Wormholes, General Relativity, Quantum Gravity, Theory, and Empiricism.

[Odin2005]

This thread reminded me of something that has been bothering me about speculation regarding wormholes and similar speculative objects derived from playing with the equations of General Relativity.

It is well know that General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are incompatible with each other and thus both must be approximate aspects of a theory of Quantum Gravity. My question is: Why should we assume that these speculated objects, like wormholes, that are allowed by the equations of General Relativity will be allowed by a theory of Quantum Gravity are are not just mathematical artifacts of the Equations of General Relativity? After all, one can use the equations of Classical Mechanics about things moving faster than light that we know cannot exist because of General Relativity, which superseded Classical Mechanics.

[BlooInBloo]

1. There's little point in having such discussion with people who aren't remotely familiar...

with the henscratches of it all.

[HereSince1628]

2. Every theory is vulnerable to death by replicable empirical observation.

When the mathematical models fail, concluding reality must be wrong is not among the choices.

[Ratty]

3. I think physicists expect that to happen

I was reading just the other day that many physicists believe that a quantum theory of gravity will likely disallow black holes, or at least black holes as they understand them now. IIRC a new theory may eliminate the singularity, i.e., no more infinite density at the center of the thing. Same thing with wormholes. Since they violate causality many physicists expect them to go poof with a new theory of quantum gravity.

[BadgerKid]

4. I speculate there's more physics to be found.

In other branches of physics, the terms of expressions producing singularities are often taken as zero because otherwise it would be unphysical. So, it could be that any unifying theory needs to have singularities can be discarded under the appropriate conditions, resulting in the physics we observe.

This is pretty much outside my...um...field (pardon the pun).