[Yasser]

Yasser  asked the Naked Scientists:

Dear Naked Scientists,
 
After reading that teleportation theoretically breaks down the structure of your molecules and rearranges on the other side while deleting the original copy, I am wondering if black holes could act as a short-cut to another place?

As far as I am currently aware, their are at least two types, one which is irregular and another which is more uniform as most commonly portrayed in media would it be possible to utilize black holes any time soon for transportation and if not, then why not utilize them for carbon disposal?

Being a student I hope your experience and knowledge can shed some light on this subject shrouded in darkness.

Thanks in Advance,
-Yasser in Canada

What do you think?

[Soul Surfer]

It is difficult to know where to start with a question like this.

There is a big difference between what science fiction writers talk about and what is theoretically possible. There is also an even bigger difference between what might be theoretically possible and what might be achieved in practice.  All your questions verge on the science fiction area and are probably not even theoretically possible in any controlled sense.

OK going through the event horizon of a large black hole will probably take you to another universe but you don't know what's there and cant come back to tell anyone.

[lyner]

After reading that teleportation theoretically breaks down the structure of your molecules and rearranges on the other side

You have to remember that there is no 'theory' at all in the film stuff. It's just an idea in fiction.
It is unwise to try to extrapolate on the ideas of a fiction writer unless they are based (a la Arthur C Clarke) on some good Science to start with.
There is a huge distinction between what may or may not happen to a single particle under extreme conditions and what you could do to a human body.

[Don_1]

It's pure fantasy.

Once upon a time SF writers came up with ideas which were, by and large, based on scientific fact or genuine theory, today, they seem to let their minds run wild.

[DoctorBeaver]

Once upon a time SF writers came up with ideas which were, by and large, based on scientific fact or genuine theory, today, they seem to let their minds run wild.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Going back to the start of SciFi you've got "The Time Machine" by H G Wells. Not much "scientific fact or genuine theory" involved there. Magazines such as "Fantastic Worlds" did much to promote SciFi from the 1930s up until the 1960s and had a mix of possible scenarios and wild fantasies (Asimov & Clarke among authors of the former). Following those were such as Phillip K Dick or "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, "Dune", and so on. Some work was based on current scientific theories, some not. Larry Niven worked extensively with Jerry Pournelle, a scientists at JPL and his Ringworld is a scientifically sound masterpiece.

It seems to me that throughout most of SciFi's history there have been ideas that are plausible and those that are not.

[lyner]

It's wise to assume "not", unless given a lot of supporting evidence.

[dentstudent]

It's wise to assume "not", unless given a lot of supporting evidence.

This should be seen as a general maxim for life!

[LeeE]

Re the Black-Hole aspect to this question, after thinking about something that someone else said here, in another thread (sorry I can't remember the person or the thread), I think that it's not possible to actually reach the Event-Horizon.

I think that if you plot the degree of curvature of space-time against the distance to the EH, at regular intervals along the curve, as opposed to intervals along the axis, the length of the curve is infinite ( haven't actually done this yet, so might be wrong, but it looks right in my head).  An object approaching the EH will travel along the curve, not the axis, and in effect distant observers only see the axis length, not the curve length.  This corresponds to space becoming infinitely 'compressed' around the EH, with nothing ever actually reaching it.  Although light and matter might seem to fall in to the BH, be 'consumed' and add to the mass of the BH, this would actually mean that the BH stays at it's original size and the light and matter that falls in to it is only trapped around the outside of the BH.  From the distant observer's point of view, looking at the axis length, the sum total of mass/energy of the BH and everything that has fallen in to it is still contained within a finite sized region of space.  One problem with this though, is that if the combination of the BH and it's trapped matter/energy is the source of it's gravity, that source is infinitely far away.

A weird idea is to contemplate what would happen if the BH was suddenly removed.