Archive for the ‘Space-Time’ Category

Why Is The Tardis Bigger On The Inside?

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

To the uninitiated the Tardis is just a blue box with the warm, friendly, and official looking sign “Police Call Box”  emblazoned, in lights, on all sides.  To the fan, The Tardis is short for “Time and Relative Dimension in Space” and its way,way more than just a Blue Box.  Today we will explore the most obvious and endearing quality of this most peculiar object.

The very first words uttered,  muttered or mouthed by stupefied first time visitors to Dr Who’s box are, invariably, “Its bigger on the inside”  to which the Doctor or a random Companion (assistant is no longer PC enough for the BBC) responds, invariably,  “it’s dimensionally transcendental.”

Dimensionally Transcendental indeed.  But what does that mean and is it possible?  Do the laws of physics allow for that particular conceit.  Well, Yes. The ridiculously Weird Science of Modern Physics allows even this far fetched premise. There are many ways to achieve this.  We will explore but a few.

First, and  easiest for our trusty Time Lord to achieve would be a simple, Space-Time projection.  The Tardis’ interior might just be in a distant part of the universe and the doorway that connects the police box exterior might just be a straight forward, yet impossibly difficult to achieve, Einstein-Rosen Bridge, better known as a wormhole.  This means that when the Tardis Materializes and dematerializes, in fact the only thing changing location, not necesarily moving, is the access point.   This acces point in Space (and time) is  the wormhole’s entrance in disguise as a Blue, circa 1954, Police Box.  The interior of the Tardis is safely stowed away at that “undisclosed location” far, far away.  The Physics of wormholes is well known and all that the Galifreyans need wrestle up  is  just a bit of exotic matter to keep the portal from collapsing.  That should not be difficult even for the most daft of Rassilon’s brood.

Even more Tardis speculation AFTER THE JUMP!
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Are We Seeing Evidence Of Distant “Flaws In Space-Time?”

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
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Could brief flashes of gamma explosions billions of light years away be the very seems of our cohesive universe?

According to theories of high-energy particle physics, the strings would have been created when matter in the very early universe went through what’s called phase changes, such as when liquid water freezes to become solid ice.

Cosmic strings, the theories state, are imperfections in space-time akin to the cracks that form as water freezes.

Although there is no observational evidence for cosmic strings, most theories predict that the strings should stretch through the universe to its horizon.

“You can picture a cosmic string as an extremely long conducting wire with the same length-scale of the universe,” Cheng said.

Most gamma explosions come from collapsing stars, but those last more much longer. These fireballs are different, shorter. Could they be the subtle imperfections in our universe?

[Nat Geo]