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What if these aren’t stars that are disappearing but instead the appearances and disappearances of wormholes that are either allowing us to see to another place

What if these aren’t stars that are disappearing but instead the appearances and disappearances of wormholes that are either allowing us to see to another place in space where that star is or perhaps a wormhole blocking where that star previously was for us and we are now looking into another section of space where a star is not?

rossdavidh 7y ago
While fun to think about, I think it is hard to go anywhere, scientifically, from such a proposition. How would you disprove it?
- tlbsofware 7y ago
  Hmm haven’t thought of how to disprove it but there is a theory about measuring the red shift[0] around the “object” in this example the wormhole [0] https://www.livescience.com/64033-shape-of-a-wormhole.html https://www.livescience.com/64033-shape-of-a-wormhole.html
krapp 7y ago
I am not a physicist, but I would assume the laws of thermodynamics would require a wormhole to emit waste heat or some kind of detectable signature. Otherwise, that would imply a perfectly efficient system, and that can't exist.
- tlbsofware 7y ago
  Would the heat expelled be bright enough to be picked up in this type of imagery? Can energy be expelled in ways not visible to these types of devices possibly? From other comments it appears that a lot of errors would be hard to produce this issue. I’m curious if they should try imaging the stars in another sort of way than the past and present catalogues have done in order to possibly capture this any sort of anomalies that we may not currently be aware of
  - krapp 7y ago
    >Would the heat expelled be bright enough to be picked up in this type of imagery? I would assume so. It probably takes a lot of energy to rip open a hole in spacetime, much less keep it open, and the only things we know of that can do anything like that are black holes. But unlike black holes, a wormhole wouldn't have an event horizon (otherwise you wouldn't be able to go in and come back out) so all of that energy can't be captured, it has to radiate somehow (as it does even with black holes as Hawking radiation.) Also, the endpoints may have their own accretion disks or there may be red or blue-shift effects that may be detectable, due to the relativistic effects of the endpoints and dark energy expansion. Basically, this seems like a "stealth in space" problem, and the consensus is that there "ain't no stealth in space[0,1]." Space is very, very empty and very, very uniform in temperature, as well as being an insulator because it's a vacuum... anything warmer than cold space itself is going to be hot enough to be noticed. The second site linked there mentions that it would be possible to detect a Space Shuttle using its thrusters from across the solar system with current technology. A wormhole big enough to see an entire star through should definitely be giving off something. >Can energy be expelled in ways not visible to these types of devices possibly? Not without using more energy and generating more heat. You can't escape the laws of thermodynamics. >I’m curious if they should try imaging the stars in another sort of way than the past and present catalogues have done in order to possibly capture this any sort of anomalies that we may not currently be aware of. I'm sure they've put a lot more effort into considering reasonable alternatives than you or I have. But AFAIK, many models of wormholes exist in various physics models, and require exotic matter with negative mass (also only known to exist in theory) to allow any sort of traversal at all, so it's not surprising that astronomers haven't tried ruling them out since at the moment we don't even know if they exist or, if they do, what properties they have. [0]http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.... [1]https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/23313/stealth-in-space-how-realistic-is-it https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/23313/stea...

rossdavidh 7y ago

While fun to think about, I think it is hard to go anywhere, scientifically, from such a proposition. How would you disprove it?

tlbsofware 7y ago
Hmm haven’t thought of how to disprove it but there is a theory about measuring the red shift[0] around the “object” in this example the wormhole [0] https://www.livescience.com/64033-shape-of-a-wormhole.html https://www.livescience.com/64033-shape-of-a-wormhole.html

krapp 7y ago

I am not a physicist, but I would assume the laws of thermodynamics would require a wormhole to emit waste heat or some kind of detectable signature. Otherwise, that would imply a perfectly efficient system, and that can't exist.

tlbsofware 7y ago
Would the heat expelled be bright enough to be picked up in this type of imagery? Can energy be expelled in ways not visible to these types of devices possibly? From other comments it appears that a lot of errors would be hard to produce this issue. I’m curious if they should try imaging the stars in another sort of way than the past and present catalogues have done in order to possibly capture this any sort of anomalies that we may not currently be aware of
- krapp 7y ago
  >Would the heat expelled be bright enough to be picked up in this type of imagery? I would assume so. It probably takes a lot of energy to rip open a hole in spacetime, much less keep it open, and the only things we know of that can do anything like that are black holes. But unlike black holes, a wormhole wouldn't have an event horizon (otherwise you wouldn't be able to go in and come back out) so all of that energy can't be captured, it has to radiate somehow (as it does even with black holes as Hawking radiation.) Also, the endpoints may have their own accretion disks or there may be red or blue-shift effects that may be detectable, due to the relativistic effects of the endpoints and dark energy expansion. Basically, this seems like a "stealth in space" problem, and the consensus is that there "ain't no stealth in space[0,1]." Space is very, very empty and very, very uniform in temperature, as well as being an insulator because it's a vacuum... anything warmer than cold space itself is going to be hot enough to be noticed. The second site linked there mentions that it would be possible to detect a Space Shuttle using its thrusters from across the solar system with current technology. A wormhole big enough to see an entire star through should definitely be giving off something. >Can energy be expelled in ways not visible to these types of devices possibly? Not without using more energy and generating more heat. You can't escape the laws of thermodynamics. >I’m curious if they should try imaging the stars in another sort of way than the past and present catalogues have done in order to possibly capture this any sort of anomalies that we may not currently be aware of. I'm sure they've put a lot more effort into considering reasonable alternatives than you or I have. But AFAIK, many models of wormholes exist in various physics models, and require exotic matter with negative mass (also only known to exist in theory) to allow any sort of traversal at all, so it's not surprising that astronomers haven't tried ruling them out since at the moment we don't even know if they exist or, if they do, what properties they have. [0]http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.... [1]https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/23313/stealth-in-space-how-realistic-is-it https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/23313/stea...