New user + what is up with all the mentions of fractals?

[Drashner1]

I don't get this. Of course the tidal forces aren't spread evenly through the WH, but what does the center of the ship have to do with their distribution? To a piece of the ship on the edge of the ship, the "bubble"/"eye wall" of highest force should be centered around it and not the center of the ship. If you're sure that it has to be centered on the middle of the ship, why is it centered there? (To use your hurricane analogy, why does the hurricane follow the train?) And why do the tidal forces seem to suddenly jump up from "not much" to "molecular dissociation" at the edge of the "bubble"? I had thought that the "bubble" you're talking about is actually the point where the accumulated tidal stress over the whole ship up to that point gets to be too much for the stuff in between, and that stuff breaks away. I see no reason for it to disintegrate once it's detached. Sure, the ship is going to fragment, but what's so special about the center of the ship for your tidal "eye wall" to be centered around it specifically???

I am so confused!

Ok, let's back up a bit and try a different approach here.

Firstly - just to clear up this point - it's not the center of the ship that's important, it's the center of the wormhole. And the tidal forces involved don't operate the same way they would around something like a planet or black hole. The wormhole is actually an example of 'space-time engineering' - space-time has been altered during the creation/expansion of the wormhole to operate in what we might deem an 'unnatural' or 'artificial' manner.

However, to get back to that different approach, let's consider that graphic that you posted earlier in the discussion:



As previously discussed, this is not a literal image of a wormhole, but a simplified 2d representation of a much more complex 3d state of affairs. But it does help with visualization and may be useful here. You could also perhaps visualize this as two actual cones (maybe giant versions of the bright orange ones used in roadwork in the US?) connected at their tips - but whatever works best for you is fine. Anyway...

Imagine this diagram as representing an OA wormhole - The widest part of each conical shape represents the 'edge' of the wormhole that you see when approaching it from 'normal' space. The narrowest part represents the Throat. The grid lines represent the tidal forces present in the wormhole. At the widest part/edge of the wormhole they are spread out and diffuse, but as you move into it they become more and more concentrated and more and more powerful. But they are all (in terms of what we need to worry about) contained within the grid lines or the walls of the cones - the interior of the wormhole as defined by the gridlines is free of lines/free of tidal forces. You do NOT want to touch those lines/the walls of the cones.

Based on our previous discussion, let's say the narrowest part of the Throat is 2km across.

What happens if a spaceship (let's have it be a circle in the diagram or a sphere in our imaginary double road cone thing) that is 4km in diameter tries to pass thru the wormhole?

I'll pause here to give you time to respond.

Hope this helps,

Todd