Wormholes & Dark Matter

[skyeschhman]

Being an amateur astronomer/sky gazer, I find the subject of using wormholes to bend space-time fascinating but would you really come back to planet Earth many years later? After all, we measure time on the rotation of the Earth for the days and its rotation around the sun for the years.

And what do you take of this dark matter business? Is it the same as the string theory? Don't buy either one! The One who created it all says He holds everything together in the universe in the Good Book. :geek:

 

[a_lost_packet_]

Being an amateur astronomer/sky gazer, I find the subject of using wormholes to bend space-time fascinating but would you really come back to planet Earth many years later?

Well, in order to turn a wormhole into a time machine, you'd need to park it near a large mass, like a neutron star. But, traveling close to the speed of light through normal space would be a more suitable way to travel forward in time. It'd also be easier. A wormhole big enough and stable enough to be used by something as large as a human being would take enormous amounts of energy, some say more than is available in the Universe... (At the minimum, more than could possibly be practically provided using known technology.)

After all, we measure time on the rotation of the Earth for the days and its rotation around the sun for the years.

I'm not sure what that has to do with it. How its measured doesn't really matter. (For practical discussion purposes. Technically, it might matter.)

And what do you take of this dark matter business? Is it the same as the string theory? Don't buy either one!

Not necessarily the same as string theory. String theory is still waiting for some experimental observations to support it. That's one of the things hoped for from the LHC.

As far as believing it, I'd say believing dark matter exists is a pretty good bet given what we know right now. Until that knowledge changes, it's the best answer to the phenomenon being observed.

The One who created it all says He holds everything together in the universe in the Good Book. :geek:

That's religion, not science.

Here's the biggest difference I have found between the two: Religion has no predictive value. I'm not saying it's wrong. I happen to be a religious man myself. But, when it comes right down to it, most religions have no predictive value because they are based on Faith. In ones that do, they're often simply redefining natural processes and applying religious meaning to them. Science, on the other hand, is entirely based on predictive value. If Science say's something is "true," you can rely on that statement to be entirely predictive. It attempts to explain observations about the natural world.

Water is wet. It will be wet here at such-and-such a temperature and, on the other side of the Universe, it will be wet there also under similar conditions. That is Science. It is completely predictive. Religion is not necessarily so and, where it is, it's simply a matter of someone redefining observations of the natural world.