2i2
PHVSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Second, we do not know how stable these wormholes would be.
The radiation generated by these wormholes might kill anyone who
enters. Or perhaps the wormholes would not be stable at all, closing as
soon as one entered them.
Third, light beams falling into the black hole would be blue
shifted; that is, they would attain greater and greater energy as they
came close to the event horizon. In fact, at the event horizon itself, light
is technically infinitely blue shifted, so the radiation from this infalling energy could kill anyone in a rocket.
Let us discuss these problems in some detail. One problem is to
amass enough energy to rip the fabric of space and time. The simplest
way to do this is to compress an object until it becomes smaller than
its "event horizon." For the sun, this means compressing it down to
about 2 miles in diameter, whereupon it will collapse into a black hole.
(The Sun's gravity is too weak to compress it naturally down to 2 miles,
so our sun will never become a black hole. In principle, this means
that anything, even you, can become a black hole if you were sufficiently compressed. This would mean compressing all the atoms of
your body to smaller than subatomic distances-a feat that is beyond
the capabilities of modern science.)
A more practical approach would be to assemble a battery of laser
beams to fire an intense beam at a specific spot. Or to build a huge
atom smasher to create two beams, which would then collide with
each other at fantastic energies, sufficient to create a small tear in the
fabric of space-time.
PLANCK ENERGY AND PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
One can calculate the energy necessary to create an instability in space
and time: it is of the order of the Planck energy, or 10
19 billion electron
volts. This is truly an unimaginably large number, a quadrillion times
larger than the energy attainable with today's most powerful machine,
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located outside Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC is capable of swinging protons in a large "doughnut"
PHVSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Second, we do not know how stable these wormholes would be.
The radiation generated by these wormholes might kill anyone who
enters. Or perhaps the wormholes would not be stable at all, closing as
soon as one entered them.
Third, light beams falling into the black hole would be blue
shifted; that is, they would attain greater and greater energy as they
came close to the event horizon. In fact, at the event horizon itself, light
is technically infinitely blue shifted, so the radiation from this infalling energy could kill anyone in a rocket.
Let us discuss these problems in some detail. One problem is to
amass enough energy to rip the fabric of space and time. The simplest
way to do this is to compress an object until it becomes smaller than
its "event horizon." For the sun, this means compressing it down to
about 2 miles in diameter, whereupon it will collapse into a black hole.
(The Sun's gravity is too weak to compress it naturally down to 2 miles,
so our sun will never become a black hole. In principle, this means
that anything, even you, can become a black hole if you were sufficiently compressed. This would mean compressing all the atoms of
your body to smaller than subatomic distances-a feat that is beyond
the capabilities of modern science.)
A more practical approach would be to assemble a battery of laser
beams to fire an intense beam at a specific spot. Or to build a huge
atom smasher to create two beams, which would then collide with
each other at fantastic energies, sufficient to create a small tear in the
fabric of space-time.
PLANCK ENERGY AND PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
One can calculate the energy necessary to create an instability in space
and time: it is of the order of the Planck energy, or 10
19 billion electron
volts. This is truly an unimaginably large number, a quadrillion times
larger than the energy attainable with today's most powerful machine,
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located outside Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC is capable of swinging protons in a large "doughnut"