Making Stargates

Abstract

If you have paid attention to the semi-tech, popular media that deals with things such as astronomy and space, you’ll know that there has been a change in the tone of the commentary by capable physicists about serious space travel in the past 5 years or so. Before that time, though Thorne’s and Alcubierre’s work on wormholes and warp drives (respectively) was quite well-known, no one seriously suggested that building such things might be possible within any foreseeable future. The reason for this widely shared attitude was simply that within the canon of mainstream physics as it is understood even today, no way could be imagined that might plausibly lead to the amassing of the stupendous amounts of exotic matter needed to implement the technologies. Within the canon of mainstream physics, that is still true. The simple fact of the matter is that if the technology is to be implemented, our understanding of physics must change. The kicker, though, is that the change must be in plausible ways that actually have a basis in reality. Fantasy physics will not lead to workable technologies no matter how much we might want that to be so.

ADDENDUM

From “Twists of Fate: Can We Make Traversable Wormholes in Spacetime?”

First we note that in relativistic gravity, the Newtonian gravitational potential propagates as light speed. So the changing instantaneous mass of each of the circuit elements is only detected at the other circuit element after a finite time has elapsed. We make use of this fact by adjusting the distance between the circuit elements, mindful of the signal propagation delay. The trick is to adjust the distance between the L and C components so that just as one component – say, C – is reaching its peak transient negative mass value, the delayed (that is, retarded) gravitational potential of the other component – L – seen by C is also just reaching its peak negative value at C. As far as local observers in proximity to the L and C components are concerned, this will appear to make no difference, for the locally measured value of the total gravitational potential, like the vacuum speed of light, is an invariant [Woodward, 1996a]. But distant observers will see something different, since neither of these quantities are global invariants.

To see what will happen from the point of view of distant observers we employ the ADM solution, Eq. [7.23]. Since this solution, as previously noted, is obtained for isotropic coordinates, we can use it unmodified for distant observers. We now remark that to get back the electron’s mass (to within 10%) we must have:

$$ {{\varphi}_u} + {{\varphi}_b} = 1, $$

(5.14)

yielding:

$$ m\;\approx \frac{{\sqrt {{{{e}^2}/G}} }}{{\frac{{2{{c}^2}}}{{{{\varphi}_u} + {{\varphi}_b}}}}}, $$

(5.15)

as long as ${{\varphi}_u} + {{\varphi}_b}\;$ << c ². As mentioned above, ${{\varphi}_b}\;\approx - {{c}^2}$ because the dust bare mass is negative and concentrated at its gravitational radius. This does not change (for either local or distant observers). ${{\varphi}_u}\;\approx {{c}^2}$ doesn’t change for local observers, either. But for distant observers ${{\varphi}_u}$ does change because it, for them, is the sum of the potential due to cosmic matter, ${{\varphi}_c}$, and the potential due to the companion circuit element, ${{\varphi}_{{ce}}}$, that is, the potential produced by L at C in the case we are considering.

We next write:

$$ {{\varphi}_u} + {{\varphi}_b} = {{\varphi}_c} + {{\varphi}_{{ce}}} + {{\varphi}_b}. $$

(5.16)

This expression, if ${{\varphi}_{{ce}}} = 0$, is just equal to one [as in Eq. (5.14)]. But if the mass of L seen at C is negative, then ${{\varphi}_{{ce}}}\;$< 0 and the expression is less than one. To see the effect of L at C on m we take ${{\varphi}_c} + {{\varphi}_b} = 1$ in Eq. (5.16), substitute in to Eq. (5.15) and do a little rearranging to get:

$$ m\;\approx \frac{{\sqrt {{{{e}^2}/G}} }}{{2{{c}^2}}}\left( {{{\varphi}_{{ce}}} + 1} \right). $$

(5.17)

As ${{\varphi}_{{ce}}}$ goes from zero to increasingly negative values, m first decreases to zero and then becomes increasingly negative, too. This effect of the gravitational potential produced by L at C affects all of the elementary particles that make up C. It follows that distant observers see the mass of C made more negative by the action of L than it would be due to the transient effect in C per se alone. Local observers in immediate proximity to either of the circuit elements, however, will be completely unaware of this effect.

But this is only part of the story. As the periodic mass fluctuations in the L and C components proceed, the mass of the L next becomes negative. The mass of L now is affected by the gravitational potential at L produced by C, which was affected by L in the previous cycle, and so on. For distant observers a bootstrap process appears to operate driving the mass of each of the components more and more negative as the device continues to cycle. If the amplitude of the effect driven in L and C is sufficiently large, some finite, reasonable number of cycles should be all that are required to attain the condition of Eq. (5.12) [bare mass exposure] – assuming, of course, that the forming TWIST [traversable wormhole in space-time] does not blow itself apart.

Reprinted from James F. Woodward, “TWISTS of Fate: Can We Make Traversable Wormholes in Spacetime?” Foundations of Physics Letters, vol. 10, pp. 153–181 (1997) with permission from Springer Verlag.