The Nemesis Wormhole

[Space Cadet]

I just down loaded the 2320 AD game and already I have an idea.

What if there was a traversable wormhole obiting a class M V star. The wormhole itself is 23,722 km in diameter, or it would be if the space around it wasn't so warped. the other end of the wormhole orbits another red dwarf star 65 million years in the past, the hypothesized Nemesis, the very star responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, it has,'t done its dirty work yet, but both the Sol System and the Nemesis system are both swarming with an unusual number of comets as the Star Nemesis is in the Oort Cloud disturbing the orbits of otherwise dormant comets. the future end of the wormhole is at the most distant point of the American Arm, while the past end is passing through the Oort cloud of the late Cretaceious Sol System, this puts it within range of stutterwarp ships. The civilization which build the stable wormhole is long gone having distroyed itself, only rubble remains in the Nemesis system now, very few working examples of their ancient technology can be found as that civilization destroyed itself millions of years prior to Nemesis's passing through of Sol's Oort Cloud.

Also surrounding the Sol system are random star systems of a similar stellar type distribution as surrounds it in the 2320 era, except none of those are the same stars.

So who do you think might explore this work first?

The US Space Force
Some private company
Australia
Or some other power or faction?

How might news of this discovery be received?

 

[Nearside]

The news would probably not be received, as it would be immediately red actioned and kept out of the hands of, well, everyone.

If the future (present?) end is in the American Arm, it seems most likely that they would find it first, or a private organization or foundation would have found it.

However, something that warps space like this would be visible light years away, if only for the gravitational distortion it would create. I can't imagine it would have been missed, unless it only recently came into existance, in which case the gravitational distortions would still be progressing outwards at c. Your hypothesis states that it was created a very long time ago.

An interesting idea.

 

[TWILIGHT]

An interesting idea indeed. I'd play a game with that as it's premise... but not 2320AD. The thing I like about 2300/2320 is it's reasonably hard edged realism. I personally feel that this takes it away from the milieu somewhat so i'd prefer it not to be included.
Still, a great idea none the less for other games... trinity maybe or traveller? keep at it. maybe a game of your own would better use this? Get writing!

 

[Nearside]

I'd also add that the gravitational displacement of the oort cloud would/could have occurred several million (or hundreds of millions) of years before the 65 million date for the death of the dinosaurs. It may well have taken that long for the stray comet to move into an orbit that would hit the earth, and there may have been several (hundred/thousand) passes before the impact. The timeline is then a bit off. Also, there would need to be more than 65 million years for the stars to be completely different around Sol.

 

[Space Cadet]

Originally posted by TWILIGHT:
An interesting idea indeed. I'd play a game with that as it's premise... but not 2320AD. The thing I like about 2300/2320 is it's reasonably hard edged realism. I personally feel that this takes it away from the milieu somewhat so i'd prefer it not to be included.
Still, a great idea none the less for other games... trinity maybe or traveller? keep at it. maybe a game of your own would better use this? Get writing!

The reason why I want to do it in 2320AD is because I want "Hard Edged" Time travel. I do not want some inventor building a time machine in his basement and traveling up and down the timeline at will, that is what I call soft time travel, and that would work fine with Traveller. Soft time travel has a number of problems with it, namely the ability to go back in time willy nilly and do over actions your characters didn't quite get right.

In this scenario, the time travellers didn't build the time machine, they don't understand quite how it works, it is a given. The wormhole connects one time period with another, the users can't change this setting as the technology is way beyond them Perhaps the size of the wormhole ought to be 5,937 km in circumference instead, having a positive mass of thousands of suns.

The wormhole doesn't really have a diameter. At the neck of the wormhole, light is bent into a circle when it travels perpendicular to the direction of the wormhole's gravity. Inside the light circle is some exotic matter of negative mass. as you travel deeper into the wormhole, this exotic matter reduces the pull of gravity and then reverses it. The spaceship then climbs back out of the gravity well as the force of gravity increases in the opposite direction, crossing a second light circle gravity then slows down the spaceship's tremendous speed so that is ends up with a non-relatavistic speed similar to the one it started out with. Look at the wormhole from the outside and you see a "fisheye" 360 view of the cosmos to which the wormhole leads. I think any star that accompanies the wormhole would orbit the wormhole rather than the wormhole orbit it.

The purpose of the wormhole being so large is to allow passage of any starship that might be built in the 2320 setting. I don't know what this Trinity thing you are talking about, I am not really interested in leaning a whole new RPG just so I can use a different setting. The attraction of the 2320 setting is that it uses a varient of the D20 roleplaying system, which means I can then use the dinosaurs from the Dinosaur Menagery thats on the Wizards d20 forums. A bunch of people have been posting a bunch of stats for different dinosaurs, and I want to put that to good use. So the wormhole has a thousand suns worth of mass, maybe that explains why there is a derth of stars around the American Arm, as some mass was used up in building the wormhole. Perhaps it ought to be farther away than 1 light year also, so that it influences the orbits of comets, but doesn't tear the solar system apart.

 

[Space Cadet]

Originally posted by Stephen Herron:
I'd also add that the gravitational displacement of the oort cloud would/could have occurred several million (or hundreds of millions) of years before the 65 million date for the death of the dinosaurs. It may well have taken that long for the stray comet to move into an orbit that would hit the earth, and there may have been several (hundred/thousand) passes before the impact. The timeline is then a bit off. Also, there would need to be more than 65 million years for the stars to be completely different around Sol.

This takes place over a time period that may be a million years or so. The speed of the comets is comparable to the speed of the wormhole as it passes by, so its going to be in the neighborhood for a long time. Also I didn't say any of the comets hit Earth as of yet, just that they were disturbed, so this may be 66 million years ago, it doesn't make that great deal of difference as the dinosaurs were around for a long time and similar dinosaurs will be around at 66 million years ago as 65 million years ago. The point is not so that the PCs will be around to witness the impact of one of the comets, but so that they'll see some dinosaurs.

Also free will is assumed, the wormhole causes a split in the timeline, so the exticntion of dinosaurs by means of a comet on the other side of the wormhole is by no means inevitable.

Also since this version of the Solar System resembles the past, that means the Belters will get interested as they will know which asteroids contain the valuable ores as they have mined them in the future solar system already, so they can go into the past and mine them again knowing exactly where they are! The asteroids and vacuum worlds of the solar system don't really change all that much over 65 million years, the Earth does, but not so much the Moon, or Mars or Mercury, or the asteroids, a few less craters perhaps. The past Earth would make a tempting colonization target, and it would make a nice outpost for exploring that 50 light year sphere of stars that surrounded Sol 65 million years ago. This will take time though as most planets aren't hospitable to life.

 

[Nearside]

The part about mining asteroids twice seems unlikely unless the past in your scenario is actually a parallel universe, what with the Grandfather Paradox in play (you can't mine the same thing twice, because otherwise, what did you mine in the future, if it was already mined in the past, etc). You mention a split in the timeline, so that is probably when the parallel timeline splits off. That being the case, nothing they do in the past could change anything in their present - or does it?

I also don't see that colonizing a past earth would be tempting to anyone at all, unless they were sure it was a parallel universe, otherwise there would be too much danger to the present day.

Other than historical interest, I'm not sure I'd see the value of this trip to the past, and in fact, most organizations would probably advise against such a dangerous course of action.

Also, the mass of the wormhole - this could not have remained hidden. Every government and foundation would know about the object, though they may not realize what it is. It's just too massive to stay hidden, and something that big would be influencing things light years away. Remember, that when traveling back and forth via stutterwarp, the movement of the stars relative to each other speeds up, and subtle gravitational influences are much easier to spot. It's the basis behind the discovery of what was going on with the AGRA at the Pleiades (and you could blame this Wormhole on AGRA too).

I'd agree with Twilight - this isn't standard (or even close to) 2300/2320 background, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a good thing to hang your hat from.

The UK TV show "Primeval" might be of interest to you (time travel, portals/wormholes), as might an old comic strip from the comic 2000AD (again from the UK) called Flesh - it's about 30 years old, and dealt with desperate human time-travelers who farmed dinosaurs for a hungry future.

 

[Space Cadet]

Eta Carinae is about 100 solar masses, so 10 Eta Carinaes would be required to make a Wormhole this big. Once a black hole forms, there is nothing preventing it from getting larger as if feeds on mass however. Perhaps 100 solar masses will suffice, additional mass could be drawn from vacuum fluxuations. A lump of exotic matter might be formed at the core of a would be black hole, its repulsive gravitational field would prevent the core from collapsing into a singularity, though the matter density would get strong enough to form a photon orbit around each end of the wormhole. An object falling into the wormhole would accelerate close to the speed of light as it would into a black hole, cross the "photon circle" radius, and the gravity would rapidly diminish and reverse as it approached the exotic matter core slowing down the space ship. (the matter and exotic matter would be mostly of the Dark variety.) The ship would pass through the core and then be repelled outwards and as it moved away from the core, the repulsive gravity would diminish as it passed through layers of dark matter and attractive gravity would rapidly increase until it reached the light circle radius on the other end and then gravity would diminish as the ship moved away from the wormhole opening. That is how I imagine what a trip through a wormhole would be like.

The openings of the wormhole would appear spherical but not black as a black hole would. Light would pass through the wormhole and an observer with a telescope would be able to see what's on the other side including stars, planets and spaceships that may be approaching and receding on the other end. As one fell into the wormhole the circle representing the other cosmos would get larger and expand outward to take up half the sky, and the other half of the sky would shrink correspondingly. Nothing actually gets hidden by the wormhole opening, a object behind the wormhole opening would get its light bent completely around it. So a wormhole mouth would seem to push images of the background stars aside as it interposed itself between the star and the observer, while stars as seen from the cosmos from the other side would be seen to shine from within the disk of the wormhole.

There would be no perceived "membrane" of the wormhole that the ship would pass through, such as was shown in Sliders or Stargate the starship would seem to be passing through nothing but vacuum over the whole trip.

The cosmos left behind would shrink into its own "fisheye" wormhole opening. Travelling through a wormhole would be just like travelling through empty space with the exception of all the gravitatinal influences that are felt.

Your right about the wormhole affecting the stars around it. Astronomers would observe that there was a massive unseen object here, though what that object was they couldn't say. Using the stutterwarp rules though, the gravitational influence of a wormhole would count as a star for the purpose of bleeding off excess radiation that is accumulated while in stutterwarp.

As for the effect on surrounding objects, as we all know, certain liberties were taken with the near star list such that it doesn't reflect 100% of what is out there, introducing a new object, such as a wormhole, would not be too radical a thing to do considering that. There are not many stars in the direction of the American arm anyway, and we can assume the same about the past Sol system on the other end. Along one direction there will be a chain of stars within reach of the stutterwarp, but in the direction of the wormhole, excepting the wormhole itself, there is a uncrossable void via stutterwarp, so in a sense, the space where the wormhole leads to is sort of like a continuation of the American arm.

As for aliens, there are some D20 aliens that would fill in nicely such as the Sesheyan, the T'sa and the Weren. I would eschew the more "humanoid" aliens such as Aleerins and Fraal. The Vrusk fits in with the bug-eyed alien template too much, so three alien races are good for starters, especially since humans would be newcomers to this past region of space.

Werens fill in the quota for humanoid races and come as close to resembling humans as we want to come. I would use the most realistic methods for generating new star systems, so explorers would have to sift through alot of worthless rocks before they find the actual garden worlds.

I'm not sure how the government could restrict access to the wormhole, especially if they are not the one's who found it first. Traders and merchants do their own fair bit of exploring and surveying as well as the government. The first givaway that what they actually discovered a past Earth is the familiar face of Earth's moon which they'll see when approaching the planet.

It seems to me that if you have both time travel and free will, you must, as a necessity, have parallel timelines. You don't actually change your own past when you do something in the apparent past via a wormhole, and since they time differential of the Wormhole cannot be changed or altered in any way by humans or any of the other races in space at present, you treat it as just another region of space.

Some people might be afraid of altering history, while other people might just be curious and make the attempt. One low-key experiment would be to send a probe on the surface of the past Earth's moon, and then look for traces of it on the present Earth's moon. If no traces of it can be found on Present Earth's moon, then they'll know they are dealing with a parallel timeline, and not the actual past.

 

[Space Cadet]

Originally posted by Stephen Herron:
I'd agree with Twilight - this isn't standard (or even close to) 2300/2320 background, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a good thing to hang your hat from.

The UK TV show "Primeval" might be of interest to you (time travel, portals/wormholes), as might an old comic strip from the comic 2000AD (again from the UK) called Flesh - it's about 30 years old, and dealt with desperate human time-travelers who farmed dinosaurs for a hungry future.

We each have out own 2320 campaigns and the GM should feel free to alter it to suit. I am just sharing my idea on one such alteration. What effect this would have on the political sphere would not be all that great, especially since there are no recoverable usable technological items left over from the civilization that built the wormhole. There is nothing that can be used as a weapons and which can alter the balance of power. As for the intelligent races on the other side of the wormhole, that might have some effect, but new alien races can be assumed to be discovered anyway as humans move outwards from the sun, and any additional aliens discovered on the other side of the wormhole would just be more aliens, they can come through the wormhole to the future as well. The wormhole is too massive to be altered or destroyed by anything the humans or other races can come up with, it may be possible to guard the opening, but space is vast. You can't just station a naval blockade outside the opening of the wormhole, the gravity is to intense for that. Any ships that are just outside are either falling in or falling out. if the ships are stationed far enough out so as to be able to hold their position, the territory to cover would be just too vast. It would be hard to stop just inside the neck of the wormhole and place mines for instance, to do so would be equivalent of sending something extremely close tot he speed of light via rocket power alone, the neck of the wormhole is also 2,000 km at its narrowest region.

 

[Nearside]

It might be an interesting opportunity to explore the "Medusan and Enemy" races from the 2300 background.

 

[Space Cadet]

I'll have to read up on them more closely, I've basically skimmed the PDF. I also have the old boxed edition of 2300 from GDW. There is a software program called Stars Unlimited which I use to rapidly churn out mainworld stats for traveller, I can use that for whats surrounding the prehistoric Earth. The stars there will of course be completely different from those in the near star list now.

 

[Space Cadet]

Of the three races I mentions, only one is space faring according to the D20 Future. The convenient location of the Wormhole would likely cause the PCs to concentrate on prehistoric Earth first.

 

[Nearside]

I'm quite familiar with the races, which originally featured in Alternity.

As suggested in the other thread, this probably should be moved to the "In My Traveller Universe" forum.

 

[TWILIGHT]

or the 2300AD non canon forum.

 

[Nearside]

I will say this - Space Cadet, you've thought this through. I like the idea of the experimental probes, especially the one on the moon - I'm reminded of Sentinel/2001 when the monolith is found on the moon. Quite an interesting twist if it's actually from the future, even if it's only a couple of hundred years.

As for the wormhole, maybe it couldn't be defended or blockaded as such, but military-grade equipment would be the only way to get close enough to do anything or useful.

Information is probably what would be used to defend or hide the wormhole. Sophisticated armies of hackers and AI viruses would be on the constant look out for evidence of interest in the area, and a great deal of disinformation would be propagated to "virtually hide" the Nemesis Wormhole.

Once news got out, although there would be a great deal of interest, an international contingent of warships would probably be enough to deal with the curious.

 

[Space Cadet]

I think the Wormhole would probably be initially explored with a probe.

A Trilon SSV-21, perhaps employed by NASA if that organization is still around, would enter into orbit around the wormhole opening just outside "the Wall", and from there it would drop in a probe. The probe would measure things like radiation, gravitational stresses etc and send that information via telemetry back to the SSV-21. Once through the wormhole, it would chart the stars and continue sending telemetry back to the SSV-21 or it would drop right back through the wormhole and return to the survey vessel.

The crew of the Survey vessel would take some time studying the data gathered by the probe, at this time they realize that the object in question is a wormhole leading to some other part of the galaxy, though to which part they aren't sure, they establish that it is safe for a manned vessel to travel through. The captain of the ship holds a meeting and discusses the various issues involved and then polls the crew to get their opinions on what to do.

If the crew and captain are agreeable the survey vessel crosses the stutterwarp threshold into the gravitational influence of the wormhole and then drops. The gravity field accelerates the ship to relatavistic velocities while the crew take refuge in the storm shelter from the cosmic rays generated by the immense gravity field of the wormhole. The ship climbs out of the gravity field past the stutterwarp threshold on the other side of the wormhole. The ship maneuvers a safe distance away from the wormhole opening and then starts surveying the stars, trying to get a fix on their position, when they fail to get a fix on any familiar star patterns they look with their more powerful instruments at thesurrounding galaxies, several similar galaxies are discovered, their orientation is wrong and their distances are wrong. a galaxy resembling M31 the Andromeda galaxy is surveyed, it is farther away than it should be, the survey team is not even sure they are still in the Milky Way galaxy, they study the data some more trying to find pattern matches to ascertain their position, but none of the other galaxies on their charts provides the proper perspective.

There is a bright G2 V star nearby, well within the ship's stutterwarp range, they plot all the nearby stars trying to ascertain their position in x,y,z coordinates measured in light years through their paralax observations and they carefully record the position of the wormhole opening so they can get back to it, and then they engage the stutterwarp drive and head to the nearby star.

Upon entering the star system in question, they notice 4 gas giants, two large and two small in very familiar orbits, there are four inner planets as well, their sizes familiar, their orbits familiar, the third one has a large moon, and oxygen is detected in the third planet's atmosphere.

The survey vessel approaches the third planet. The moon immediately registers as Earth's moon, its features are readily recognizable, but the stars are all wrong. The starship begins hailing the surface of the planet but it gets no response on the radio, it finds no space stations or satellites orbiting the planet. the SSV-21 parks in geosynchronius orbit over the equator above the western hemisphere. the continent shapes look somewhat familiar. North and South America are disconnected, the Atlantic ocean is smaller, North America is partially submerged and is dominated by a great inland sea, the Rockies are visible. A lander is dispatched to the shore of the great inland sea of North America. This would be the SLV-50, it lands along the shore of the great inland sea in a clearing of tall grasses.

The Mule Corp Explorer is rolled out of the Cargo bay and the crew of 4 boards her and it travels cautiously along the shoreline observing the various animals that are immediately identified as dinosaurs, some primitive toothy birds are sighted as well as flying reptiles. All of this is photographed, some samples are taken and small animals are captured, some alive, while others are disected in the ATV's laboratory. If the crew is not careful they may have some dangerous encounters with some large predators.

After a week or so of exploration, the expedition leader writes a report, they roll the ATV back into the Cargo bay of the lander. the lander takes off to meet with the Survey vessel, and using its charts, the Survey vessel heads back to the Wormhole and returns to the American Arm and then to headquarters, where he is debriefed and the higher ups are then consulted about what to do next.

 

[TWILIGHT]

Damn! Thought I was gonna get first post in a new section!

 

[Nearside]

I gotta say, if I was the captain of that mission, I would NOT let anyone leave the ship, let alone go down on a survey mission. If I even had the remotest inkling of this being in the past, I'd do a high orbit recon, and get the heck outta dodge. I don't think anyone would be so reckless as to interact with the ancient Earth in that manner, not until the parallel-ness of the timelines was established.

Also, remind me - the probe would have been sent through first. I'd imagine that by taking pulsar readings/various related things like that, they would know long before going through in person, that the other side of the wormhole was in a different time as well as place. It might be confusing initially, but they'd be able to map enough stars/pulsars/radio sources via the probe to establish that fairly quickly, right?

 

[Space Cadet]

Actually you did. My previous post got carried over from the other forum. You are the first to respond in this forum.

Ok here we are assuming a setting identical to 2320AD but with the addition of a massive transversible wormhole and another near star list for stars surrounding "Dinosaur Earth" whose coordinates are assumed by convention to be (0.0, 0.0, 0.0)

 

[gavindady]

Hmm. There are a few funky things to consider.

Firstly, there will be a threshold in the wormhole where you stop being in one timeline and start being in another. Anything passing this threshold would change the total energy of the two time frames, removing energy equal to the object from one and adding it to the other. Unless you have some sort of balancing mechanism you are going to be breaching the first law of thermodynamics.

Secondly, you are going to end up with two lots of the same matter in the same universe. For instance, the Tantulum in the drive coils of the ship will be present both on the coil, and still in the deposits below the ground. That raises all sorts of paradoxical issues and means that you need to be darn sure of your determinacy principle before you send anything through - the butterfly effect over 65 million years.

Thirdly, I wouldn't want to use my stutterwarp any where near that thing. Who knows what kind of funky interactions you'll get.

G.