Science question for story I'm writing

[High Priest of Sol]

The origin of the universe for an upcoming story I have planned hinges around an idea where, when the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit Earth, instead of wiping out the dinosaurs, it opened up a portal that deposited them in another part of the galaxy. Now, this is of course most assuredly something that could never happen, but is there any way I could create a scientific explanation that would at least sound halfway good? One idea of mine is that, somehow, a wormhole briefly develops inside of the asteroid right before striking the Earth. As it hits, it sucks in large amounts of life, but then closes fast enough that the bulk of the biosphere is left intact. Another is that a miniature worm hole flying through space is ever so slightly pushed off course by the asteroid, swallows the asteroid, then rips its way through Earth at such a speed that, once again, lots of life is sucked through but the Earth is left intact. Again, I know that none of this could happen, but I'm looking for something that sounds pretty and scientific. I might resort to supernatural stuff like alien sorcerers, but I want to try for a more naturalistic explanation first. Any thoughts on how I could make this work?

 

[oz93666]

As you say , hard to see how this could occur without intelligent intervention ...

What about a race of ET's ,who were similar in some ways to our Earth dinosaurs, were aware of the imminent asteroid impact, and decided to save the dinosaurs by teleporting them to somewhere safe.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

As you say , hard to see how this could occur without intelligent intervention ...

What about a race of ET's ,who were similar in some ways to our Earth dinosaurs, were aware of the imminent asteroid impact, and decided to save the dinosaurs by teleporting them to somewhere safe.

Rats, ninja'd.

Okay, the dinos are both transported, and held in stasis, 50/50. The one's in stasis are stored on the Moon for the day they can come back.

 

[axiom]

Magnetic forces sounds credible and mix that with gravity and the asteroids approach to earth, picking up speed and increasing mass.

You could also create a myth behind this asteroid, where was it from, visualise it's journey too the earth...passing/orbiting the sun towards the earth, the sun having an effect on the asteroid speed wise and the effect of the solar radiation on the asteroids composition...And the journey to the earth, the asteroids speed, ever increasing, faster and faster...Space time becoming warped, dilating and BOOOOM just before the asteroid hits Earth the asteroid causes a warp in the fabric of space and time...The asteroid vanishes as it passes through the earth, dragging the Earth in its wake...!?

 

[tionis]

The Great sorcerers who lived ages before there were any men on Earth came to the young Earth out of the sky. They indeed came from the stars when they were right. They plunged into the world in a mad dash and opened up a portal of spacetime and soon began transporting dinosaurs up to cosmic infinity.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Okay, but why didn't they just shove the rock aside?

 

[tionis]

They couldn't touch the rock as it was sent by a powerful cosmic overlord who was wroth with the dinos. All they could do is find a way to save them by other means i.e, opening a spacetime portal. Of course, the overlord finds out and tosses the wizards into a black hole as punishment but not before they litter the cosmos with dinos and other species.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

So some of them have evolved to the point of intellect equal to ours, if not exceeding it?

 

[tionis]

Indeed. On the Kardashev scale, they're probably off the chart.

 

[High Priest of Sol]

Thanks for the ideas; I like the idea of the asteroid whipping around the sun so fast that it bends time and space when hitting Earth. Maybe the cause for this could be something supernatural, like a living black hole or such, or maybe something very banal, like a slight shift in the Moon's orbit that throws the asteroid off course. This is a universe packed with all sorts of Lovecraftian beings, so maybe they could have so slight influence as well. I'm just worried about throwing too much weirdness into the initial premise of the story for fear of utterly throwing off the reader.

 

[tionis]

But the asteroid by virtue of its speed does nothing to warp spacetime.

 

[axiom]

Have you considered writing just a few technical terms relevant to your story and that particular time, words like dinosaur, time travel, asteroid, alien planet, wormhole, alien etc and create a flowchart and go through your story drawing a line from word to word.A dark space containment carrier, was moving through a region unprepared space. The freshly collected "Dark Space" [black hole/material] was held in a sold light containment field, this particular Dark Space was old and breaking apart and releasing it's material. best time for harvesting..!

The ship was moving through the solar system...unprepared space due the number of asteroids, due to a navigational error...?

An asteroid strikes the containment carrier causing a rupture and black hole material leaks out...Alarm bells go off..

In the distance the Earth affected by the pull of the leaking Dark Space and starts to tilt creating massive electrical/magnetic activity. The leaked Dark Space is destroyed or collected by the crew and/or robot technology...

Big argument on board and crew fail to see second asteroid and move at the last second, deflecting the asteroid into the planet, big explosion, remaining dinosaurs destroyed...

On board are a number of dinosaurs, some merged with the hull, walls etc..Through a temporal phase shift caused by the leaked Dark Space and electrical/magnetic shifting them off the planet and into a space occupied by the ship.

 

[Noisy Rhysling]

Doing a framework would be essential, certainly.

 

[Drakkith]

Again, I know that none of this could happen, but I'm looking for something that sounds pretty and scientific. I might resort to supernatural stuff like alien sorcerers, but I want to try for a more naturalistic explanation first. Any thoughts on how I could make this work?

Without substantially butchering physics, no, there is simply no way for this to happen.

This is a universe packed with all sorts of Lovecraftian beings, so maybe they could have so slight influence as well.

That seems like your answer right there. If your universe already includes supernatural elements, then it seems like a trivial matter to have one of them cause it. A cosmic spat between demigod A and demigod B, dinosaurs sucked into a wormhole or three, now they're evolved and enjoying tea...

I'm just worried about throwing too much weirdness into the initial premise of the story for fear of utterly throwing off the reader.

That's something you'll have to work through on your own I think. Without reading your story there's no way to know if you're throwing too much at the reader at once. Though, I will say that unless you're introducing a large number of strange things all in the first few pages you're probably okay. But again, I can't know without reading it.

 

[snorkack]

An asteroid "sucking" life, alive, would be implausible.
But why even an asteroid?
There certainly was an explosion. The only mundane explanation is an asteroid.
But if portals/wormholes exist, how about a stored energy of portal/wormhole at some point being released in an explosion whereby the portal/wormhole vanishes?

Also, the portal does not need to "suck" the dinosaurs. How about, the portal is simply open for some extended time, a number of dinosaurs nosing around walk through and settle on the other side - then, when the explosion destroys the portal and dinosaurs on Earth side, the other side is less damaged.

 

[Grinkle]

The wormhole let the dinosaurs out and brought the asteroid here. The wormhole is still somewhere on Earth in a spot where its more or less at equilibrium conditions with whatever is on the other side so its unnoticed - like 2 miles under the sea and there is equal water pressure on both sides of the wormhole. Only fish use it now. That region of the sea, over the millenia, ends up having the same fish as the region on the far side of the wormhole on the planet far away, because fish swim through it all the time and whatever species won the darwinian battle had to win it on both sides of the wormhole. So when someone pulls up a fish with an organ that seems to have no earthly relevance, its an odd thing.

 

[axiom]

nDimensional beings failed to realign part of a quantum field correctly and thus a dimension was not realized and was subsequently out of line, this misalignment caused a collapse in the dimensional space-time field and because there was no matter involved a black hole could not begin, instead a wormhole started and extended through the misaligned space time field to an aligned part of the quantum field and opened a portal to an advanced earth. Earths advanced population saw this portal and saw the Earth and visited, collected some dinosaur specimens...

The nDimensional beings eventually managed to realign the quantum field and the dimension was restored and the wormhole disappeared..chaos resumed, time moved on ...?

 

[newjerseyrunner]

How did it only take the biosphere? Did it eoncompass the entire surface (but not the volume) or the planet? What about the rest of the biosphere, why were us mammals, reptiles, fish... left behind?

I think an easy way to resolve the where is the wormhole now problem by saying that the creators simply reused it elsewhere. According to general relativity, if wormholes are possible, it's only because they existed already, new ones can not be created or destroyed because it would require tearing space.

If the species is advanced enough, you could omit the how. You said very high or beyond the K scale. Beings like that would for all practical purposes be gods to us. It portrays in your writing the level of advancement they have. For example, in Star Trek when The Borg did something cool, Jordie or 7 could figure out what they did and explain it. No one ever attempts to explain the abilities of Q. The closest thing is when Q says he doesn't have time to explain the true nature of the universe. It implies that he knows something beyond human comprehension, where other super advanced creature like the borg know all of the same things as humans, they've just mastered it more.

 

[snorkack]

How did it only take the biosphere? Did it eoncompass the entire surface (but not the volume) or the planet? What about the rest of the biosphere, why were us mammals, reptiles, fish... left behind?

The pattern of Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction does not only include (all) dinosaurs. It also included some mammals, some birds, some fish, some sharks, , some lizards, some insects, some plants, some mollusks such as all ammonites and belemnites, and some plankton.