Sunday, December 24, 2017

relativity - Wormholes, time travel, and time dilation


I believe I understand the "wormhole time machine" now, but still have one question regarding what happens if you enter the stationary mouth.


A wormhole is created and (of course) has two mouths, x and y.


x remains stationary on Earth while y is sent away at relativistic speeds (.99c) for (example) five years as measured on Earth (observer at the stationary mouth x).


The spaceship with mouth y returns to Earth. Mouth y and any occupants of the spaceship have obviously aged less than five years, though observers on Earth and wormhole mouth x have aged 5.


What now happens if someone enters into wormhole mouth y?



As explained below by Ben Crowell, you would exit mouth x at a time in the past. This happens because the time (as measured by clocks, if you wish) inside the mouths of the wormholes remains syncronized. So, when you enter y (the younger wormhole mouth), it takes you to the mouth of x when it was the same age. You end up in the past.


What happens if someone enters into wormhole mouth x?


I can't find a definite answer on this, so I'll try to work through it. I think you would emerge from mouth y - the one in the present time (5 years old). Because the time inside remains synchronized between the wormholes regardless of the outside age, then entering y takes us to x in the past (sometime between <5 and 5 years ago); however, entering x does not take us to the future because mouth y (outside) has not yet aged beyond 5 years since we started our experiment.


Can someone confirm if my reasoning is correct or not?




No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...