Two Worlds linked by Traversable Wormhole Relativity Problem

[Chirios]

Assuming an advanced civilisation on Earth, builds and transports two wormholes at sublight speed from Earth to Mars (assume standard modern shuttle type speeds); with wormhole E on earth and M on Spaceship/Mars, what would a traveller see when:

1) Looking through wormhole E as M travels through space

2) Looking through wormhole E while M is on Mars

Specifically, in situation 2 would the observer at E be looking backwards in time since the wormhole is in motion relative to the stationary observer at Earth?

[Feil]

Because E and M are always in (roughly) the same inertial frame, no funky time effects occur without a great deal of effort. Traditional sci-fi "superluminal travel just means getting there faster" applies for everything except for deliberate attempts to bounce a signal back in time. Superluminal travel as time travel is only an issue between frames which disagree on simultaneity, and E and M agree almost completely.

So, technically, yes, you break the laws of physics with your wormhole by having time potential travel and therefore violating causality. If you want faster than light travel, kick physics off the wagon and get on with it: you can't have FTL, real life physics, and causality in the same universe.

[Chirios]

Because E and M are always in (roughly) the same inertial frame, no funky time effects occur without a great deal of effort. Traditional sci-fi "superluminal travel just means getting there faster" applies for everything except for deliberate attempts to bounce a signal back in time. Superluminal travel as time travel is only an issue between frames which disagree on simultaneity, and E and M agree almost completely.

So, technically, yes, you break the laws of physics with your wormhole by having time potential travel and therefore violating causality. If you want faster than light travel, kick physics off the wagon and get on with it: you can't have FTL, real life physics, and causality in the same universe.

I wasn't trying to build an FTL thingie for a story, it was just a thought I had while reading a random newspaper.

[Eternal_Freedom]

THe womrhole does not break causality as long as you can't use it to send a message to yourself before you departed into the wormhole.

The wormhole connects two space-time events, not locations. So, if the wormhole travels fast enough to only take one hour to arrive at Mars, then anyone looking through the wormhole will only see one hour pass before the wormhole arrives at Mars, even if, say, six months of objective time has passed. So, moving through the wormhole from Earth to MArs moves you six months minus one hour into the future, and vice versa. For more information, look at the recent post in the "Viable FTL tech" thread, there's a link to an article-type thing that explains this.

[Imperial528]

I was going to make a slight nitpick about the use of "objective time" but then something else occurred to me that was much more interesting:

If the wormhole is experiencing one hour of travel time, where the solar system experiences it taking six months, you just did make a time machine. The beginning and destination are only light-minutes apart, and the time dilation has placed the wormhole mouth six months ahead after the wormhole only experienced an hour of the time that passed. So looking through the wormhole will show you Mars +6 months, and going through it will let you see Earth +6 months, then go back in and tell everyone about the terrible tragedy you heard about on the internet +6 months about some wormhole exploding six months.... Oh shit. And then you all die horribly as the product of a damn good amplifier spills forth from the wormhole mouth the in form of lots and lots of photons.

Or maybe it was a financial disaster combined with slightly smaller tragedy because the wormhole collapsed shortly after it was first ventured through, and the scout person doesn't have enough food for the six months minimum to get him or her back. RIP intern in a spacesuit.

Although do note I'm a bit tired so I probably lost something there.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ach, I forgot the time travel bit. I was basing my post on a description of wormholes moving across hundreds of light years, not light-minutes, so my numbers (which were total ass-pulls btw) may be off.

A better set of numbers might be a few seconds of subjective time and a little over three minutes of objective time. Of course, since it's within the solar system you would not need to shoot the wormhole off at relativistic speeds, you could just wait six months for the rocket to arrive.