CS1 - Cosmic Strings |
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Speaker |
MacLaurin, Colin |
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| Talk Title |
Cosmic Cable |
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Abstract |
I investigate the mechanics of a relativistic string in an arbitrary stationary spacetime. Suppose a reel is anchored to a fixed location in space (meaning its 4-velocity is parallel to a chosen timelike Killing vector). Now suppose a long cable/string composed of ordinary matter has one end wound up on the reel, with the other end extended through space. Then in certain spacetimes, tension will result on the cable due to its own mass. An intuitive example is the weight of a cable hanging from a tree branch; another example is de Sitter space with the cable particles comoving in de Sitter's original "static" coordinate system. Such mechanisms have been proposed to test the possibility of mining energy from the expansion of the universe (Davies; Harrison). Cables have also been considered for black holes, to lower an object to mechanically extract its rest mass-energy (Penrose), or test the laws of thermodynamics (Geroch; Bekenstein) including Hawking radiation. Investigations of the rope in the static case (Gibbons; Redmount; Unruh & Wald) show a "redshift" of force transmitted along the cable. I extend the analysis to a moving cable, albeit a motion with time symmetry. |
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