July 03 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Other Year: General Rating: 8 Hot
A glance at what life may be like ten millennia from now, by
Dick Pelletier
Of course, nobody can predict exactly how the future will unfold
in 10,000 years, but by tracking technology advances expected in
the coming centuries, we see changes that will transform humanity
into super-intelligent beings focused on developing space,
exploring universes, and traveling through time. 
Imagine if you could peek in on the dinosaurs’ first-hand, enjoy
an exotic vacation thousands of light years from Earth, or jump
into a parallel universe where another you is living a far more
exciting life than yours – and you could stay there if you
like.
For years, scientists around the world have bandied about the
revolutionary idea that future humans could zip across the universe
using wormholes as high-speed portals enabling faster-than-light
travel to explore space, enter other universes, and witness the
past and future.
Wormholes enable travel between its two openings. One end of the
wormhole stays home while the other is carted away at sub-light
velocities to the destination, connecting the two locations through
a tunnel in warped space-time. A person enters the wormhole, and
depending on the connection, exits to a remote destination in
space, another time in the past or future, or into a parallel
universe.
Consensus among most scientists has been that wormholes are so
destructive; people would be torn to subatomic bits if they tried
such a thing. However, a new paper by University of Utah physicist
Lior Burko now raises the possibility that wormholes may not
annihilate all matter, and the potential for hyperspace travel
could one day be realized. (cont.)
“One possibility is that wormholes may allow us to travel to
very remote places in the universe, or to another universe
entirely,” said Burko. “It depends on the topology of the universe,
which today, we do not know very well… I’m not arguing it’s a
practical thing to do, but in thousands of years from now it may
become simpler.”
In Burko’s scheme, wormholes are theoretical constructs
equivalent to tunnels, or shortcuts, between distant points of the
universe, different places in time, or even parallel universes.
This idea isn’t new. Wormholes were popularized by Caltech
physicist Kip Thorne in the 1980s and were the interstellar vehicle
of choice in the Jody Foster movie, Contact.
Princeton physicist Richard Gott in his book Time Travel in
Einstein’s Universe said, “I characterize it like a speed bump. You
hit it, and you come out in a region of time travel, another
universe, or somewhere a great distance away. These are interesting
possibilities.”
Though construction of wormholes is beyond present day
abilities, advances in today’s artificial intelligence, combined
with new nanomaterials promise to one day provide humanity with
superior nanoelectronic brains where intelligence is governed by
physics, not biology. Sometime between the years 3000 and 12000,
many futurists believe that civilization could be capable of
harnessing wormholes.
Could a forward vision like this ever happen? Given the rise of
religious fundamentalism and a growing anti-science movement, there
could be rough sledding ahead, but positive-thinkers believe that
with determination and good fortune, this “magical future” will
become reality.
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