If you could create the a warp hole exit just above the warp hole entrance and dropped a ball into it,?

Question

How fast would the ball get?

Let's say a 16lb bowling ball.

Answer 1

Assuming that this happens in the air near the surface of the Earth, and the "warp hole" itself imparts no acceleration or friction, this would be equivalent to simply dropping the ball from a very tall height. As a result, the ball would reach its terminal velocity, at which the upwards force of drag (which increases with velocity) is equal and opposite to the downwards force of gravity (which is constant), and then continue to fall at that constant velocity. The world record speed for a skydiver is 382 mph; a bowling ball should have a higher terminal velocity than that. In February, a 14 lb bowling ball was dropped from a plane at an altitude of 820 ft in order to simulate a meteorite impact. The scientists involved mentioned that it would require a drop from about a half-mile to achieve terminal velocity, but they didn't say what they expected the magnitude of that velocity to be.

Answer 2

The weight doesn't really matter.

Unless the whole contraption is in a vacuum, the bowling ball will eventually top out at terminal velocity -- about 150 MPH. Friction against the air will prevent it from going any faster.

Things would really get interesting if you put the contraption in a vacuum, and let it run for a few months. Assuming it's still sitting on Earth, the falling ball would go from a lower orbital to a higher one as it falls through the bottom wormhole and comes out in the top. Presumably this loss of energy would take the form of a loss of heat, causing the ball's temperature to freeze in short order. And as the ball's velocity gets to a comfortable fraction of lightspeed, you'd find the ball's mass increasing, as well.

For more information, you might try looking for the essay "Teleportation in Theory and Practice" by Larry Niven.

Answer 3

Depends. Is there gravity? How much? What's the atmosphere like? If we're talking about some fictional device on earth, it would accelerate until it reached its terminal velocity. This would be where the drag in the air equals the force of gravity on the ball.

Answer 4

I'm not sure bc i have never seen a warp hole and probably never will