🚀 go-pugleaf

I wrote:
>I wonder if the heat death could be avoided by the creation of new matter.
>Eventually in Dyson's scheme, even the essential particles will decay away.
>(I think it's been estimated that _protons_ have a half-life of around 10^34
>years?)  However, if a way could be found to create new matter, we could go
>on indefinitely because we could simply replace decayed particles with new
>ones.  My best candidate would be Hawking radiation.  This is a process of
>black hole evaporation whereby a virtual particle pair is created at the
>(matter) event horizon of a black hole; one just inside, one just outside.
>Before they have the chance to recombine, one is sucked in while the other
>goes free.  If we could somehow snatch those freed particles....  Of course,
>we'd need to find something a bit longer-lasting than a black hole as a
>source.  I wonder if the Casimir effect could be of use.  Since the Casimir
>effect produces a region of relatively lower energy, does anyone know if
>there would be an increased level of virtual particle creation around that
>region?  Or are the two completely unrelated?

To answer my own question, the Casimir effect could be of help, though not
quite in the fashion I first imagined.  I dug up a short article in "New
Scientist" (15 Oct. 1988, p. 31) stating that the Casimir effect could be
used to prop open a wormhole and prevent it from pinching off.  A wormhole
could, in turn, connect to a baby universe, which could be used as a vast
new source of more matter & energy.  (From what I understand, you couldn't
"mine" the baby universe, but you could pack up & move there with the proper
mass/energy exchange.)

There's just a couple problems I forsee.  First, it may be possible to
create macroscopic, traversable wormholes in theory, but it has yet to
be demonstrated that such could be done in practice.

Second is what happens when that baby universe is created.  Normally, the
wormhole would get pinched off at creation, severing any link between the
two universes.  If the connecting wormhole could be kept open, what happens
during the baby universe's inflationary stage?  You'd get a HELLUVA lot of
stuff coming through that wormhole which you'd need to counter with a flow
back into it.  (I'm assuming that one needs equal amounts of transfer thru
a wormhole in either direction for it to remain stable.)  Also, the physical
laws of the baby universe would be heavily dependent on its initial con-
ditions.  If they were to differ from our own, how would we handle sending
a traveller from our universe into the baby universe?

It is perhaps a mixed blessing that the answers to these questions won't be
absolutely required for quite a long time to come.  Still, why be unprepared
for the future?  :-)
--
Andrew Trapp				dreamer@uiuc.edu

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.


P.S.  On the same page as the wormhole/Casimir article is another article
on the possibility of the universe one day tending _away_ from entropy as
it collapses.  (The article assumes a closed universe.)  Just think...the
entire universe may eventually become extropic!  :-)