Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories

[james_davis_nicoll]

Plenty of exciting hypotheses eventually fall out of scientific favor — but not before they've found their way into science fiction!

Five SF Novels Inspired by Disproven Scientific Theories

Comments

[philrm]

I'm not clear on when those calculations were made. Mostly post-2000(ish). By the time Nolan was making Interstellar, pretty much everyone who actually does research in the field had come to the conclusion that there are sound physics reasons for believing that you can't have negative energy densities (the thing that is actually required for 'exotic matter' to keep the throat of a macroscopic wormhole open) on large enough spatial and temporal scales, i.e., big enough and lasting for a long enough time, to have traversable wormholes. That's why for Interstellar's wormhole Kip Thorne used the suggestion that if our four-dimensional spacetime is actually embedded in a higher-dimensional 'bulk', it might be possible to hold a wormhole open without needing exotic matter in our four-dimensional spacetime. But that suggestion reflects ignorance of the physics of such a universe as much as anything else.

And no way in hell am I getting in a discussion with the guy over at Reactor who thinks the Alcubierre drive and exotic matter-stabilized wormholes are still a thing.

[patrick_morris_miller]

Yah, FTL Reply Guy really takes away my will to fight the forum software there.

[(Anonymous)]

Doesn't Elizabeth Bear use the Alcubierre drive concept in her White Space novels? And those are quite recent.

-Awesome Aud