Wormhole

[songar87]

If the path of the wormhole is supposed to be relativly straight, how come the transition sequence looks so twisted? Or is that as straight as it gets?

[RogueSeven]

just make to make it cool, if they just had someone going through some broing straight tunnel, that would be no fun at all

[Zatnikitelman]

They did it once in "2001" you see a reverse view of Joe getting de-particlized, the wormhole moving away from the screen instead of towards, then re-particilized. So yet, the wormhole is straight, it just looks cooler with twists and turns.

[RM_2000_A]

The misty tunnel effect just makes it look twisted. But that path is actually straight.

[jonty-comp]

It wouldn't matter, because you don't actually see that while you travel anyway, being sent as a cloud of 0s and 1s.

[talyn2k1]

It wouldn't matter, because you don't actually see that while you travel anyway, being sent as a cloud of 0s and 1s.

I think you're actually sent as energy rather than binary data.

If I had to come up with a reason for the wormhole not being straight, I'd say that there are maybe certain 'tides' or features to subspace which distort the wormhole so even though the path of the wormhole is straight from A to B but the features of subspace cause some distortions to occur, meaning there are some bends in it.

Not sure if that makes sense but hopefully you get what I mean, and someone out there with a little more eloquence can put it in a more sensical way.

[jds1982]

It's just to look cool, the people in the wormhole wouldn't see anything anyway, it's purely for the audience.

[Metonic]

If the path of the wormhole is supposed to be relativly straight, how come the transition sequence looks so twisted? Or is that as straight as it gets?

its in the script?

I would say...it only appears to be bending because Space is bending around it.

[Tupopoflungo]

When do they say that wormholes are straight?

[RM_2000_A]

The only other possible explanation for the bendy-bending would be its a plot hole.

*gets sucked into a wormhole/plothole*

[Tupopoflungo]

Why do you say that? I mean, if you say that the wormhole's exist in subspace, then the super heavy element would not have been able to latch on to the wormhole and effect Ktau's sun the way it did.

If they do not exist in subspace, then they exist in our space, which means they would have to bend in order to go around solid matter, otherwise we would be dragging things along in the wormhole all the time.

This is Possibly a plot hole, but I think more evidence is needed by people who are more...awake than me.

[Splitsecond]

There is no reason why a wormhole should be straight, a wormhole is simply a region of space that temporarily bridges two regions of space but is shorter then the standard route, a short cut does not need to be continuous or a straight line.

[RM_2000_A]

If I remember correctly, only our hyperspace engines work their magic in subspace. The wormholes are in real space, with all the nasty stuff like the superheavy elements.

[Tupopoflungo]

If I remember correctly, only our hyperspace engines work their magic in subspace. The wormholes are in real space, with all the nasty stuff like the superheavy elements.

This is exactly what I was saying, I gave two options, each with their own problems.

The way you are putting it is that the wormhole travels through our space, so then the wormhole could not possibly be straight, otherwise we would encounter things affecting the wormhole all the time, dragging things along with it and the like, and since we don't, it is possible to infer that the wormhole is not straight...

[Dobberman]

Wormholes do not pass through normal space! The very idea of a wormhole is that it takes a short cut through subspace. Look it up. It's been said on the show as well, the whole apple analogy that Sam tried to explain to Jack once.

As to why it's not 'straight', the lowest energy state of a wormhole would be to have the shortest distance between two points. Ordinarily, this would be a straight line, but when dealing with 4 dimensional space-time, this is not necessarily so (the shortest distance is called a geodesic, in 2D/3D space this is a straight line). Extra dimensions could make the route through subspace even more warped, making the shortest distance far from straight, so it's conceivable that the shortest route a wormhole could take would appear quite curved.