Re: Hard Sci-fi?

On May 3, 10:53 pm, thro...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Wayne Throop) wrote:

> Hm.  Nevertheless, still totally dependent on ultradense handwavium.
> And the particular handwavium seems to indicate that you don't need
> anywhere *near* as much energy as one would expect.  What's indicated
> isn't anywhere near enough to get relativistic effects; it's still
> square in the middle of newton-and-maxwell-land.  One can suppose that
> there's some subtle loophole.  After all, we've got superconductivity,
> superfluidity, and einstein-bose condensates, and those are macroscopic,
> yet exhibit quantum effects.  So, one could argue that once we know
about
> quantum gravity, we can get some sort of free ride.  But it still
doesn't
> seem good enough to be called "hard", in terms of theories holding true
> in their currently known realm of applicability.

While the things the humans assembled to make the gizmo might have had
normal density for atomic/molecular condensed matter, there's no
reason it couldn't have concentrated some of the energy to extreme
values in a very small spot - that's what modern particle accelerators
do, after all.  Once you create a very small wormhole, it may be
possible (at least within the confines of what is possible with our
current knowledge) to expand the wormhole to arbitrary sizes without
using any additional extreme density inputs (see my other post about
wormholes in this thread).

Luke