Actually, if we figure out how to stabilize traversible wormholes, the colonizable volume goes up faster than (ct)^3. I’m not sure exactly how much faster, but the idea is, you send one mouth of the wormhole rocketing off at relativistic speed, and due to time dialation, the home-end of the gate opens up allowing travel to the destination in less than half the time it would take a lightspeed signal to travel to the destination and back.
Assuming zero space inflation, the “exit” mouth of the wormhole can’t travel faster than c with respect to the entry. So for expansion purposes (where you don’t need (can’t, actually, due to lack of space) to go back), you’re limited to c (radial) expansion. Which is the same as without wormholes.
In other words, the volume covered by wormholes expands as (c×t)³ relative to when you start sending wormholes. The number of people is exponential relative to when you start reproducing. Even if you start sending wormholes a long time before you start reproducing exponentially, you’re still going to fill the wormhole-covered volume.
(The fault in your statement is that you can go in “less” than half the time only for travel within the volume already covered by wormholes. For arbitrarily far distances you still need to wait for the wormhole exit to reach there, with is still below c.)
Space inflation doesn’t help that much. Given long enough time, the “distance” between the wormhole entry and exit point can grow at more than c (because the space between the two expands; the exit points still travel below c). In other words, far parts of the Universe can fall outside your event horizon, but the wormhole can keep them still accessible (for various values of can...). This can allow you unbounded-growth in the volume of space for expansion (exponentially, if the inflation is exponential), but note that the quantity of matter accessible is still the same volume that was in your (c×t)³ (without inflation) volume of space.
Strange7 is referring to this essay, especially section 6.
Wormholes sent to the Andromeda at near light speeds arrive in approx year 2,250,000 co-moving time, but in year 15 empire-time (setting year zero at start of expansion).
I still don’t get how you can get more than c×t³ as a colonized volume.
With wormholes you could travel within that volume very quickly, which will certainly help you approach c-speed expansion faster, since engine innovations at home can be propagated to the border immediately. And, of course, your volume will be more “useful” because of the lower communication costs (time-wise, & presuming worm-holes are not very expensive otherwise). But I don’t see how you can expand the volume quicker than c, since the border expansion will still be limited by it.
(Disclaimer: I didn’t read everything there, mostly the section you pointed out.)
Actually, if we figure out how to stabilize traversible wormholes, the colonizable volume goes up faster than (ct)^3. I’m not sure exactly how much faster, but the idea is, you send one mouth of the wormhole rocketing off at relativistic speed, and due to time dialation, the home-end of the gate opens up allowing travel to the destination in less than half the time it would take a lightspeed signal to travel to the destination and back.
Assuming zero space inflation, the “exit” mouth of the wormhole can’t travel faster than c with respect to the entry. So for expansion purposes (where you don’t need (can’t, actually, due to lack of space) to go back), you’re limited to c (radial) expansion. Which is the same as without wormholes.
In other words, the volume covered by wormholes expands as (c×t)³ relative to when you start sending wormholes. The number of people is exponential relative to when you start reproducing. Even if you start sending wormholes a long time before you start reproducing exponentially, you’re still going to fill the wormhole-covered volume.
(The fault in your statement is that you can go in “less” than half the time only for travel within the volume already covered by wormholes. For arbitrarily far distances you still need to wait for the wormhole exit to reach there, with is still below c.)
Space inflation doesn’t help that much. Given long enough time, the “distance” between the wormhole entry and exit point can grow at more than c (because the space between the two expands; the exit points still travel below c). In other words, far parts of the Universe can fall outside your event horizon, but the wormhole can keep them still accessible (for various values of can...). This can allow you unbounded-growth in the volume of space for expansion (exponentially, if the inflation is exponential), but note that the quantity of matter accessible is still the same volume that was in your (c×t)³ (without inflation) volume of space.
Strange7 is referring to this essay, especially section 6.
I still don’t get how you can get more than c×t³ as a colonized volume.
With wormholes you could travel within that volume very quickly, which will certainly help you approach c-speed expansion faster, since engine innovations at home can be propagated to the border immediately. And, of course, your volume will be more “useful” because of the lower communication costs (time-wise, & presuming worm-holes are not very expensive otherwise). But I don’t see how you can expand the volume quicker than c, since the border expansion will still be limited by it.
(Disclaimer: I didn’t read everything there, mostly the section you pointed out.)