Keeping Two Wormhole Mouths Apart: Mutual Tides, Orbital Periods and Minimum Separation
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: A wormhole mouth is not a weightless doorway: its gravitational mass parameter is set by its radius, and for a ten-metre throat that parameter is 6.73e+27 kilograms, of planetary order. Two such mouths attract, orbit and tidally stress anything between them. The separation at which the mutual tidal acceleration across a two-metre traveller falls to one Earth gravity is 5.68e+05 metres; at one hundred kilometres the tide is 1.83e+02 gravities and the pair's mutual orbital period is 2.10e-01 seconds. The verdict is that a mouth pair is a planetary-mass binary system in its own right, demanding separations of hundreds of kilometres or continuous station-keeping, and that placing mouths conveniently close, on a planetary surface or in a single facility, subjects the neighbourhood to tides the throat's own design never budgeted for. Computed, not measured.
Author: Aldred, William Alexander
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225782027
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