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Physics everywhere
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Science fiction will often have fantastic stories about humans traversing stars at great speeds, faster than light. Vast interstellar civilizations are maintained by fleets of starships that fly from world to world in a matter of days or weeks. The truth, sadly, is far less fantastic. The universal speed limit is the speed of light, or approximately 2.998x108 m/sec. Nothing can move faster than that constant. Even at that extreme speed, it would take approximately 4 years for any spaceship to reach the closest of other stars. To make matters even worse, the energy required to accelerate an object increases exponentially as it gets closer and closer to the speed of light to the point where we cannot input enough energy to make the object actually go the speed of light. So how can we have these great galaxy spanning civilizations and expand our frontiers beyond the boundaries of our solar system? One possible solution is wormholes. This web project will attempt to inform on some of the basic theories of wormholes and how they could be used to traverse great distances and possibly even time itself.
History
Einstein first proposed wormholes in 1935. He co-wrote a paper with Nathan Rosen in which they showed that general relativity allowed for what they called “bridges.” They theorized that there could be places where space/time is folded that allowed transfer of matter from one point to another in the universe.
After this initial burst of ideas in the thirties, wormhole theory was pretty much dropped by the world of physics in general. It wasn’t until the 1980’s when Carl Sagan wished to write his book Contact was wormhole theory revisited. Sagan wanted to have his protagonist leave Earth and arrive at a distant star system in a relatively short amount of time without being completely scientifically invalid. He turned to his fellow physicist Kip Thorne to develop an at least somewhat scientifically appropriate method of faster-than-light space travel. Thorne came up with much of the modern framework for wormhole theory that is in existence today for the book, which is now a major motion picture starring Jodi Foster.
Definition
A wormhole is a tunnel in space that matter can traverse through. It works in four dimensions with time being the fourth. It connects two points in the universe. A useful analogy for how a wormhole works is a two-dimensional piece of paper with a pair of dots on it.
Until recently, theorists believed that wormholes could exist for only an instant of time, and anyone trying to pass through would run into a singularity. But Khalili shows the reader that more recent calculations show that a truly advanced civilization might be able to make wormholes work. By using something physicists call “exotic matter,” which has a negative energy, the civilization could prevent a wormhole from collapsing on itself. Perhaps someday in the far future, wormholes will become a useful asset in universal transportation.
Albert Einstein’s discoveries and theories have had a positively enormous effect on the world. Some of Einstein’s biggest impacting discoveries and theories are the theories of Special and General relativity, the Theory of Relativity, Brownian motion, the discovery of the photon, and Einstein’s creation of the equation E = MC^2. Perhaps Einstein’s most beneficial discovery is his formulation of E = MC^2 which is crucial for space-flight and can help today’s scientist in gathering knowledge about our universe.
The idea of Black Holes was first proposed in the 1700s by scientists John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace, who argued, independant of each other, that there might be objects in the universe with such a large gravitational force, that even light could be trapped. Published in 1916 Einstein’s theory of general relativity which included how gravity does affect light’s motion, gave way to scientific discoveries involving black holes. In Einstein’s own theory, he was only able to approximate the solutions to some of his own equations, however Karl Schwarzschild was able to provide the solutions. These solutions described objects like black holes that had such massive density that nothing could escape them. Schwarzschild theorized that if an object had such a small radius, that the escape velocity will be greater than the speed of light. Because as previously mentioned, nothing is faster than the speed of light, the object would be sucked into itself by it’s own gravitational pull, which would cause the object to disappear. What r...
Karl Schwarzschild is credited with being the brilliant astronomer who developed the concept of black holes. In 1916, using Einstein's general theory of relativity, he began to make calculations about the gravity fields of stars. He concluded that if a huge mass, such as a star, were to be concentrated down to the size of an infintessimal point, the effects of Einstein's relativity would get really fairly extreme. Schwarzschild doubted that a star could get that small, and theorized that if a star did infact shrink upon itself like that, its gravity would remain the same and the planets revolving around it would remain in the same orbits they always had. Since then however, some of Schwarzschild's theories have been disproved, but most of his initial theories hold intact today. The Schwarzschild Radius, the maximum radius a body with a specific mass can have that won't let light escape, is named in his honor, and the equation of which is still in use today: Rs=2MG/(c^2)
..., however this cannot be achieved in practice. And some recent researches found that our space possibly is a multiply connected complex frame, thus shortcuts named wormhole exists. Gravitational lens effect which was predicted by general relativity makes the research of black holes, dark matter and dark energy possible for astronomers8.
In November of 1919, at the age of 40, Albert Einstein became an overnight celebrity, thanks to a solar eclipse. An experiment had confirmed that light rays from distant stars were deflected by the gravity of the sun in just the amount he had predicted in his theory of gravity, General Relativity. General Relativity was the first major new theory of gravity since Isaac Newton's, more than two hundred and fifty years earlier.
This aspect of relativity explained the phenomena of light bending around the sun, predicted black holes as well as the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) -- a discovery rendering fundamental anomalies in the classic Steady-State hypothesis. For his work on relativity, the photoelectric effect and blackbody radiation, Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921.
Albert Einstein was undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest physicians and mathematicians of all time. Einstein’s theories of relativity completely changed the world and have had a huge impact on how we currently live our lives. From how we heat our homes to how we are able to use GPS navigation systems. His theories have greatly changed how we must view the world around us. His theories of relativity and his works during the world wars earned him a Nobel Prize in physics, to name one of the many he deservingly received.
...onding research are amongst the biggest names in the scientific world. Einstein of course, who laid the foundations. Karl Schwarzschild, who was at the forefront on picking up where Einstein left - Frank Tipler, who devised one of the first models of a time machine; and inspired a generation – Kip Thorne who opened the possibilities of wormholes in the fabric of space-time – and Stephen Hawking, who has explicitly shown a repeated interest in the topic. Even then that’s just to name a few! In the coming chapters I will analyse their work, and investigating whether in principle it is realistically possible to build a working time machine, given our current state of technological and physical progress as a civilization.
Geologist John Mitchell is credited with first devising the idea of a black hole. He said that if some force could compress the sun down to an small enough size, it would have a gravitational field so strong, that one would need to be going faster than the speed of light to escape it (UTFC). All objects in the universe have what is called a schwarzschild radius. An object’s schwarzschild radius is the radius that an object would have to be compressed into in order to have an escape velocity greater than that of the speed of light, or a black hole. (VSBH).
Miller, A. (1975) Albert Einstein and Max Wertheimer: a Gestalt psychologist's view of the genesis of special relativity theory. History of science; an Annual Review of Literature, Research and Teaching 13 (2): 75–103.
Throughout the ages, outstanding physicists, to the movies, to some of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, have pondered the idea of time-travel. The thought of actually being able to travel to another time or universe has long since enthralled, enveloped, and overwhelmed some of the greatest minds in the history of physics. No one person can actually prove any of their theories, but a few actually make sense. Meaning that they do not violate the laws of physics. One of the main theories suggested, are wormholes. Wormholes are considered to connect two regions of flat space-time, two universes, or two parts of the same universe. There is a lot of theoretical evidence that wormholes exist, with an equal amount of evidence that they do not exist. However, no matter what one’s belief is, the existence of wormholes still makes you wonder…
15 February 2010 http://www.informatics.org/museum/tsiol.html>. Time Travel Research Center -. Nazi V-2/ A-4 Rocket Technology. 2005. The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the ' 15 February 2010 http://www.zamandayolculuk.com/cetinbal/V2RROCKET.htm>. Tyson, Neil deGrasse.
Human fascination with the stars is as ancient as Babylonians and has been suggested to be older than Stonehenge. From “be fruitful and multiply” to “live long and prosper,” the instinct to protect and propagate the species has manifested in religion, art, and the imaginations of countless individuals. As human understanding of space treks out of the fantastical and into the scientific, the realities of traveling through and living in space are becoming clearer. Exploring, investigating, and living in space pose an expansive series of problems. However, the solutions to the problems faced by mankind's desire to reach beyond the horizon, through the night sky, and into the stars are solutions that will help in all areas of life on Earth.
Initially, Albert Einstein was the person to predict the existence of black holes through his General Theory of Relativity, in which he had created several general equations that show the interaction of gravitation as a result of space being curved by matter or energy. In 1915, he published Einstein’s field equations, which specify how the geometry of space and time is influenced by whatever matter and radiation are present, and form the core of Einstein's general theory of relativity (Redd). The general theory relativity was the initial step in the process to finding out more information about black holes. As time went on, there were a few main contributors that solved these equations to help develop better theories on black holes. One of the most important contributors to the development of a better u...