General Offer of Expertise

[BlackChakram]

My pleasure! One of the things I love most about astronomy is that truth is way stranger than fiction!

[s0meguy]

My pleasure! One of the things I love most about astronomy is that truth is way stranger than fiction!

Can you give some examples of this? Really strange but plausible situations would be fun to play with.

Another question: are "wormholes" or basically portals that human space ships could travel through to go to another far off part of space (like another galaxy) even remotely possible?

[BlackChakram]

Can you give some examples of this? Really strange but plausible situations would be fun to play with.

Another question: are "wormholes" or basically portals that human space ships could travel through to go to another far off part of space (like another galaxy) even remotely possible?

So the wormhole thing IS actually plausible, but definitely not doable. The problem is that the size of a wormhole in a black hole is ridiculously small. Like "black hole at the center of the galaxy would make a wormhole only a few nanometers in diameter" kind of thing. Easily good enough to send a tight-beam transmission, but likely not matter. Where they link is totally hypothetical, but I've heard everything from other wormholes to new universes. Whatever you want to do with them has probably been theorized.

As for examples of the truth being stranger than fiction, about half the things on this list are crazy weird.
Wikipedia List of Planet Types

[s0meguy]

So the wormhole thing IS actually plausible, but definitely not doable. The problem is that the size of a wormhole in a black hole is ridiculously small. Like "black hole at the center of the galaxy would make a wormhole only a few nanometers in diameter" kind of thing. Easily good enough to send a tight-beam transmission, but likely not matter. Where they link is totally hypothetical, but I've heard everything from other wormholes to new universes. Whatever you want to do with them has probably been theorized.

As for examples of the truth being stranger than fiction, about half the things on this list are crazy weird.
Wikipedia List of Planet Types

Thanks. Are there good reasons to assume that the creation of such artificial wormholes/portals that connect one part of space to another is physically impossible, no matter how advanced and beyond our understanding the technology used to create them is?

I wonder about the nature of the "electric planet" that is mentioned on that page, but there is no article for it, and I can't find anything about it either.

What could a "Chthonian planet" look like? (A gas giant stripped of gas, leaving only it's core) From my limited understanding, it would basically be a huge terrestial planet, possibly with a remnant of the gas giant's atmosphere, still having an atmospheric density multiple times that of Earth. I suppose it would be difficult for such a planet to support life, also because to become a Chthonian planet in the first place, it would have to be close enough to a star for it to strip away its atmosphere. From what I have read, the composition of gas giant cores is unknown, and is only speculated. What would be some strange properties that such a planet could have, especially ones that would influence life on it?

[BlackChakram]

Thanks. Are there good reasons to assume that the creation of such artificial wormholes/portals that connect one part of space to another is physically impossible, no matter how advanced and beyond our understanding the technology used to create them is?

Eh. The beauty of science fiction is that you can invent such technologies. But no, as of present, we have nothing. I suppose you'd need something to create antigravity, which isn't impossible according to the equations.

I wonder about the nature of the "electric planet" that is mentioned on that page, but there is no article for it, and I can't find anything about it either.

A lot of the exoplanetology is so new that you have to take it with a grain of salt. It' a lot of hypothetical extraction from limited data. I haven't heard of that particular one, either, honestly.

What could a "Chthonian planet" look like? (A gas giant stripped of gas, leaving only it's core) From my limited understanding, it would basically be a huge terrestial planet, possibly with a remnant of the gas giant's atmosphere, still having an atmospheric density multiple times that of Earth. I suppose it would be difficult for such a planet to support life, also because to become a Chthonian planet in the first place, it would have to be close enough to a star for it to strip away its atmosphere. From what I have read, the composition of gas giant cores is unknown, and is only speculated. What would be some strange properties that such a planet could have, especially ones that would influence life on it?

Your ideas on the Chthonians sound about right to me. We know that the hydrogen deeeeeeep in Jupiter start acting more like a liquid metal than a gas. I suppose that would all change once that atmosphere boils away, but I'd like to think that that could have SOME cool sci-fi like effect. Maybe a highly magnetized surface? I would also guess life would have to evolve to tolerate extreme heat, winds, and pressure changes. Maybe they'd only live underground. That surface sounds pretty harsh.