Quizzes & Puzzles1 min ago
Is It Possible To "break Air"? Would This Lead To A Wormhole Developing?
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When you see aircraft travelling at supersonic speed they break the sound barrier right and it's almost as if they're splitting the air, so what if you have a plane or rocket travelling at 1000 times that speed? The air would become solid at that speed and as we know solids can be broken, is it possible that the formation of a wormhole could be made this way? Where would this even lead to seeing that only one end is open?
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I'm unsure I'd want to just dismiss theoretical physics. I occasionally wonder if practical limits to experimentation may not mean that one day that's all that's left to ponder what is. No doubt some would say that is no longer science if one can on perform the experiment, but the option would be to just give up on searching for further answers/understanding.
Must be mighty large worms though.
Must be mighty large worms though.
Theoretical Physics, too, can drive experiment.
My main point really was that OP had a serious misunderstanding of what a wormhole actually was, and how it could be made. I doubt their existence because it's not even clear what goes on inside Black Holes, and a wormhole would be equivalent to a black-hole and "anti-black hole" pair. Even the latter objects aren't established as existing, so a combination of the two is even more extraordinary.
Furthermore, the energies involved in an object travelling at Mach 10,000, while impressive, turn out by my calculations to be far smaller in relation to the measure energy/area than those currently produced at, for example, the LHC or the recently shut-down Tevatron. Roughly speaking, if the Mach 10,000 object produces an energy/ area of 1, then the particle accelerators produce an energy/ area of 400 million times that.
Such energies would be at the very least far more likely to produce wormholes/ black holes than a mere fast plane.
My main point really was that OP had a serious misunderstanding of what a wormhole actually was, and how it could be made. I doubt their existence because it's not even clear what goes on inside Black Holes, and a wormhole would be equivalent to a black-hole and "anti-black hole" pair. Even the latter objects aren't established as existing, so a combination of the two is even more extraordinary.
Furthermore, the energies involved in an object travelling at Mach 10,000, while impressive, turn out by my calculations to be far smaller in relation to the measure energy/area than those currently produced at, for example, the LHC or the recently shut-down Tevatron. Roughly speaking, if the Mach 10,000 object produces an energy/ area of 1, then the particle accelerators produce an energy/ area of 400 million times that.
Such energies would be at the very least far more likely to produce wormholes/ black holes than a mere fast plane.
It's not really a question of dismissing theoretical physics but rather asking whether a particular piece of theoretical physics is testable or has any prospect of being testable.
If it's not then IMHO it's not really science but more an abstract form of philosophy.
One of the problems with such theories is they tend to people in an aesthetic manner and appeal to people's scientific inuition.
For example Jim doesn't seem to like wormholes but I suspect leans more favourably towards string theory. I've always been rather negatively disposed towards SuperSymmetry.
It's dangerous territory, modern physics has a habbit of turning up a lot of counterinutitive ideas
I agree that the idea of creating a wormhole by going really fast is seriously flawed but the ide of them being created in very intense gravitational fields is less certain
The question remains is it testable?
If it's not then IMHO it's not really science but more an abstract form of philosophy.
One of the problems with such theories is they tend to people in an aesthetic manner and appeal to people's scientific inuition.
For example Jim doesn't seem to like wormholes but I suspect leans more favourably towards string theory. I've always been rather negatively disposed towards SuperSymmetry.
It's dangerous territory, modern physics has a habbit of turning up a lot of counterinutitive ideas
I agree that the idea of creating a wormhole by going really fast is seriously flawed but the ide of them being created in very intense gravitational fields is less certain
The question remains is it testable?
I've had courses in both String Theory and Supersymmetry and wouldn't necessarily want to make up my mind about either of them. Supersymmetry at least is testable and we should know within the next ten years whether or not it is right. String Theory will probably have to wait far longer, if at all, because my somewhat tentative understanding of it suggests that we would need a particle accelerator many, many orders of magnitude more powerful than the LHC.
Just be reading this thread with some interest. I find the concept of the density of air in earths atmosphere becoming denser, even turning solid is a bit bizarre, as is the whole idea of "breaking air"....
I would love there to be wormholes though - StarGate SG1 was one of my favourite Sci-Fi shows :)
I would love there to be wormholes though - StarGate SG1 was one of my favourite Sci-Fi shows :)
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