2011-05-19: Poit

[kaitou]

The first thing "Poit" puts me in mind of is Pinky from Pinky and The Brain.

For me, it was Mad Magazine (Don Martin, in particular).

See also: http://www.kaitou.org/comic/archives/4

[Madayar]

I will not converse about the absurdity of travelling through holes in space, this is high fantasy, physics stays out of it from page 1

So you don't like Stargate either? Einstein himself suggested wormholes.

Well, well, isn't there a difference between large physical phenomenons and a humanoid CREATING one out of SHEER MENTAL POWER and big enough to move a fleet?

[Forrest]

Inner and outer horizons, white hole interior region, Schwarzschild wormholes! Poe is a genius! Theoretical physics are win!

Much with the radiation. Including ship sized radiation and whole-people radiation out the other end.

Back to lurking.

You want to maybe describe what you're seeing in these panels that's so theoretically awesome? Cause I was having trouble putting together exactly what was depicted (besides the obvious "ship goes into hole"), and I think I probably know my theoretical physics better than the average forumgoer (though there are some here who probably know better than I; I believe at least one someone here is an actual, practicing physicist).

[l33tm44m]

I will not converse about the absurdity of travelling through holes in space, this is high fantasy, physics stays out of it from page 1

So you don't like Stargate either? Einstein himself suggested wormholes.

Good thing this WASN'T Stargate. The wormhole would have had a giant unstable "splash" wave like a jet engine being run through a tank of water (that's how they did the special effect for the first time in the STARGATE movie. They totally CGd the effect afterwards for the TV series.)

[Bytemite]

I actually was only planning on one post, because the more I talk the more I'm going to look like an idiot and I just wanted to express <3 at Poe's efforts to show a wormhole.

But I can try to describe what I'm seeing, keeping in mind that I may not be right, and also keeping in mind some of the limitations of trying to show an event like this from a third person perspective, and recognizing that third person was probably the only perspective Poe could use to convey what was happening.

It starts last page. Meji apparently can concentrate enough energy and/or matter (E=mc^2?) that she can break gravity and space time and create a large enough hole for a fleet of airships. Another option is that she's super accelerating sub atomic particles to the point where they create micro black holes, but this one on a macro-scale. The last panel on the page shows a black hole popping into existence. It appears that one of the ships has already become caught in the inescapable gravitational well, and may even be passing the outer horizon. As the ship passes through, some air molecules around the ship appear to be super-excited and "flash off" in a burst of radiation. Meji is protecting the ship, which is why the entire ship doesn't also do the same.

I believe that the second ring we see may be the inner horizon of the black hole, which technically as a third person observer we wouldn't normally be able to see, but I was mostly just happy that Poe included it, as it's a relatively recent development in the understanding of black holes. Then following that is the black hole, which is a 3 dimensional object, but which might look like a flat disk to anyone observing it. Poe skewed the perspective on the disk to emphasize that the ships are being pulled in.

On the latest page, this is where it starts to get fun. There's a couple of interpretations I can give. Either the first panel is the ship crossing the inner horizon and accelerating towards the black hole from a normal third person perspective... OR, the ships have actually already fallen through the black hole here, and are approaching either the singularity itself, or a white hole within the black hole that Meji created through means unknown, and we are seeing this panel through the perspective of the ships, within the black hole but from outside the ships.

If the later, then the kinda if you squint glimpses of ships in the third panel just outside the black hole past the inner horizon could be holograms, visual echoes of the ships that are already inside the black hole, produced from the bizarre physics occurring within and around the black hole.

If they hadn't gone through the black hole yet, the third panel could be another phenomenon, where people past the inner horizon would experience time almost in reverse, and might think they were moving away from the black hole, while an outside observer would still see them falling inward. Around a black hole, from the perspective of the person approaching it, there would appear to be both streams of particles flowing inwards and particles that seem to be flowing outwards, but which actually are also falling inward.

In the fourth panel, Meji's black hole does not evaporate like a regular black hole, but collapses like a theoretical Schwarszchild wormhole might (also called an Einstein-Rosen bridge if you prefer that). If you think about a Schwarszchild wormhole, any object entering the wormhole continues on it's accelerated trajectory, and experiences both past and future of the particle, though likely not on any level that a human would be able to process. The system is unstable and likely to collapse, however. If the system is stable enough and you're fast enough to escape the collapse, and you found a way to get through or around the schwarszchild bubble, you could theoretically use the wormhole as a system of instantaneous travel. If you didn't escape the collapse you'd be toast. Most things couldn't, but then Meji is running the show here.

We don't know what the ships see inside the holes, so we can't tell conclusively if they're heading towards an internal white hole or have yet to pass through the initial blackhole. But I think this is certainly a wormhole. It's possible that white holes may always occur within black holes, that all black holes are wormholes (just difficult to get through), or that a white hole IS the black hole, at a point where time has completely reversed near the center of the black hole. It's even possible that the energy and matter feed into a black hole can create infant universes at the singularity, like a big bang event, though it's unlikely that information or organization of the energy and mass involved is preserved.

Personally, I take a few unusual views on singularities, the big bang, and the current models for wormholes. To me Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle suggests that you can have singularity-like conditions, but potentially not an actual singularity, as all particles in the singularity would have to have known velocities and positions (Hawkings radiation suggests further that full singularities may not exist). Secondly, I take the big bang as potential evidence for the existence of white holes outside of a black hole region, and for fecund universes. Thirdly, I think half of the Schwarszchild solution may be interpreted incorrectly. If you allow for the big bang and fecund universes, and thus allow for white holes outside of black holes, then the other side of a wormhole being also a black hole and trapping you forever in the schwarszchild bubble seems to me to be contradicted by observable evidence otherwise. This would require our entire observable universe to be in fact the interior of a black hole - possible, if there really will be a big crunch, but between you and me I have my doubts.

Anyway, I think I'm skirting catgirl GENOCIDE! here, so that's probably enough from me.

[Viking-Sensei]

The only correction I'd offer to Bytemite's views is a reminder that these ships were already cruising as fast as they could, which presumably isn't a slow speed, when she created the wormhole in front of them. If there is a gravity-based event here, it really isn't so much "caught in the inescapable gravitational well" as "careened uncontrollably into the inescapable gravitational well at full speed".

[Slamlander]

I will not converse about the absurdity of travelling through holes in space, this is high fantasy, physics stays out of it from page 1

So you don't like Stargate either? Einstein himself suggested wormholes.

Well, well, isn't there a difference between large physical phenomenons and a humanoid CREATING one out of SHEER MENTAL POWER and big enough to move a fleet?

...

I might remind you that this is fiction. But with that attitude, you probably don't read much of it. Let your hair down, toss the tie, roll up your sleeves, and enjoy the show. Who knows, you might even learn to like it

I will not converse about the absurdity of travelling through holes in space, this is high fantasy, physics stays out of it from page 1

So you don't like Stargate either? Einstein himself suggested wormholes.

Good thing this WASN'T Stargate. The wormhole would have had a giant unstable "splash" wave like a jet engine being run through a tank of water (that's how they did the special effect for the first time in the STARGATE movie. They totally CGd the effect afterwards for the TV series.)

Actually, I was only referencing the wormhole bit. Implementation effects differ with the author. In fact, my own are much less dramatic. On the other hand, this is not much conceptually different than a portal.

[Madayar]

I might remind you that this is fiction. But with that attitude, you probably don't read much of it. Let your hair down, toss the tie, roll up your sleeves, and enjoy the show. Who knows, you might even learn to like it

Actually, I was only referencing the wormhole bit. Implementation effects differ with the author. In fact, my own are much less dramatic. On the other hand, this is not much conceptually different than a portal.

And THAT is why I wrote "I will NOT CONVERSE" on it, and it is "HIGH FANTASY". You were the one who brought Einstein into it. Who is besides "Presence of the Master" a non-fictional person. But Bytemite won the "explain the inexplicable" award anyway. And got a comic quoting him. Hell.

And yes, I dislike Stargate. But more because their presentation of other cultures is horrible even compared to most Star Trek series, the gates I can dig.

[Anthony]

The only problem with the wormhole theory is that, well, the tidal forces near a black hole of that size are sufficient to rip apart atoms and trigger nuclear fusion. In theory you can balance things out on a line near the center of the hole, but not near the edges or outside, so a wormhole would destroy any ships not on the central line and probably rip a continent-sized hole in the planet.

Thus, my reluctance to comment on what's clearly just plain 'magic' (or 'psionic waveform manipulation', or whatever explanobabble you prefer).

[Sareth]

You were the one who brought Einstein into it.

... I suddenly feel the urge to demand a drawing of Einstein dressed up as "Albert Einstein, Catgirl Exterminator".