Would like professional advice on a sci fi story.

[Brad12d3]

So I have been working on a sci fi script, and I wanted to run a few ideas past you guys to see if they hold up. I have never taken a physics class and most of what I have learned is from internet articles and Michio Kaku. So I certainly don’t claim to be an expert. ☺

I have taken all the necessary steps to protect my idea, so I am not worried about throwing it out there.

This isn’t the whole story, but just the scientific elements I have included.

One day during one of the collisions at the LHC, missing energy and mass is observed. It is assumed that particles have successfully been knocked into the higher dimensions. What we don’t realize, however, is that they have been knocked all the way up to the 11th dimension and into another Universe lying on a membrane right next to ours. In an incredibly lucky shot, these particles enter in the vicinity of other intelligent beings that observe these particles entering their world. Due to their superior technology and knowledge they are able to respond by sending their own particles back to the same location that ours came from. In other words, they respond back to where the LHC is.

However, the particles that we unintentionally sent arrived at different times. Some actually traveled back in time before arriving at this other Universe.

(side note: time is different in their Universe. 1 week their time would be 600 years our time)

So from their perspective they receive particles from us at two different times despite the fact that they were sent at the same time in our Universe. Therefore they have two responses, one that arrives in our present day and the other arrives 600 years ago before the LHC even existed.

The particles they send are entangled. They have developed a method of using entanglement as a research tool to examine the makeup of objects in places they can’t get to themselves. So if these particles they sent, entered our world and came into contact with a plant, then they would be able to study this plant down to an atomic level. They would know everything about it. If these particles came into contact with a human and made contact with their brain, then they could eventually learn to send signals directly to their brain. Over time they would be able to open a direct line of communication with this person’s mind, using visual and auditory impulses.

Now I am assuming that these particles are traveling via tiny wormholes. Now we are far from harnessing the energy to open a traversable wormhole, but these other beings are far more advance than we are. They are able to open one, but only for a brief time. As a result the main character is tasked with building a device that can act as a conduit that will help sustain a wormhole that forms in its vicinity. So they have the power to open the wormhole, but our device helps keep it open.

I may be stretching the limits of what is feasible, but I would like to hear some opinions from people who actually know what they are talking about.

 

[JesseM]

The particles they send are entangled. They have developed a method of using entanglement as a research tool to examine the makeup of objects in places they can’t get to themselves. So if these particles they sent, entered our world and came into contact with a plant, then they would be able to study this plant down to an atomic level. They would know everything about it. If these particles came into contact with a human and made contact with their brain, then they could eventually learn to send signals directly to their brain. Over time they would be able to open a direct line of communication with this person’s mind, using visual and auditory impulses.

Now I am assuming that these particles are traveling via tiny wormholes. Now we are far from harnessing the energy to open a traversable wormhole, but these other beings are far more advance than we are. They are able to open one, but only for a brief time. As a result the main character is tasked with building a device that can act as a conduit that will help sustain a wormhole that forms in its vicinity. So they have the power to open the wormhole, but our device helps keep it open.

The stuff about brane theory seems fine for a sci-fi story, but there is a theorem in quantum field theory that definitively rules out the possibility of using entangled particles to communicate FTL messages, known as Eberhard's theorem (some other links on this can be found in [post=2068964]this post[/post]). If you're having the particles travel by wormhole, couldn't the aliens just use those wormholes to get a peek into our universe and direct particles at the right spots in someone's brain?

 

[Brad12d3]

The stuff about brane theory seems fine for a sci-fi story, but there is a theorem in quantum field theory that definitively rules out the possibility of using entangled particles to communicate FTL messages, known as Eberhard's theorem (some other links on this can be found in [post=2068964]this post[/post]). If you're having the particles travel by wormhole, couldn't the aliens just use those wormholes to get a peek into our universe and direct particles at the right spots in someone's brain?

Hey thanks so much for the response. This is exactly what I need. OK, so using entanglement probably won't work then. So to go along with what you said, is there anything interfering with the idea that they could track specific objects (like a human) from their Universe by consistently opening wormholes and peering into our world?

I guess I had always assumed that wormholes were very unstable, and that they would disappear as quickly as they appeared. Now I also heard once that there could be very tiny wormholes everywhere, and that they would exist in the quantum foam. So I guess what I am trying to figure out is if there is a way that they could have a consistent open line of communication with someone in our world, even if the information is being sent through several different wormholes that are constantly popping in and out of existence.

Now, if they can't use entanglement, then in order to receive information they would need those particles to be able to return. So perhaps these particles of theirs are actually very sophisticated nano-machines that can make their own way back and forth from their Universe and ours via wormholes? This would mean that they are so sophisticated that they are capable of opening the wormhole themselves.

Of course this leads to the question, how logical is it that a wormhole could be controlled with such precision? To not only be able to connect to the appropriate Universe, but also the exact point in space where the laboratory is located?

Sorry if I am asking a lot of questions. I really want to make something that can be more faithful to the science than a many other sci fi films have been.

 

[HarryRool]

I'm no expert. But I just read a https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984150005/?tag=pfamazon01-20by one. It seems to me that your best bet is Gauss-Bonnet gravity.

In 4 dimensions Gauss-Bonnet gravity is exactly the same as Einstein's gravity.

But in 5 or more dimensions Gauss-Bonnet gravity contains an extra term that allows wormholes to be held open without negative-energy matter (which is next to impossible to create).

I think, though, that these wormholes would have to be tiny (no bigger than 0.1 millimeter in diameter), because the extra dimensions are not noticeable at larger length scales.

 

[Brad12d3]

I'm no expert. But I just read a https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984150005/?tag=pfamazon01-20by one. It seems to me that your best bet is Gauss-Bonnet gravity.

In 4 dimensions Gauss-Bonnet gravity is exactly the same as Einstein's gravity.

But in 5 or more dimensions Gauss-Bonnet gravity contains an extra term that allows wormholes to be held open without negative-energy matter (which is next to impossible to create).

I think, though, that these wormholes would have to be tiny (no bigger than 0.1 millimeter in diameter), because the extra dimensions are not noticeable at larger length scales.

Thanks for the link to the book. It looks incredibly interesting, in fact I just ordered it from Amazon.

So is there no good way to create a traversable wormhole? I had the idea that this character travels to this other Universe in the end. This fact was going to be a bit ambiguous within the story, but I wanted to at least understand how it could work. I didn't want to just throw something in without fully understanding it myself. Are there other ways besides wormhole that this journey could take place?

 

[JesseM]

Thanks for the link to the book. It looks incredibly interesting, in fact I just ordered it from Amazon.

So is there no good way to create a traversable wormhole? I had the idea that this character travels to this other Universe in the end. This fact was going to be a bit ambiguous within the story, but I wanted to at least understand how it could work. I didn't want to just throw something in without fully understanding it myself. Are there other ways besides wormhole that this journey could take place?

It might be possible to create a traversable wormhole with sufficiently advanced technology, for example the Casimir effect is often suggested as a way of creating the necessary negative energy, and wikipedia's wormhole article also mentions that tiny traversable wormholes held open by small negative-energy "cosmic strings" might appear spontaneously in the quantum foam, perhaps a sufficiently advanced civilization could somehow capture and expand them. But wormholes might not be completely necessary, if particles can spontaneously leave one brane and travel to the other without the need for a wormhole, maybe a civilization with a full understanding of superstring theory could send larger objects through the "bulk" space in between the branes as well? (or put the object on a smaller intermediate brane which would carry it from one universe-brane to the other) There probably isn't any known way that could work in superstring theory but I doubt enough is known to definitively rule it out.

 

[HarryRool]

I dug deeper into the book that I referenced before. It looks to me that there actually are 2 approaches to generating the negative-energy (i.e. "exotic") matter needed for a human-sized traversable wormhole: 1) Quantum methods (like the Casimir effect) 2) Classical methods.

Quantum Methods

Normally, the quantum methods only allow ultra-thin concentrations of negative energy at the wormhole throat due to constraints called the "Quantum Inequalities". The thinness of these concentrations is way too small to be engineered. You can get around these if

--There exists a "scalar" field (like what the undiscovered Higgs field is supposed to be).

--Spacetime near the wormhole is "conformally flat" (i.e. flat spacetime multiplied by a scale factor that can vary from place to place)

Bottom line: If you can get around the Quantum Inequalities, you can have a human-sized traversable wormhole.

Classical Methods

The classical methods require the following to be true:

--There exists a scalar field.

--The scalar field interacts with the curvature of spacetime in a particular way,
or with itself in a particular way, or with another field in a particular way.

Bottom line: If you have classical negative-energy matter, you can have a human-sized traversable wormhole.

I get the impression the these are huge "ifs". For example, no one has ever detected a scalar field (even though mainstream physics assumes its existence).

Here are a couple of relevant quotes from the book (p. 204)

"The restrictions imposed by the Quantum Inequalities can be circumvented. They do not prevent the existence of traversable wormholes sustained by the negative energy from the vacuum of quantum matter fields."

"Certain classical scalar fields can be used to create negative energy densities through particular types of interactions with other fields, with spacetime curvature, or with themselves."

 

[HarryRool]

But wormholes might not be completely necessary, if particles can spontaneously leave one brane and travel to the other without the need for a wormhole.

I'm pretty sure that one of the basic rules about brane worlds is that ordinary matter is stuck to the brane. The only thing that can leave the brane are gravitons, the particles responsible for gravity. It seems to me that the only way to travel between branes is via wormholes in the bulk.