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Aftermarth
Feb5-08, 04:53 AM
Do wormholes really exist in spacetime?
I mean, as a race we need to colonize the rest of the galaxy before too long otherwise the sun will extinguish our aspirations to survive, and we really cant just travel in a spaceship so we need to look at other ideas.

could "star-trek" or whatever the show is be real and wormholes or rips in the fabric of space appear so that we could go through them and end up in another part of the galaxy in minutes rather than thousands and thousands of years?

George Jones
Feb5-08, 06:19 AM
Do wormholes really exist in spacetime?
I mean, as a race we need to colonize the rest of the galaxy before too long otherwise the sun will extinguish our aspirations to survive, and we really cant just travel in a spaceship so we need to look at other ideas.

could "star-trek" or whatever the show is be real and wormholes or rips in the fabric of space appear so that we could go through them and end up in another part of the galaxy in minutes rather than thousands and thousands of years?

Unfortunately, there are no clear-cut answers (even in theory) upon which the whole physics community agrees.

A stable wormhole requires "exotic" matter to hold it open, and exotic matter is such that some observers measure its density to be negative.

There are some hints from quantum theory that exotic matter is theoretically possible, but not everyone agrees on how much is needed to hold a wormhole open, how much is possible, etc.

Your questions lie in an area of active research.

Aftermarth
Feb5-08, 08:21 PM
can u help me understand something i read involving "quantum foam"
it said that it was a miniscule substance which covered everything and was a foam-like thing that shifted and flowed around itself, occasionally opening up breaks in the "fabric of space"

Denton
Feb6-08, 06:46 AM
Uh how can you have negative density? Isnt that just as rediculous as negative mass?

Ich
Feb6-08, 09:30 AM
Uh how can you have negative density? Isnt that just as rediculous as negative mass?
It's quite the same, it's ridiculous and it obviously exists. But AFAIK it exists only on small scales and has to be countered by positive energy density in the vicinity. But as George Jones said, we don't know yet what restrictions might apply.

Aftermarth
Feb6-08, 10:15 PM
slow down guys..... where did denisty come into this at all?