Let\'s say I have a tube, of large radius (about 5 - 7 meters in diameter), with

Question

Let's say I have a tube, of large radius (about 5 - 7 meters in diameter), with traversable wormholes at the ends. The wormholes are arranged as such that if something falls inside one hole from inside of the tube, it will come out at the other end still inside the tube. Now, let's say I empty all air from the tube (to make a "vacuum tube," if you will), set it upright and somehow manage to get a rock (or whatever other object) in there. My question now is, does the situation described above rule out the existence of traversable wormholes?

Or, if not, since the rock is falling through the wormhole over and over again, will it always be accelerating at the same rate? Or will its velocity only always be approaching light speed? In either case, would the rock's mass increase to the point that it overpowers Earth's gravity, or even collapses into a singularity? Or is there something that would prevent that from happening?

Explanation / Answer

I found an entry in a Wormhole FAQ that seems to address your thought experiment:

"Is a wormhole whose mouths are arranged vertically in a gravitational field a source of unlimited energy?

No. The argument in favor of such a wormhole being an energy source is this: An object falls from the upper mouth, gains kinetic energy as it falls, enters the lower mouth, reemerges from the upper mouth with this newly acquired kinetic energy, and repeats the cycle to gain even more kinetic energy ad infinitum. The problem with this is that general relativity does not permit discontinuities in the metric

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