by nature boy » Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:48 am
i still don't think you get what i'm saying and how i mean that a wormhole acts different from a transwarp conduit and the two aren't really comparable. i wasn't saying that a wormhole IS a fold, i said it's "like" a fold, in that you are transported from one point to another. let's put it this way:
space is a building. to travel from one point to another, you have to climb stairs. it sucks because it's slow and the building is so tall, and the stairs wind back and forth and all that jazz. there is no other way to get from the bottom of the building to the top. the shortest and quickest route is up the stairs.
a transwarp conduit is like installing an escalator replacing those stairs. you still travel the same exact route, but at a faster rate. you still go through each step, each floor, each hallway and landing on the escalator like you would each light year as you would if you were travelling at your regular speed. the end result is that you get to where you're going much quicker than you would by conventional means.
a wormhole is like an elevator that cuts through that conventional route. you travel a totally different weird magic route that cuts through all conventional space but still appear at point b somehow. you bypass each step, each floor, each hallway and landing that you would pass through conventionally and get you to point b. so it's not a "fold" in space as you describe the geodesic fold is, but it "acts" like a fold in that it shortens the distance from point a to point b a great deal (like if you were to have two dots drawn on a piece of paper, folded that paper in half so the points are closer but not touching).
so the huge difference in the two and the reason why i say that they're not the same whatsoever is that a transwarp conduit still travels the same distance and the same route but just super fast and a wormhole is a short cut that "teleports" you from one point to another. in saying that they're the same would be like saying beaming up to the moon from earth is the same as taking the enterprise at warp 3. both take the same time (roughly 0.03 seconds) and cover the same distance, but the means and method of travel are very different.