Portals and Pocket Universes

[robject]

So, how do portals work? How are they built? And how big do they get?

In the Ringworld thread, Mike Wightman suggested that a Ringworld would make a portal big enough to pinch off a star into a pocket universe.

So how does THAT work? When you have a single portal, unconnected to any other portal, does it 'create' pocket universes?

Well, no. At least not automatically. First there's the need for the proper technology. So I suggest that a "Pincher" is made up of two things:

1. A portal, unconnected to another portal.

2. An "injector" - a mechanism that forces part of this universe through an unconnected portal, presumably causing that space to be separated, pinched off, from the universe.


The larger the portal, the larger the objects which may be forced into that pocket of space.

So if you want a star in that pocket universe, you'll need a Ringworld-sized portal.

 

[atpollard]

Doesn't that mean that we should find "ringworlds" with no star in the center?

 

[mike wightman]

No, I don't think so, because either the ringworld is consumed in the pocket universe creation mechanism or it is within the pocket universe.

I imagine the ringword being spun to form a sphere around the star, increase the spin kinetic energy enough and you are deforming spacetime until you get to the point that the deformation snaps off from our universe forming a pocket universe bubble in the extradimensional space that my tiny brain has difficulty grasping (think of the picture you have seen of black holes deforming space time and imagine pulling just enough to break it off).

 

[aramis]

No, because either the ringworld is consumed in the pocket universe creation mechanism or it is within the pocket universe.

I imagine the ringword being spun to form a sphere around the star, increase the spin kinetic energy enough and you are deforming spacetime until you get to the point that the deformation snaps off from our universe forming a pocket universe bubble in the extradimensional space that my tiny brain has difficulty grasping (think of the picture you have seen of black holes deforming space time and imagine pulling just enough to break it off).

You'd break the ring (even a scrith ring) that way.

It would need to be a series of projectors, not a mechanical device, because the stresses of even a 0.1 AU ring spinning other than along its axis would generate deformation stresses that would liquify scrith.

Even spinning along its axis fast enough for the frame dragging to matter implies energies beyond scrith's tolerance. Niven talks about the need for scrith to be a monomolecule in the foreward to one of the revised editions, simply to tolerate the ring's 0.9G.

 

[mike wightman]

Obviously the ring is reinforced with dark matter

At the TLs we are talking about the physics of the material are way beyond my understanding. It would by like trying to explain shape memory alloys to chimpanzees.

 

[aramis]

Obviously the ring is reinforced with dark matter

At the TLs we are talking about the physics of the material are way beyond my understanding. It would by like trying to explain shape memory alloys to chimpanzees.

I don't buy that excuse, Mike. That perhaps it's all accelerated infdim, coordinated perhaps, but a sphere is Unstable as q Shell... one glitch or power failure and it's falling apart.