Folks, I am working on a screenplay currently, and need to ask a few questions on some of the physics that make up the storyline. I am not necessarily looking for exactitudes; reasonable guesses will be great. Anyway, I have a few questions. 1) I need to have a Systemic catastrophe, stemming from man fooling around with wormhole technology. For the sake of this, I am assuming that when a stable wormhole is formed by artificial means, transmission of matter can happen in both directions simultaneously, and that travel is instantaneous. Now, my question stems around a wormhole being opened from our solar system to our closest neighbour, Proxima Centauri, and opening in the core of the star. Assumedly the pressures there are in the order of several hundred billion standard earth atmospheres, and the pressure on the other side of the hole would be vacuum. How much matter would it be reasonable to assume would spew out in a given time, say a quarter of a second to a second and a half or so? 2) This super pressurised, super energetic material would then explode out (Simply moving from a high pressure area to a low pressure one). This would wipe out most of the Solar System (presumed). What sort of rate would it move across the system? (Less than the speed of light, but what would the plasma cloud expand out at. Would it be dramatically less than C?) 3) This depends on the answer to 1, above, but how much volume would the transported material take when it stabilised? ie would it form a new nebula 4) This Nebula, assuming there is one formed, would be what temperature, and how fast would it cool to close to the normal background temp? 5) would enough matter be stripped from the core of Proxima Centauri in that short space of time to cause the star to become unstable and go Nova? The premise is that the hole opens, the gate is destroyed, but enough material has come through the hole that the resulting plasma wavefront of it's dispersal destroys earth, mars and most of the colonies in the System that were not far out and in the shadow of a larger body, such as Neptune, etc. The Story will only work if I can have a calamity that destroys 99% of humanity, but allows the 1% to survive. If the Nebula is still 15000 Kelvin when it reaches Pluto Orbit, then it all falls over and I will have to think of another way to present the calamity (The story is such that it will likely have folk demanding to know the physics behind the assumptions I have made) Anyway, feel free to have a laugh at my lunacy, but if you have any feedback, please contribute. Cheers, Andrew Campbell Writer - 'Phoenix Rising'.
I don't see any reason why this should come anywhere near destroying the Solar system in the way you have proposed. What makes you think the plasma would rush outwards at close to c? As soon as any substantial volume has passed through the wormhole gravitational forces will tend to pull it together. If you want to wipe out 99% of humanity there are far more convincing ways to do it. Plague Comet impact Solar instability - massive flares Nearby Nova Gamma ray burster Nemesis etc
I quite like this idea; but my rough calculations (too rough to make public) suggest the hole need to be open for several tens of minutes to threaten the Earth's biosphere, (and also fataly damage the widely-separated future colonies of the Solar system). I think the blast of gamma rays from black body radiation of the plasma would be the most damaging phenomenon. Actually at Orion's Arm we have been considering a type of wormhole specifically designed to skim material from a star; but the large volume of mass passing through tends to cause the hole to collapse, so a lot of energy has to be spent to keep the hole open. ------------------ SF worldbuilding at www.orionsarm.com
I suggest you wouldn't get that much material through, maybe a couple of million tons, but if you can get it in close proximity to the Earth you could do a lot of damage, because the temperature is so high. If the near end of the wormhole is anchored on the Moon say at the North Polar base, then the hemisphere facing the Moon will get thoroughly irradiated and you could wipe out a good chunk of humanity by getting your timing right. Even more if you have it on the Moon in the centre of the Earth-facing side, spewing gamma-hot fusing hydrogen plasma straight at the Earth. Assuming that it spreads on about a sixth of a sphere I think the transfered material would be harmless by the time it reaches the orbit of Mars or Venus. It's the radiant energy of the compact material that will do most damage. Perhaps the wormhole can set up some kind of oscillation, nearly closing then opening again, in a giant cosmic fart, to prolong the material transfer. Well that's my intuition on this highly speculative piece of physics but I have zero calculations to back it up. Have fun with the story.
The speed is probably less important than the fact that a wavefront would shoot out from the Gate location, say a Lagrange point. What I envisioned was that the gate opens, and instantly a spray of material shoots out at tremendous velocity. Because this material is still at the ludicrous interior-star pressure, it naturally seeks to equalise pressure with the surrounding space and expands out in a massive flare. I was hoping that the plasma (if Plasma is indeed the right term) would still be hot and energetic enough, and moving fast enough to trash any body that it would come into contact with in the inner system, and would perhaps stay hot enough that over a few months the orbital period of any bodies not immediately charred would move through the field and broil. Any estimation on how fast the plasma would cool to manageable temperatres? ie how fast would the soup radiate away it's heat, and would that radiation comprise of high energy particles that would irradiate anything not boiled? Andrew
