Our Wormholes Are Different: Difference between revisions

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.

 

 

As the [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] means that every TV show, movie, book and game can have quantum physics do slightly different things, you can be assured that '''Our Wormholes Are Different''' too.

 

Related to [[Negative Space Wedgie]]. Compare: [[Our Time Travel Is Different]], which this may sometimes overlap. See also [[Swirly Energy Thingy]]. Compare [[Black Holes Suck]].

{{examples}}

* Planet Remina from ''[[Hellstar Remina]]'' came from [[Another Dimension]] through a wormhole. And considering [[Eldritch Abomination|what the planet is]]...

 

* ''[[Donnie Darko]]'' involves one that {{spoiler|loops through time}}, [[Mind Screw|maybe possibly]].

* The Bifröst bridge in ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'' is actually a traversable Einstein-Rosen Bridge (read: wormhole). The myth of it being a rainbow bridge is due to the fact that it causes atmospheric disturbances as it opens up on Earth. It also comes with [[Visual Effects of Awesome|a neat light show]].

* In ''[[Contact]]'', Dr. Arroway theorizes that the the alien machine transports its subject via an Einstein-Rosen bridge.

 

* 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.

* The [[Time Scout]] portals combine this with [[Portal to the Past]].

 

* ''[[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]].

* The fugitives in ''[[Tracker]]'' came to Earth via a womrhole, and Cole used one in the final episode. The math apparently isn't easy to get, and he misjudged the timing, allowing him to come back to Earth in the very end. Zin apparently originated a lot of the wormhole stuff, then got laughed at by his fellow scientists for it.

 

* Porte sorcerors in ''[[7th 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 ''[[7th 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 ''[[7th 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.''

 

* 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.

* In ''[[Free Space]]'', Subspace travel utilizes "Subspace Nodes", which are essentially wormholes that link together certain regions of space.

 

* In ''[[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 ''[[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.

 

* 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.

* ''[[Interstella 5555]]'' features a wormhole located behind the moon that connects our solar system to another. It's particularly dangerous to use, and Shep's ship is badly damaged trying to navigate it.

 

 

* ''[[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 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!]]

 

* 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 [[Black Holes Suck|nearly as unrealistic]] as the trope being discussed.

* In ''Sphere'', the {{spoiler|future ship}} used a black hole that ''creates'' a wormhole, using a [[wikipedia: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.

 

* ''[[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 ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' episode "[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|White Hole]]". It spat out the matter and ''time'' that a black hole swallowed up, leading to short time loops and similar disturbances.

* In ''[[First Wave]]'', Joshua claims the Gua use "white holes" to transport objects from their planet.

 

* 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)}}.

 

* ''[[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.

 

* 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."

 

* 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.

 

* [[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.

 

* The electromagnetic storm in the 2001 ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'', which not only goes through space, but also time.

 

* ''[[A Wrinkle in Time]]'' has Tesseracts, which basically function as wormholes. [[wikipedia: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|Honorverse]] has several wormholes but rather than a tunnel in space they are described as points where extremely powerful standing grav-waves that normally exist in hyperspace overlap with real space and allow effectively instantaneous travel between their two ends. They all come in clusters of at least two and a large portion of Manticore's wealth comes from shipping fees of their own six, later seven, terminus wormhole junction, the largest in the known galaxy.

* 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 [[Überwald|Romania]]). A few millennia later a [[Phlebotinum Overload]] in [[Soviet Superscience|Russia]]'s ambitious continent-wide [[Deflector Shield]] creates a much bigger wormhole in the heart of the then U.S.S.R. The twist is that each wormhole is a one way trip, but by using both you can turn them into a superhighway.

 

* ''[[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.

* The dimensional portals in [[Angel]].

 

 

* ''[[King's Quest: Mask of Eternity|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.

 

 

{{reflist}}