Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
214,537
edits
(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.OurWormholesAreDifferent 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.OurWormholesAreDifferent, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
No edit summary |
||
(12 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
In reality, wormholes are purely a scientific conjecture, a consequence of the same equations that describe black holes. Being inconveniently located at (or near) the centers of said black holes, it is of course impossible to detect them, at least with current technology. The theoretical wormhole would, thanks to relativistic effects, close before anyone could get through it, no matter how fast they were traveling. One way to get around this could be to try to get through a wormhole inside a rotating black hole; but even then, you'd have to somehow survive being pummeled by literally all the radiation in the universe, and somehow not create any disturbance and collapse the wormhole altogether. Actually stabilizing the wormhole would theoretically require "exotic matter"... which would have, among other never-encountered qualities, negative mass... Needless to say, wormholes have remained a curiosity in the field of physics, and are certainly not being considered for practical travel anytime soon.
Fiction, of course, is different. Wormholes are often used as a potential way to get past that bothersome "[[
As the [[Timey
Related to [[Negative Space Wedgie]]. Compare: [[Our Time Travel Is Different]], which this may sometimes overlap. See also [[Swirly Energy Thingy]]. Compare [[
{{examples|Examples}}▼
==== Wormholes ====▼
== Anime & Manga ==▼
* Planet Remina from ''[[Hellstar Remina]]'' came from [[Another Dimension]] through a wormhole. And considering [[Eldritch Abomination|what the planet is]]...
=== Film ===
* ''[[Donnie Darko]]'' involves one that {{spoiler|loops through time}}, [[Mind Screw|maybe possibly]].
* The Bifröst bridge in ''[[Thor (
** Apparently, if you keep it open longer than a few seconds, it can act as a [[Wave Motion Gun]] and destroy an entire planet... Which makes [[Justified Trope|a lot more sense]] when one considers the ludicrous energies required to make on of these things work in [[Real Life]].
* The [[Starfish Aliens|Mi-Go]] portal from Yuggoth (Pluto) to Earth in the 2011 [[Adaptation Expansion|adaptation]] of ''[[Lovecraft
* In ''[[Contact]]'', Dr. Arroway theorizes that the the alien machine transports its subject via an Einstein-Rosen bridge.
=== Literature ===
* The only time a wormhole came up in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] was in ''The Phantom Affair'', an arc in the [[X Wing Series]] comics. A superweapon known as the gravitic polarizing device made the enemy ships and a portion of the asteroid belt ringing a planet simply disappear, with one of the startled pilots saying that it looked like a wormhole had opened up.
** In "The Glove of Darth Vader", a wormhole created by the exploding reactor is responsible for transporting Darth Vader's indestructible glove from the exploding wreckage of the Death Star II to the oceans of Mon Calamari.
* ''[[Nights Dawn|The Night's Dawn Trilogy]]'' has humans using wormhole-generating ''ZTT'' drives to cross interstellar distances. The mechanical type requires the ship to be [http://images.wikia.com/nightsdawn/images/e/e3/Ladymac.jpg spherical] and is bound by orbital mechanics, while the ones used by the organic [[Living Ship|Voidhawks]] have no such limitations, but die after a few decades. The [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|Kiint]] have refined the technology to the point where they use personal teleporters to jump between distant ''galaxies''.
* From the same author: In ''[[
* Lois Mc Master Bujold's [[Vorkosigan Saga]] has an interstellar community, "the Nexus," linked together by "wormholes." Rather than being stellar-scale objects of massive gravity, these are subtle flaws in spacetime that you need special equipment to detect and use. They are natural features of some star systems. Earth only has one, way out in the Oort Cloud. Lucky systems have a handful. Barrayar, the heroes' home planet, was cut off from the Nexus for centuries when their one wormhole unexpectedly closed.
* The [[
== Live-Action TV ==▼
▲=== Live-Action TV ===
* ''[[Sliders]]'' had wormholes that could only be opened at certain times, and transported people between parallel dimensions (alternate realities would be a better pair of words). A specific device was required to create said wormholes.
** In fact, each timer was unique in that each had its own cycle. Should the traveler miss his/her window, he/she would have to wait for the next one with the current timer for over 29 years - a number defined by [[Applied Phlebotinum]].
* ''[[
** Later he turned wormholes into offensive weapons, learned how they could be used for travelling to different points in time as well as [[Alternate Timeline|"unrealised" realities"]], and eventually he learned how to make a "wormhole weapon" (essentially a black hole that doubles in size every few minutes).
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' has controlled wormholes created between the titular stargates, and as the means for spacecraft to enter hyperspace.
** In the Stargate 'Verse, wormholes operate in ''sub''space, rather than hyperspace. Atlantis (the city) used a wormhole drive (rather than a hyperspace drive) to get from the Pegasus Galaxy to Earth (in the Milky Way) in a split second, where Hyperspace was taking weeks.
*** Atlantis used a ''hyperdrive'' to get from Pegasus to the Milky Way, and used its wormhole drive only after its hyperdrive broke down near the edge of the Milky Way. Also, in the first episode of SG-1's sixth season, a "hyperspace window" is referred to as a "wormhole," so wormholes ''are'' used to enter hyperspace.
*** Hyperspace is used by Stargates. Subspace is used by FTL travel. Various other dimensions/planes of existence are used by the Ascended, the [[Stargate SG
** This franchise also has the peculiar and arbitrary "time limit" rule. It's apparently a "law of wormhole physics" that it's impossible to maintain a wormhole for more than 38 minutes (unless it's plugged into a black hole or similar massive power source, which would suggest that it's more a limitation of the stargate's power systems than anything to do with physics). In effect, though, there seem to be more exceptions than cases of this rule being played straight.
*** The first time that the 38 minute rule was exceeded was because of time dilation, not energy expenditure: on the black hole planet, 38 minutes hadn't elapsed yet. This is why the wormhole remained open. Sadly, in later episodes it just became dumbed down to "black hole/energy = wormhole can stay open longer".
Line 50 ⟶ 44:
*** Indeed, the rules for how wormholes behave under these conditions seem to be different in each and every appearance. Sometimes the wormhole "loops back" and travelers emerge from the gate they just entered, sometimes they come out of the gate they were trying to travel to, sometimes there is a visual effect associated with the disruption, sometimes not... There have been passing [[Hand Wave|Handwaves]] about how different external conditions result in the different effects, but yeah... Those wormholes are different.
*** At first, it's not the 'solar flares', the flares are just bending the wormholes somewhere else. The implication is that someone who understood, and had full control of, a Stargate could basically connect a wormhole to any point in time or space, and the lack of time travel was a deliberate technological limitation of the gate you had to 'hack' by using solar flares to bend the wormhole. Although that raises other questions, like why did the Ancients have to build an entire separate time travel system? Later, they seemed to have forgotten this explanation, and time travel started requiring solar flares.
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' has wormholes. For example, in ''Star Trek: The Motion Picture,'' an imbalance in the matter-antimatter ratio in the ship's engines can create a temporary wormhole that traps the ship and other nearby
* ''[[Terra Nova]]'' has a wormhole that exists in their universe 2149 and alternate timeline cretaceous period. It is still not explained if people can go back to 2149 or it is one way, but there are hints at it being the former.
* The fugitives in ''[[
=== Tabletop Games ===
* Porte sorcerors in ''[[
▲* Porte sorcerors in ''[[Seventh Sea]]'' have access to a rather bizarre version of portals. They can mark an object with their own blood, and then pull the object to them across a hand-sized portal, regardless of where it is. Later, they gain the ability to pull ''themselves'' to the object, regardless of where ''it'' is (rather handy if, for example, the object is in the pocket of a friend who's been imprisoned), and still later they can bring others with them. There are even rules for creating permanent Porte holes, though they cost an extreme version of [[Cast From Hit Points]] (as ''[[Seventh Sea]]'' doesn't have [[Hit Points]] per se, creating a permanent Porte hole will permanently cost a number of Sorcerors a point of the primary stat that determines when damage kills them). Porte has other restrictions, though; the dimension that the Sorceror (and any passengers) must cross is implied to one of a few cans holding [[Sealed Evil in A Can]], either hell itself or the abode of the now-vanished [[Abusive Precursors]] (or possibly both). It is explicitly stated that anyone, sorceror or passenger, who opens his eyes during the trip will go mad--and that the denizens of this place will whisper sweet promises to any human making the trip, if only they'd open their eyes. All the sorceries but one in ''[[Seventh Sea]]'' are also {{spoiler|weakening the boundary between the real world and hell.}} Porte, as it tears holes in reality itself, is implied to be one of the worst about these. Lastly, Porte sorcerors are easy to spot--they have red hands as a consequence of frequently blooding objects for their art. As a result, gloves have become fashionable in Montaigne.
** The consequences of Porte are dire enough that at least one canon NPC has been executed by L'Empereur (an [[Expy]] of Louis XIV) by ''having his eyelids torn off and being cast into a Porte hole.''
=== Video Games ===
* The ''[[X (
▲* The ''[[X (Video Game)|X-Universe]]'' has the Lost Technology [[Portal Network|Jump Gates]], which are needed to get between solar systems. None of the races know how to make them {{spoiler|except the Terrans (who developed the tech on their own) and the Paranid (because they were told how by one of the [[Precursors]])}}.
** [[All There in the Manual|According to the X-Superbox Encyclopedia]], the wormholes are different due to using exotic matter to power the wormhole, and by using magnetic forces to flatten the aperture. If those factors didn't occur, it would be the exact same as [[Real Life]]'s theoretical wormholes.
* ''[[Freelancer]]'' has Jump Gates that are implied to work as controlled wormholes, as well as normal, hidden wormholes that are implied to be dangerous, but perfectly safe in practice.
* The portals in ''[[Prey]]'', much like those in ''[[Portal (
* The portals in ''[[Portal (
** With [[Cloudcuckoolander|possible application]] as a [[Mundane Utility|shower curtain]].
** As of [[
*** We'll, they can open portals between certain materials {{spoiler|Moon rocks. They don't do good things for your health.}}. So long as they have a line to the target with no other solids in the way, the portal works.
* ''[[
** This was also how the original EVE Gate worked in the backstory. It lasted several hundred years before collapsing and was considerably larger, but the principle was the same.
* ''[[Conquest: Frontier Wars]]'' has naturally occurring wormholes to travel between systems, but then they somebody starts making ''artificial wormholes'' and things get a bit complicated, then someone else steals that technology..
* Wormholes in ''[[Nexus the Jupiter Incident]]'' act as rapid transit between remote star systems. However, the latter stages of the game reveal that {{spoiler|they were created by the [[Big Bad]] Mechanoids as a byproduct of them altering the universe}}.
* The only mode of system-to-system travel in the ''[[Space Empires]]'' series, as there is no [[FTL Travel]]. Some of them can be [[Point of No Return|one-way only]], though most are two-way. Random wormhole events can also fling your ships (or even ''bases!'') hundreds of LY across the map, as a sort of... ''[[Blind Jump]]'' meets ''[[Negative Space Wedgie]]''.
* In ''[[Haegemonia]]'', wormholes are naturally-occurring space phenomena that allow rapid travel to other systems. The only other way to travel to other system is via an experimental technology that creates temporary one-way wormholes to "wormhole probes" which only becomes available in the latter stages. Wormholes can be blocked by Darzok-developed probes or natural events.
* In the second ''[[
** A one-time special event can also create a temporary wormhole for a ship/fleet in transit, letting them finish their trip at the start of the next turn, regardless of how long they would normally have had remaining.
* ''[[Space Rangers]]'' has "black holes" (though their name is just pilots' slang) that randomly appear on the edges of star systems, and hurl you into a random system (be it one hyper-jump away or 50 parsecs into enemy territory). They also contain [[Subspace or Hyperspace|hyperspace]] [[Pocket Dimension|pockets]] inhabited by unidentified ships.
* In ''[[Free Space]]'', Subspace travel utilizes "Subspace Nodes", which are essentially wormholes that link together certain regions of space.
===
* In ''[[
=== Web Original ===▼
▲* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary (Webcomic)|Schlock Mercenary]]'', the "teraport" drive works by essentially sending every subatomic particle through its own wormhole. There are also "[[Cool Gate|wormgates]]", which theoretically produce a single wormhole big enough to pass entire starships. The wormgates can also output to multiple gates, acting as a duplicator; an entire arc centers around [[Ancient Conspiracy|what the gates' owners were doing with this capability]].
* Integral to the existence of society in ''[[
▲== Web Original ==
▲* Integral to the existence of society in ''[[Orions Arm|Orion's Arm]]'' due to the lack of any other sort of FTL travel. Actually traveling through them is time consuming and difficult, their main use is to transfer massive amount of information between star systems.
** It takes so long because traversible wormholes need a "transition zone" clear of all massive objects that is at least 654 AU in diameter (over eight times that of the entire solar system). For some reason nanoscale wormholes used for data transmission don't need that much space.
=== Western Animation ===
* The ''[[Invader Zim]]'' episode "A Room With a Moose" had Zim attempt to send the rest of his class (but especially Dib) through a wormhole to the eponymous [[Cosmic Horror|room with a moose]]. It was not stated whether this was in their dimension or another.
* ''[[
* In ''[[
== Black
* In ''[[Undocumented Features]]'', the black hole Cygnus X-1 is a gateway to Asgard.
* ''[[The Black Hole]]'' treats its title menace, a collapsed star, as a wormhole. And not just in theory; when we finally travel into it, it ''is'' a wormhole.
* ''[[Event Horizon]]'' uses black hole as wormhole, ''[[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place|a wormhole that is connected to hell]]!''
** Technically, they use a "quantum singularity" (as in semi-controlled artificial black hole) to power the ENGINE which creates a wormhole. Somehow. Still goes to hell though.
* The 2009 ''[[Star Trek (
** Except the black hole in that movie wasn't created by a collapsing star, the first one was created when Spock used the "red matter" to stop the "supernova" that was going to destroy the galaxy. Because that's what red matter is used for, creating black holes.
* ''[[The Giant Spider Invasion]]'' has a miniature black hole(that can be contained in a meteor and impact the Earth without compressing the whole thing) that apparently leads to the spider dimension. Also it can be closed off by filling it with [[Techno Babble|SCIENCE!]]
=== Literature ===
* The ''[[Humanx Commonwealth|Flinx and Pip]]'' novel ''The End of the Matter'' features a white hole used not for transportation but to destroy (slowly) a black hole of equal but opposite mass. This is of course [[
* In ''Sphere'', the {{spoiler|future ship}} used a black hole that ''creates'' a wormhole, using a [
▲* The ''[[Humanx Commonwealth|Flinx and Pip]]'' novel ''The End of the Matter'' features a white hole used not for transportation but to destroy (slowly) a black hole of equal but opposite mass. This is of course [[Unrealistic Black Hole|nearly as unrealistic]] as the trope being discussed.
▲* In ''Sphere'', the {{spoiler|future ship}} used a black hole that ''creates'' a wormhole, using a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerr_metric Kerr metric]; the black hole spins so rapidly that it warps nearby spacetime so that two distant locations and times touch.
* While the word "wormhole" is never used in ''Angel Station'' by [[Walter Jon Williams]], all ships use captured black holes in order to perform FTL jumps. This requires precise calculations, which are done perfectly by one of the protagonists, because she's a "witch", a genetically-engineered girl with the ability to see and alter electron motion. Opening a "tunnel" creates in a massive radiation wave that can damage anything for thousands of miles, meaning jumps have to be made far away from planets or other ships. It is also revealed that {{spoiler|aliens use the same method}}. Apparently, any ship can be equipped with devices for capturing black holes. Why they don't get torn to shreds by gravity is never brought up.
=== Live-Action TV ===
* ''[[Black Hole High]]'' originally called it a black hole, though they later speculated that it was actually a wormhole and preferred that term, despite occasionally reverting to the less accurate term for its mnemonic transfer ("Black Hole" also sounds a lot like "Blake Holsey", the name of the school). Wormholes can do [[Green Rocks|just about anything]] in this show.
* A white hole appears in the ''[[
* In ''[[
▲== Music ==
=== Music ===
* In the album: ''The Universal Migrator Part 2 - Flight of the Migrator'' by [[Ayreon]], the protagonist plunges into the black hole located in the center of the quasar 3C 273 to end up in a wormhole {{spoiler|that will carry him to the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)}}.
=== Video Games ===
* ''[[Spore]]'' treats its black holes as wormholes, and in fact often names one as the other and vice versa.
* ''[[X-COM]] Interceptor'' features black holes all over the sector that can wreck havoc on your ships and probes. Playing through the game and researching the alien intentions reveals that {{spoiler|there is exactly one black hole that is actually a worm hole to a pocket solar system, where the aliens are constructing their doomsday weapon, and the game becomes a race against time to discover the method to use the wormhole to reach the pocket dimension and destroy the weapon before it's completed.}}
* In ''[[Heechee Saga|Gateway II: Homeworld]]'', the player uses a [[Precursors|Heechee]] ship to go through a black hole that leads to a pocket universe, which is the sanctuary of the entire Heechee race, who hid there after discovering the [[Abusive Precursors|Assassins]]. Apparently, only certain ships are able to safely pass through the black hole, and it requires certain devices, which the Heechee promptly remove from the ship, preventing the player from leaving.
=== Western Animation ===
* At the end of the ''[[Futurama]]'' episode "A Flight To Remember", the spaceship Titanic gets sucked into a black hole along with {{spoiler|Countess Dela Rocha, the rich robot Bender fell in love with.}} Fry reassures {{spoiler|Bender}} that no one really knows what happens in a black hole and that {{spoiler|the Countess}} could still be alive somewhere. Prof. Farnsworth agrees with him, but then turns to Hermes to say "not a chance."
=== Real Life ===
* One [[Real Life]] [[Science Marches On|outdated]] theory proposed that black holes are the counterparts of "white holes" located elsewhere. All of the matter and energy falling into a particular black hole is supposed to be ejected from its corresponding white hole. But even white holes are subject to their own "[[Our Tropes Are Different|Ours are different]]" among the scientific community: Dr. Stephen Hawking suggests that the "time reversal" of a black hole is ''also'' a black hole; another common perception is that white holes ''recede'' faster-than-light from attracted matter.
=== Comic Books ===▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* [[The DCU|The DC Universe]] has Mother Boxes that can apparently open portals between any two points. These portals are called [[Rule of Cool|Boom Tubes]].
* In ''[[Universal War One]]'', scientists build a space station that can create a wormhole.
=== Film ===
* The electromagnetic storm in the 2001 ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'', which not only goes through space, but also time.
=== Literature ===
* ''[[A Wrinkle in Time]]'' has Tesseracts, which basically function as wormholes. [
▲* ''[[A Wrinkle in Time]]'' has Tesseracts, which basically function as wormholes. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract Real Tesseracts] have nothing to do with this, being a geometric concept related to cubes (basically, a Tesseract is to a cube what a cube is to a square). Wormholes were not topical at the time.
* ''[[Quantum Gravity]]'': There are portals between realms used to get from one to the other. Or into I-space.
* The [[Honor Harrington
* In ''[[Necroscope]]'' a "white hole" crash landed on a [[Eldritch Location|Vampire World]] creating a small one-way wormhole that links it with ours (specifically [[
* In the ''[[
== Live-Action TV ==▼
▲=== Live-Action TV ===
* ''[[Lexx]]'''s fractal cores, glowing swirly points in space where the [[The Multiverse|Two Universes]] intersect.
* Jumpgates and jump points in ''[[Babylon 5]]'' are very much wormhole-like on their ends, though the big expanse of hyperspace in between bears little resemblance to the theory.
* All the strange things in ''[[Black Hole High|Strange Days At Blake Holsey High]]'' are handwaved by the black hole/wormhole thing.
* Wormholes haven't actually appeared on ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' (unless you count a few magic portals), but they have been mentioned. When [[Trickster Archetype|the Trickster]] is interrogated on where a missing skeptic is, he says smugly "He didn't believe in wormholes. So I dropped him in one."
* The dimensional portals in [[Angel]].
=== Tabletop Games ===
* In ''[[Starfire]]'', every accessible star system is home to one or more naturally-occurring "warp points." A warp point provides an FTL link to another specific warp point in another star system (or, occasionally, to a warp point floating deep in interstellar space). Sometimes, one of the two warp points that forms a warp-link may be "closed" (totally undetectable unless you happen to see something coming out of it), which means there may be undiscovered warp points lurking about in any star system. (This created a dire threat to the Terran Federation during Interstellar War IV.)▼
=== Video Games ===▼
▲* In [[Starfire]], every accessible star system is home to one or more naturally-occurring "warp points." A warp point provides an FTL link to another specific warp point in another star system (or, occasionally, to a warp point floating deep in interstellar space). Sometimes, one of the two warp points that forms a warp-link may be "closed" (totally undetectable unless you happen to see something coming out of it), which means there may be undiscovered warp points lurking about in any star system. (This created a dire threat to the Terran Federation during Interstellar War IV.)
* ''[[King's Quest: Mask of Eternity
▲== Video Games ==
▲* ''[[King's Quest Mask of Eternity (Video Game)|King's Quest Mask of Eternity]]'' has portals that only go between two specified points, and operate on switches.
* Stormgates from [[Pirate 101]] are whirlpool like wormholes act like portals that allow pirates to sail to through the stars to different parts of the Spiral.
=== Real Life ===
* Because black holes don't mesh very neatly with quantum mechanics some physicists have put forward the idea of a [[
▲== Real Life ==
▲* Because black holes don't mesh very neatly with quantum mechanics some physicists have put forward the idea of a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Star_<!-- 28semiclassical_gravity29 "black star"]] which is like a black hole, but not. -->
{{reflist}}
Line 182 ⟶ 157:
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Our Tropes Are Different]]
[[Category:
|