6 ms·

The Wormhole Hall of Shame

42 points by rznicolet 17d ago

In which I expound on a very petty complaint about fictional wormholes.

turtleyacht 2mo ago
Unsure where to safely step forward. The bending boundary bits look terrifying.
- rznicolet 17d ago
  Yeah, I expect the tidal forces and whatnot are, shall we say, not negligible in practice.
inigyou 2mo ago
I thought stargates were explicitly not wormholes. For one thing, they're one-way.
- Terr_ 17d ago
  Yeah, even if a wormhole is involved, the "surface" is some local magic machinery designed to make the trip survivable and ensure you pop out in the right shape on the other side.
ChiperSoft 13d ago
We never see the wormhole in Stargate, at least under SG1 canon. It's microscopic and simply used for transporting a matter stream. The ring field is a matter destabalizer and recombinator, pretty much the same thing as Star Trek transporters. Thats why radio waves can move two-way but matter is one-way. Now if you're using Movie canon, yeah, it's broke. Also, Marvel? Those aren't wormholes, they're magic portals.
- Chaosvex 13d ago
  Isn't the whole CG effect of flying through a magical tube seeing the wormhole? Although the explanation of how it all works is rather inconsistent in Stargate. Initially, gate travel was something that people experienced and it was only later changed to being dematerialised.
  - procarch2019 13d ago
    I don’t think so, or maybe it was… IDK anymore. Now I’ll have to go rewatch it. It definitely is explained as described above. The gate itself, the “event horizon” is all part of the apparatus for accessing the wormhole, not the wormhole itself. I forget the episode, but there is one where something happens due to the fact that they recreated/reverse engineered the “brains” of the device with human design (missing some key failsafes) and some of them get stuck in the “buffer” (dematerialized state) until it’s figured out how to reconstitute them.
    - Chaosvex 12d ago
      Yeah, that's right and I believe that was the episode that introduced McKay. I've been binging Stargate over the last month or so, so it's pretty fresh.
- ButlerianJihad 12d ago
  There is a whole lot of technical mumbo-jumbo in the Fandom Wiki: https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Stargate#Technical_specifications https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Stargate#Technical_specific... It seems that Stargates are not only responsible for forming and maintaining wormholes (but only for 38 seconds and only one-directional!) but also the same concept as Star Trek transporters, as far as deconstructing everything to sub-atomic levels, "pattern buffers" to store them all, and reconstituting them on the other side. Stargate SG-1 and its precursor film were interesting distractions for me, but the lore was too complex and it all just relied so, so heavily on that Stargate network and the USA being in control of a central one. I am currently rewatching Babylon 5 as it drops on YouTube for free, and I enjoy the jump gates and hyperspace as a highly-simplified plot device for how they can ship stuff, and transport people, around the solar system and around the galaxy. Also, Babylon 5 retains a Star Wars-inspired dichotomy of capital ships that can form own jump points, vs. support vessels that can't. Interestingly, the two contemporary series shared the lore of being "found technology" created by ancient races who ascended long ago.
deleted 13d ago
[deleted]
sirvicks 13d ago
How does a 2D creature see curved space? https://youtu.be/9JbYDDjhnx4 https://youtu.be/9JbYDDjhnx4
smcameron 13d ago
Scott Manley has a couple of nice videos about wormholes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7e-1bRpweo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7e-1bRpweo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVO8nvb1o2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVO8nvb1o2w The second video is about how the first video was made.
- pseudohadamard 13d ago
  Philomena Cunk also discusses wormholes with Prof.Brian Cox, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPX0v9NzzrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPX0v9NzzrM.
LoganDark 13d ago
Doctor Who's Time Vortex is not a wormhole...
Terr_ 13d ago
PSA: This was posted 4 days ago and seems to have been given a "second chance", so take all the HN timestamps with a grain of salt.
- mikestew 13d ago
  Yeah, but comments from two months ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793637
  - Terr_ 13d ago
    I won't pretend to understand the code involved, I just know it happens occasionally on HN, and that my own comment is being shown as 3-days-younger than it actually is.
wiml 13d ago
Nothing requires the wormhole "surface" to be a sphere, just like nothing requires the wormhole in the 2D analogy to be a circular hole. If you make it a sphere with one flat side, travelers won't have to traverse curved space (with the attendant weird tidal/gravitational effects).
- eks391 12d ago
  Why do bubbles naturally always end up as spheres instead of cubes or some other shape? Even though wormholes as discussed aren't real, geometric and physical optimizations of energy are going to push for a 'natural' shape so long as there isn't concerted effort and energy to retain an unnatural, unoptimized shape. Regarding the curved space, I think you bring an interesting observation. Instead of a flat sided sphere, it's still a sphere, but the curve that connects the two spaces has Radius = 0 (the spaces are touching, no tunnel needed), so there wouldn't be any distorted curved space to traverse. However, to conserve matter, this idea requires the hole to be infinitesimally small (or tiny with a negligible tunnel), which explains why we don't see wormholes in real life
nlawalker 13d ago
If you’re inclined to add any more, consider Outer Wilds! “Black holes technology” is a major plot point and shows up as a neat gameplay mechanic in a couple places.
Terr_ 17d ago
> Schlock Mercenary [...] Gold star, A+, would archive binge again. Seconded, and don't worry, the initial art gets a lot better over the decades. :)

42 points by rznicolet 17d ago

In which I expound on a very petty complaint about fictional wormholes.

turtleyacht 2mo ago

Unsure where to safely step forward. The bending boundary bits look terrifying.

rznicolet 17d ago
Yeah, I expect the tidal forces and whatnot are, shall we say, not negligible in practice.

inigyou 2mo ago

I thought stargates were explicitly not wormholes. For one thing, they're one-way.

Terr_ 17d ago
Yeah, even if a wormhole is involved, the "surface" is some local magic machinery designed to make the trip survivable and ensure you pop out in the right shape on the other side.

ChiperSoft 13d ago

We never see the wormhole in Stargate, at least under SG1 canon. It's microscopic and simply used for transporting a matter stream. The ring field is a matter destabalizer and recombinator, pretty much the same thing as Star Trek transporters. Thats why radio waves can move two-way but matter is one-way. Now if you're using Movie canon, yeah, it's broke. Also, Marvel? Those aren't wormholes, they're magic portals.

Chaosvex 13d ago
Isn't the whole CG effect of flying through a magical tube seeing the wormhole? Although the explanation of how it all works is rather inconsistent in Stargate. Initially, gate travel was something that people experienced and it was only later changed to being dematerialised.
- procarch2019 13d ago
  I don’t think so, or maybe it was… IDK anymore. Now I’ll have to go rewatch it. It definitely is explained as described above. The gate itself, the “event horizon” is all part of the apparatus for accessing the wormhole, not the wormhole itself. I forget the episode, but there is one where something happens due to the fact that they recreated/reverse engineered the “brains” of the device with human design (missing some key failsafes) and some of them get stuck in the “buffer” (dematerialized state) until it’s figured out how to reconstitute them.
  - Chaosvex 12d ago
    Yeah, that's right and I believe that was the episode that introduced McKay. I've been binging Stargate over the last month or so, so it's pretty fresh.
ButlerianJihad 12d ago
There is a whole lot of technical mumbo-jumbo in the Fandom Wiki: https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Stargate#Technical_specifications https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Stargate#Technical_specific... It seems that Stargates are not only responsible for forming and maintaining wormholes (but only for 38 seconds and only one-directional!) but also the same concept as Star Trek transporters, as far as deconstructing everything to sub-atomic levels, "pattern buffers" to store them all, and reconstituting them on the other side. Stargate SG-1 and its precursor film were interesting distractions for me, but the lore was too complex and it all just relied so, so heavily on that Stargate network and the USA being in control of a central one. I am currently rewatching Babylon 5 as it drops on YouTube for free, and I enjoy the jump gates and hyperspace as a highly-simplified plot device for how they can ship stuff, and transport people, around the solar system and around the galaxy. Also, Babylon 5 retains a Star Wars-inspired dichotomy of capital ships that can form own jump points, vs. support vessels that can't. Interestingly, the two contemporary series shared the lore of being "found technology" created by ancient races who ascended long ago.

deleted 13d ago

[deleted]

sirvicks 13d ago

How does a 2D creature see curved space? https://youtu.be/9JbYDDjhnx4 https://youtu.be/9JbYDDjhnx4

smcameron 13d ago

Scott Manley has a couple of nice videos about wormholes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7e-1bRpweo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7e-1bRpweo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVO8nvb1o2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVO8nvb1o2w The second video is about how the first video was made.

pseudohadamard 13d ago
Philomena Cunk also discusses wormholes with Prof.Brian Cox, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPX0v9NzzrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPX0v9NzzrM.

LoganDark 13d ago

Doctor Who's Time Vortex is not a wormhole...

Terr_ 13d ago

PSA: This was posted 4 days ago and seems to have been given a "second chance", so take all the HN timestamps with a grain of salt.

mikestew 13d ago
Yeah, but comments from two months ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793637
- Terr_ 13d ago
  I won't pretend to understand the code involved, I just know it happens occasionally on HN, and that my own comment is being shown as 3-days-younger than it actually is.

wiml 13d ago

Nothing requires the wormhole "surface" to be a sphere, just like nothing requires the wormhole in the 2D analogy to be a circular hole. If you make it a sphere with one flat side, travelers won't have to traverse curved space (with the attendant weird tidal/gravitational effects).

eks391 12d ago
Why do bubbles naturally always end up as spheres instead of cubes or some other shape? Even though wormholes as discussed aren't real, geometric and physical optimizations of energy are going to push for a 'natural' shape so long as there isn't concerted effort and energy to retain an unnatural, unoptimized shape. Regarding the curved space, I think you bring an interesting observation. Instead of a flat sided sphere, it's still a sphere, but the curve that connects the two spaces has Radius = 0 (the spaces are touching, no tunnel needed), so there wouldn't be any distorted curved space to traverse. However, to conserve matter, this idea requires the hole to be infinitesimally small (or tiny with a negligible tunnel), which explains why we don't see wormholes in real life

nlawalker 13d ago

If you’re inclined to add any more, consider Outer Wilds! “Black holes technology” is a major plot point and shows up as a neat gameplay mechanic in a couple places.

Terr_ 17d ago

> Schlock Mercenary [...] Gold star, A+, would archive binge again. Seconded, and don't worry, the initial art gets a lot better over the decades. :)