would probably not be able to actually see those really impressive SFX shots of streaks of light, and definitely not if they were faster than light.

The wormhole travel time seems the same in all - except possible the one to Othala - need to check that one. But why are they sometimes frosty, and other times not, and ditto for sometimes falling over as if thrown out of the wormhole?

 

[muzungu]

Just to clarify what P'Teppic said regarding the increase in weight of their weapons, at the speed of light they would have an infinite mass. However if they manage to go faster than the speed of light in real space there mass would decrease from infinity and they would go backward through time.

 

[Koala]

One way to answer this would be to say "fast. real fast."

When Carter explains why the iris works she says something to the effect that it's distance from the event horizon was so that the traveler (i think she said "matter") didn't have time to re-integrate. If we take that explanation and expand on it a bit it would eliminate the things about the weight of the weapons, etc. In fact, maybe they accelerate half way through the journey and then the receiving gate slows them down for the balance of the journey. It would make sence that they at least worked in a push-pull type configuration so that they shared the power requirements. Other wise you'd shoot out through the other side and splat on (or though) something.

Perhaps the "sending" gate converts an object into a stream of data and it is merely reconstituted at the other end. Each gate would then act like a highly specialized computer with the sender acting as a matter disassociator and the receiver a reassociator (something like the replicators in star trek).

If the object's matter were to be converted to a metter stream and place inside some type of "packaging" it wouldn't have to worry about "colliding" with others going the same direction or tohers coing from the opposite direction at the same time, especially assuming that each was sent at a slightly different "frequency".

And yes, you can go both directions through a gate once it's opened. See the opening few minutes of the first episode. They went to the gate room, grabbed Carol, and stepped back through the gate without it closing and reopening.

That always made me wonder what would happen if you ran head-on into another traveller from the other direction, which led me to the data stream or different frequency consept.

 

[padders]

a few problems with some of that Koala, especially the assembling/reassembling thing. If i understand quantum mechanics enough, this is impossible. Nothing can be duplicated like this because what is needed to measure something affects it. ie, i think for these tiny particles, if you measure the speed you have to affect the location and if you meausre the location you affect the speed hence you can't ever know the speed and location at the same time. Apparently, this is a big probelm for matter replicators as nothing can be made identical because you can't even work out what there is in the first place, and something like a human body would have to be done pretty acuratley i would think. Of course that could be garbage.

And, the whole "travelling thing" in the wormhole is just wrong IMHO. The cold thing is also a little bizarre, why would it change by about 10 to 20 degrees i have no idea what so ever. Seems very unlikely it would happen to get cold enough to be noticeable on humans with out narrow temperature range. Of course, this is just a tv thing but no idea why the actually bothered with it (or was it in the film???). The speeding up thing, normally that only happens when they go into the gate quickly, like an explosion (sam said how velocity is preserved through the gate).

There are so many episodes that could come from the physics of gate travel. One i would like is if somehow two wormholes managed to intersect each other and the travellers went to the wrong destination. A good way to get some people through into the Earth base as SG1 would have already active the GDO.

 

[padders]

Originally posted by muzungu
Just to clarify what P'Teppic said regarding the increase in weight of their weapons, at the speed of light they would have an infinite mass. However if they manage to go faster than the speed of light in real space there mass would decrease from infinity and they would go backward through time.

the only problem being the energy required to get something even approaching the speed of light

 

[PTeppic]

a) beyond speed of light = backwards in time: is this theoretical? [Doh! of course it must be :freak4:]

b) if I recall one of the Netu episodes the rings uses a "matter stream" which must be intercepted.

Assuming a similar technology, its just "direct connection" instead of "dialled". Given the effects, the gateroom monitors etc. it does definitely seem that there is some sort of molecular decomposition and recomposition... which means there is certainly some very interesting scope for an episode involving a gate accident and transposition...

If a race is competent enough to get the wormhole established, I think we can assume they get over the quantum-level scanning and copying.

For real-life possibilities this technology, check out "The Physics of Star Trek" by Prof. Lawrence Krauss. Which includes the assertion that any technology capable of shielding force-fields by definition should be able to do invisible-type cloaking...

 

[Koala]

Originally posted by padders
"...If i understand quantum mechanics enough..."
"...something like a human body would have to be done pretty acuratley..."

I never even took physics. Managed to avoid it somehow . But I remember that at the University of Illinois that Boeing would hire 3rd year students who hadn't had a physics course taught in the 4th for the summer because the course told them certain things weren't possible. As a result, the "regular" engineers couldn't design a few things that the students could. I know that some of the "toys" I've played with (one blowing up a university lab) were theoretically impossible. But we won't alk about that... I'll finish that nice little invention when I win the lottery or find out I have a rich uncle who just died.

As far as scanning anything, I agree that it would be near impossible since the atoms are constantly in motion. And we wouldn't want the device to "approximate" things in the case of a living thing. That would seem to pretty much screw up "insignificant" things like what is going on in the brain.

Another "query" would have to do with sticking an item part way into a gate and withdrawing it. But, like you said, we'd have to assume that a race capable of building such a device would appear to have arrived at a more advanced understanding than us.

(Then again, it IS amke believe...for now. Are we considering writers an "advanced race?")

 

[Koala]

Originally posted by padders
"...If i understand quantum mechanics enough..."
"...something like a human body would have to be done pretty acuratley..."

I never even took physics. Managed to avoid it somehow . But I remember that at the University of Illinois that Boeing would hire 3rd year students who hadn't had a physics course taught in the 4th for the summer because the course told them certain things weren't possible. As a result, the "regular" engineers couldn't design a few things that the students could. I know that some of the "toys" I've played with (one blowing up a university lab) were theoretically impossible. But we won't alk about that... I'll finish that nice little invention when I win the lottery or find out I have a rich uncle who just died.

As far as scanning anything, I agree that it would be near impossible since the atoms are constantly in motion. And we wouldn't want the device to "approximate" things in the case of a living thing. That would seem to pretty much screw up "insignificant" things like what is going on in the brain.

Another "query" would have to do with sticking an item part way into a gate and withdrawing it. But, like you said, we'd have to assume that a race capable of building such a device would appear to have arrived at a more advanced understanding than us.

(Then again, it IS make believe...for now. Are we considering writers an "advanced race?")

 

[Koala]

Soory about double post

Sorry about the double post. No idea how it happened. Maybe the system "hiccupped" while I was editing a couple typos in the first copy and it just saved it as a post? Never seen that here before tho.)