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Near Light Speed Travel Possible After All?
DrStrabismus writes "PhysOrg has a story about research that may indicate that close to light speed travel is possible. From the article: 'New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century, he predicts. On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light.'"
Theres no point in travelling at close to light speed if your have no way of stopping.
Mind that planet!
What planet?
SPLAT
liqbase
all he wants is his name to be recognized by providing an unprovable, but "sounds good" theory.
The near-light-speed object creating the antigravity field smacks into the little ship and it's all over.
But before they can even worry about that, they'll have think of a way to accelerate the object creating the antigravity field to near light speed so it can push the ship that's not yet moving at near light speed, and smack into it a billionth of a second later.
If I invented a near light speed technology, the first place I'd announce it was a cheezy website filled with text (and link) ads too.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Can't
Can
Can't
Can
Can't
Wake me when someone actually accomplishes something. I'm sick and tired or the back and forth debate over ethereal concepts that can neither be proven or disproven in our lifetime.
What was making impossible near-lightspeed travel? Only FTL was prohibited. Problems like engines, fuel, shielding etc. are only technological problems.
not worthy of an article here?
Where do I invest my Money?
You have to know the exact cause of gravity to negate it. Last time I checked they dont know what exactly adds to the weight of a single atom so I dont see how they can create antigravity.
Also you have to have good knowledge of the path involved. Imagine passing a asteroid 10m across at the speed of light. If your system cannot accomodate for the effects then most likely you'll be a smear inside the ship if the ship survives.
Best bet is to hope that there's a nth demension you can pop into that allows you to travel the same spatime line without worrying about the mass of objects in the path.
I dont see the two coming around anytime soon. It would be best to focus efforts on speedy travel between earth, mars, and the asteroid belt. Longer missions to the outer planets are fine but mars is our best bet for establishing a second colony of humans in case earth gets smeared by a large asteroid.
Now, if health care will just advance enough to let me live that long, this will actually be useful info.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
For more information, see Dr. Felber's recent works on arXiv.org:
Weak 'Antigravity' Fields in General Relativity
Exact Relativistic 'Antigravity' Propulsion
Personally I'm a bit skeptical about his claims, however energy appears to be conserved. This method uses gravitationally-mediated kinetic energy exchange - this is the same principle that allows gravitational slingshot to work.
If I am reading this correctly (IIARTC), there is no way to safely stop with any foreseeable technology. If the anti-gravity wave reduces to near nothing, as you approach near nothing speed, than you have to be pretty damned sure that you aren't bumping into the satellite for Alpha Centauri news when you near it. With unchartered space, a collision is bound to happen when you slow down unless your sensors can detect something oh say the size of a buick from 1,000,000 miles ahead when you tap the brakes.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
Wait, we can get close to light speed travel, but we cant figure out how to time travel?! This sucks.
Proudly posting without RTFA.
Um, except I need a star going more than 0.6c, passing close enough for me to whip in front of it... gee I hope this works....
Why is an exotic solution involving anti-gravity even necessary, when there's the Bussard ramjet? While certain versions of this concept are infeasible, there's plenty of room for technical improvement. The ramjet has been a mainstay of science fiction for decades such as in Larry Niven's Known Space universe, precisely because it seems the solution closest to actual development.
And we're not just talking about any old object here. From the article:
So we've reduced the problem of how to accelerate a ship to near light speed to the problem of how to accelerate a star to near light speed.
Big improvement.
-- MarkusQ
And, once we whip around a star, we can go back in time to save the whales and invent transparent aluminum (which, of course, my physics professor showed us was impossible to create).
Funny sigs make your Karma go down.
One thing I have often wondered is if an object moves fast enough, could its relativistic mass become so large that it would look like a black hole relative to a laboratory frame?
We can't go faster than light (the speed of light is the maximum speed of "things in the universe" light just happens to travel that fast, simply because it can't go any faster). But even at light speed th closest galaxies are still years away, so we really can't 'go anywhere'
Even at short range this is still probablamatic. A ship can't accelerate to the speed of light too quickly otherwise all of its passengers (and equipment that's not bolted down) will crash into the rear bulkhead (because of your momentum, you won't accelerate as fast as the ship. Even if you're strapped in, accelerating too fast will cause MAJOR dammage to your internal organs.). You'd have to spend several hours accellerating, and then decellerating, so a trip to mars would still take a long time.
I do love "!" but not as much as I love "..."...
I'm positive he is right :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim-Theory
Light-speed travel is impossible, but near-light-speed travel is wildly impractical, because of the mass you gain. This guy seems to be saying that if you have an anti-gravity machine, you could counteract that. You couldn't get to FTL, but you could go a lot faster than without it. Heck, there's all KINDS of nifty things you could do with an anti-gravity machine.
And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
I think that this guy has been pushing his anti-gravity solution of general relativity for a while. IANAP, so I can't say whether he's right or wrong, though being a good skeptic I'm inclined to guess the latter.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I have only a basic comprehension of this topic so perhaps some of the /. brains can help me out here.
Take, on a related note, the speed of sound. This number is commonly held to be 300 m/s at STP, I ask: at what frequency was this measured. Given that frequency, wavelength, and the speed of sound are interrelated, is it possible that the speed of sound at 30 Hz is, even ever so slightly, different than the speed of sound at 2975 Hz? I think so...
Since the dawn of special relativity, travelling near light speed has always been possible. Its going beyond the speed of light thats not possible.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I'm not so interested in the mechanics (where do you put it, that allows you to use it as an accelerant?) but more in the effectiveness.
While antigravity is a cool SciFi story device, it is quite possible that attempting to implement an antigravity device is like pulling yourself out of the swamp by pulling at your own hair like Munchhausen, or like protecting yourself from rain by sitting in an open boat on a lake.
:-P), then you'd have to get in front of it, and in order to avoid the star smacking right into your spaceship, you'd have to have a speed of 0.57c already. Moreover(guessing), when you'd accelerate over 0.57c to take advantage of it, as you move away, the antigravity cone probably would loose focus and dispel just like gravity with a spread function of 1/r^2, quickly rendering it useless unless you'd just float along with the star.
r avity) predicts similar behavior on a small scale and provides a simpler model for working out strange gravity effects.
Now even when Dr. Felbers calculations are true, you'd first have to find a star speeding at a speed of 57%+ of lights speed(or accelerate one yourself
obLinks: Google "pushing gravity" or (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=pushing%20g
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Instead of sending a single ship, we send hundreds or thousands, until one makes it. It's not like we're exactly running out of people any time soon.
Ah ha. I see. May I be the first to volunteer you for the most incredible ride of your life? Or the shortest. We're not really sure. Game?
Put some money in a stock index fund then climb aboard your spaceship. Accelerate to near-light speed and take a cruise of some nearby solar systems for a few hundred years. Come back, having aged little, and collect your fortune.
This is wrong. As observed from Earth, it would take over 1000 years to travel to somewhere 1000 light years away. But for passengers travelling close to the speed of light, distances in the direction of travel are relativistically contracted, so it would take much less time. Provided we don't mind all our friends being long-dead when we return, the speed of light is not a limit on reaching distant stars.
Finding the energy to accelerate to such speeds is another matter.
...suddenly, I no longer have dreams of exploring other solar systems. Send someone else please.
noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present
"Franklin Felber" has less than 40 hits on google. For that reason I very much doubt he is a noted physicist. By association, I am not going to take his claims seriously...
In the 'antigravity beam' of a speeding star, a payload would draw its energy from the antigravity force of the much more massive star. In effect, the payload would be hitching a ride on a star.
This has got to be the single best invention coming out of ursa minor - the hitchhikers guide to lightspeedVery interesting. If I understand it right, one of the big differences between this and most other proposals I've ever heard is that it is based on a gravitational field, not on propulsion methods.
Why is it so important? Because our bodies are too soft to accelerate over a few G's using standard propulsion methods. Bear in mind that some people have survived enourmous acceleration before, but always for a short amount of time; our circulation system can't handle it for a long time. It would take a very large amount of time to accelerate (or brake) up something like 0.8c -- not to mention that it could be very, very painful.
So that's my understanding: if the entire ship is accelerated by a field, and if the acceleration is relatively uniform over the distances involved inside the ship, then I assume that it's not going to be painful or life threatening. That's a really big development.
There's a live culture HIV vaccination program you might consider too. And something that not quite resembles tea - or is it MDMA? Whatever. Me, I'll wait for the navigation computer to plot safe course before engaging the hyperdrive to jump to lightspeed... You could run into a star, or an asteroid, and that'd ruin a perfectly good day!
*cough!*
http://rebelscience.org/Crackpots/notorious.htm
The article said that the new theory explains we can go move in an instant.
I like it !
....slashdot did not figure out? "..back and forth debate over ethereal concepts that can neither be proven or disproven..." is what we do here. The alternative is spending time with our families. Can you imagine?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
It was just a joke.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, if you could somehow make your mass negative, wouldn't you be able to go faster than light? I'm honestly curious. I'm not a physicist, but would it ever be possible to have negative mass, even theoretically?
today is spelling optional day.
Well, that's easy; you just choose an inertial frame of reference that gives the star a velocity of 0.6c! Bingo...
I'll believe it when I see it.
Er, or maybe when I don't see it.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
The density of interstellar space is about one atom per cubic centimeter. If the spaceship were going near the speed of light (3 x 10^10 cm/sec), it would be hit by 3 x 10^10 relativistic particles per cm^2/sec. This is about the equivalent of one Curie per cm^2, which would kill a human and cripple any electronics on board
A very heavy magnet could deflect the protons, but the neutral atoms would be unaffected by the magnetic field.
Well, I suppose you could string two of them together with an elastic rubberband ..
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
we could do what this scientist proposes I think our biggest obstacle would be space debris. I know this is something each shuttle mission has to worry about. Even tiny objects can cause tremendous amounts of damage, given its speed.
Moving faster than 57.7% of c? Relative to what?
Right now, the earth is moving through space at a speed greater than 57.7% relative to something. No, I don't know what, or where, but rest assured there's some body out there somewhere in whose frame of reference the Earth is moving at greater than 57.7% of c. And there's some other body in whose frame of reference the Earth is moving at greater than 10% of c, and another body where Earth is moving at 95% of c, and another body where Earth isn't moving at all (Hey, like me!).
So why isn't the Earth emitting such an antigravity beam, repelling masses in its path? Rest assured that if it were, we'd be seeing its effect, like ferinstance as it played havoc with GPS satellites.
Or, heck, there are cosmic rays which occasionally smack into the Earth's atmosphere at a speed that's only infinitesimally smaller than c in Earth's FOR. They should *definitely* be emitting some sort of antigravity, if this guy's correct. Should be trivial to observe, but we haven't seen it.
This smells like bullshit.
Does this mean that Kirk really can go back in time? :)
Ok, I've worked in gravity for a while, but unfortunately I haven't time right now to go through this guy's paper. Several things are setting off my B.S. detector, though.
First, this guy is not a "noted" physicist, let alone a noted gravitational physicist, as far as I can tell. He published some papers in accelerator physics while affiliated with the Naval Research Lab. He has no publications, or as far as I can tell, training in general relativity. He's now affiliated with some company ("Starmark, Inc.") in San Diego. Furthermore, gravitational physicists generally give talks at gravity conferences (or at least physics conferences), not space engineering conferences (which have drastically lower standards when it comes to gravity, since the organizers of the conference typically have no GR background).
Second, I skimmed the preprint of his (unpublished) "antigravity" paper. He claims that a distant observer watching a particle fall into a black hole, in the (initial, local) rest frame of the particle, will see the black hole to approach the particle, and then cause the particle to accelerate away from the black hole. This is not in any weird "warp drive" spacetime, but in ordinary Schwarzschild spacetime — such as the spacetime outside of a star or a planet (!). Yes, you read that right, according to him, even planets create antigravity (if you're traveling fast enough). This bears no relation to anything I know about orbits of particles in Schwarzschild spacetime.
Then he mentions performing a Lorentz transformation of a particle trajectory into the frame of a distant observer. This is impossible. You can only apply a global Lorentz transformation to a flat (Minkowski) spacetime, not a curved spacetime (such as Schwarzschild). Well, you can apply a transformation to a flat tangent space at a point in a curved spacetime, but you can only transform a vector in the tangent space at that point, not an entire trajectory that spans a continuum of points. It is true that Schwarzschild geometry is asymptotically flat for "distant" observers, and he's speaking of transforming into the frame of a distant observer, but the fact remains that you cannot Lorentz transform a worldline that is not entirely within an approximately flat region of spacetime (and his trajectories definitely aren't always far from the gravitating body).
Now, you're free not to buy my suspicions, because as I said I haven't the time to go through all his calculations and see what's up (general relativity calculations are a pain in the ass). My bet, however, is that he's simply misinterpreting a coordinate quantity as having physical meaning. This is a common error for GR beginners (and you can see a prime example of it in the crackpot A. Mitra, who claims that black holes contradict the Einstein field equations based on his misinterpretation of coordinate derivatives in Schwarzschild spacetime). The thing about GR is that you can write solutions in any coordinate system you want, and you have to make sure that the quantities you're calculating are physically meaningful, and not just an artifact of whatever coordinates you happened to choose. Anyway, that's my guess based on what this guy has written so far and the kind of errors I see people make when making "wild" claims in GR. But it's also possible he simply made a math error. I am not betting, however, that he has suddenly discovered antigravity lurking within the ordinary Schwarzschild metric.
except I need a star going more than 0.6c
Just smash 2 stars going 0.3c into each other. It is addative, dispite what your phyz book says. It is called Intelligently Designed Space Travel.
Table-ized A.I.
My fealing in the subject is that the speed of light is just a mental barrier. Just like the speed of sound. I have a really hard time accepting that the speed of light would impossible to exceed. I should really take some time off to put my reasoning behind this into calculations and theories. In my world the speed of light is the highest speed of light, not the highest speed of everything else.
Before you jump all over me, dont forget that the world once was flat and the sun evolved around the earth. We still have a long way to go.
HTTP/1.1 400
1. filter gold out of bottle of Goldschlager
...
...
2. squish bits of gold together
3. accelerate squished gold to near light speeds
4. Profit!!
(methodology also works if you do the same as above but with the dusty remnants of your last bag)
-----
so... lets say you did that with that tiny amount of gold... but also did it with a gold brick... what's crazy that at some point along their trek to near light speeds, both amounts of gold will have the same mass (albeit at different velocities)... crazy.
The Admin and the Engineer
You forgot relativity. The actual time depends of the reference point. I sincerely don't know how to make such calculation (I left my physics class about 20 years ago), but I'm sure that it would take a much longer time from Earth's perspective, making the mission not very practical. If you manage to accelerate faster (which is possible using a field), the actual difference, in absolute terms from each reference point, will not matter very much. For example, and by no means do not take these numbers as absolute, it's just an example -- it's like comparing 500 days to 500 years, versus 5 days to a 5 years in Earth time.
Actually, I'm much more concerned about our ability to find (or create?) a uniform field than anything else. At such huge scales, any tiny distortion would probably destroy the ship, tearing it apart. That's a really huge engineering challenge.
Whenever I run across a discussion of light speed or near-light speed travel, I always find myself asking, relative to what? Are people assuming that an object can be "at rest" with respect to the universe, such that it can then accelerate to a near-light speed? That would seem to be the tacit assumption of such discussions, because the only other alternative is that "velocity" is a vector relationship between any two objects. If that is the case, then any one object is at any given moment "traveling" at any number of velocities, depending on how many other objects in the universe you "relate" it to. And while our everyday experience tells us that mostly we are at rest - or close to it - with respect to our immediate surroundings, on the cosmic scale, and given the range of particles moving through this universe, it would seem pretty obvious that some of our exisiting velocities are already pretty close to light speed, even if those relationships are pretty far removed from us. To assume we are "at rest" and those other objects are "high energy" is pretty self-centered, which is intuitive and generally works for us, but doesn't really have a basis in science.
Another week another crackpot theory lauded by Slashdot editors! Could you guys try any harder to make yourselves look ridiculous?
I want to ask if the type of storage ring used in the G-2 muon wobble experiment might be used to test the Felber antigravity theory.
In the G-2 experiment, the muon storage ring was able to extend the lifespan of the ordinarily short-lived muons relativistically by accelerating them to extremely high speeds.
I'm wondering if such high speed acceleration can be used to similarly study any possible "antigravity beam" phenomena, to see if it's real.
Comments?
Sounds about as sensible as 88 miles per hour.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, this is actually an underestimate since relativistic effects make it harder to get that close to the speed of light, the closer you get. If you could achieve a constant 1G, that is how long it would take, but this is physically impossible since effective mass increases with velocity.
I calculated it on Google calculator with the following formula (just type into search):
Why my radar isin't working?
That's bullshit. Theory is based on experimental evidence, and there is a century's worth of experimental evidence supporting relativity, including accelerating particles to enormous energies to within a tiny, tiny fraction of the speed of light. We find, just as relativity predicts, that as the particle's speed increases, additional inputs of energy give rise to less and less change in speed, so that its speed always asymptotically approaches that of light, never reaching it. First 99.999% of c, then 99.9999% of c, then 99.99999% of c, etc.
More nonsense. There are many things in science that are not merely "guesses" or "rough estimates", but rather are established beyond all credible doubt. There are guesses and rough estimates too, as well as things in between. (There is never proof in the mathematical sense, because it is logically impossible to prove a scientific theory 100%.)
That's also wrong. Scientists are encouraged to communicate with the lay public. You're simply not supposed to announce brand new results to the public before they've gone through peer review. Unfortunately, funding crunches have made "publication by press release" dismayingly common in recent years.
One quickly gets the idea that you not only don't know how science works or what it is, but you also don't know any scientists personally.
What the hell are you talking about? Nothing in science is totally authoritarian. There is nothing more contentious than a group of scientists arguing with each other about who's right.
Idiot. The word "law" as it is used in science does not imply that "laws" cannot have exceptions. Where did you get your knowledge of science, out of an elementary school textbook?
Regardless of what an individual scientist may claim, the truth of the matter is ultimately sorted out in the peer reviewed literature. That's the whole point of the scientific process: it's self-correcting.
Your are not the daring unconventional thinker you fancy yourself to be. In fact, kneejerk dismissal of perceived "authority" by self-proclaimed "freethinkers" is part of Slashdot groupthink. Intelligent people question claims (which has nothing to do with "authority"), but they also make sure they are informed, and you are not remotely informed about science, the scientific process, or the scientific community.
Time Dilation doesn't actually help much here. You have to accelerate to high speed and deccelerate at the end of the journey. Human beans can handle high accelerations for brief times with few ill affects, but we're talking months here. I suppose if you remain strapped into a squishy chair without having to move around too much then two or three g's might be more reasonable, but I'm pretty sure noone's done the studies.
Anyhoo, I typed "relativistic acceleration" into google, and two clicks later I was here.
It's a little disappointing. A traveller would only get up to 95% of the speed of light before it was time to start deccelerating. For longer trips, however, the effect would be greater.
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
Now THAT'S a valentine's gift.
I kill harmless processes for sport
Every single scientific experiment ever performed was performed to question theory. Else, why bother to do the experiment, if you know the theory is right beyond question? The whole POINT of experimental science is to question theory.
You sound like a petulant college student who is pissed off because you were too naive to realize that the science you learned in grade school wasn't the whole story.
Why the hell would we build near light speed weapons?
They would be more difficult to intercept.
They could be smaller, same kinetic energy yield for less mass.
You do realize we nearly have light speed weapons? Lasers. One of the benefits is that for practical purposes flight time from weapon to target is zero. No more having to lead the target. It makes interception of fast moving things far more practical.
I'm thinking that whether you have a hole straight through you, or a bullet embedded in you, you're not gunna be particularly happy.
Happier no, but possibly healthier if it made a hole. Bullets that stop dliver all their energy into you, those that pass through do not. That energy, and the resulting shock waves, is part of the lethality of a bullet. Also, since we are talking near light speed it might be worthwhile to mention that the intense heat from friction may result in no bleeding.
Now we have replaced the problem of "how do we travel to distant stars by going near the speed of light" to "how do we travel to distant stars so that we can accellerate near the speed of light so that we can travel to distant stars?"
Hmm... Seems very practical.
Oh, and pardon me if I am wrong, but I think you would still have a decelleration problem.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
But it wouldn't be MAD, if you could instantly obliterate an opponent. The deterrent effect of MAD hinges on an opponent being able to retaliate. An instant attack would essentially nullify this, as they would not be able to respond.
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
From: http://physicsmathforums.com/ [physicsmathforums.com]
http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=60 [physicsmathforums.com]
Book on Moving Dimensions Theory Due Out in Fall 05
Moving Dimensions Theory
By Dr. E
http://physicsmathforums.com/ [physicsmathforums.com]
Questions Addressed by MDT:
Why is the speed of light constant in all frames?
Why are light and energy quantized?
How can matter display both wave and particle properties?
Why are there non-local effects in quantum mechanics?
Why does time stop at the speed of light?
How come a photon does not age?
Why are inertial mass and gravitational mass the same thing?
Why do moving bodies exhibit length contraction?
Why are mass and energy equivalent?
Why does time's arrow point in the direction it points in? Why entropy?
Why do photons appear as spherically-symmetric wavefronts traveling with the velocity c?
Why is there a minus sign in the following metric? x^2+y^2+z^2-c^2t^2=s^2
What deeper reality underlies Einstein's postulates of relativity?
What deeper reality underlies Newton's laws?
What underlies the laws of Inertia?
Why does general relativity fail at short distances? Why does quantum mechanics dominate at short distances?
Why have so many great minds, Einestin, Godel, Wheeler, Hawking, and Penrose called for a new conception of time?
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
--Albert Einstein
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
--Isaac Newton
Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, felt that the pioneer scientist must have "a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination."
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.
--Max Planck
Moving Dimensions Theory (MDT)
Today I am writing regarding Moving Dimensions Theory--a deeper model for explaining diverse phenomena in both quantum mechanics and relativity.
The General Postulate of Moving Dimensions Theory:
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
The Specific Postulate of Moving Dimensions Theory:
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c in quantized units of the Planck length.
Relativistic, classical, and quantum mechanical phenomena, as well as time itself, are emergent properties of this fundamental principle. Newton's laws, the principle of Inertia, Einstein's postulates, and the inherent wave-particle duality of QM may be explained with this model.
A few years back, while surfing a towering wave on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a beautiful thought occurred to me. Suppose the wave I was riding represented a coordinate in a dimension. Then although I was approaching shore, I was not moving in this dimension.
The dimension itself was moving with me--I was surfing the dimension. In a flash I saw that that is why photons never age--they are moving along with the fourth dimension, and thus stationary relative to it. In another flash I saw that that is why a photon's space-time interval is represented by a null vector, or a 0, no matter how far it travels. Indeed Einstein stated that an object's velocity through space-time was always c--even stationary objects are traveling at the velocity c through time! How could this be, were it not for a fourth expanding dimension, which matter could surf as photons, giving rise to our notion of time? And so it is that Moving Dimensions Theory was born as the wave crested and crashed about me, thundering on down, as I fought t
I think it's best to do it the Little Prince way, by catching a shooting star in a net and "sail away".
I thought the little prince made his own stars by rolling up garbage.
http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=56 [physicsmathforums.com]
Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy.
"As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks," Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, "The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy."
Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David "the truth is out there" Duchovney, explained the plot: "String theory's muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for."
Greene continues: "At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he's doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory's hoax and save Jessica Alba."
But it's not that easy, as standing in Greene's way is Michio "king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything- or-anything-made-
you-read-this" Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the "ironic" pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. "WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!" Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, "There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory's GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!"
But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. "Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket)," Greene shouts. "It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!"
"Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there's a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We're laughing at the public! We're the insider pomo hipsters! Get with the gangsta-wankst
"An example of this is NASA's James Hansen. He speaks out directly to the public and is mobbed by his peers as a result. More power to him."
His peers DID NOT MOB HIM. Bush's fundamentalist political appointees are suppressing scientists all over the spectrum (as you know, of course). On global warming, reproduction, evolutionary biology, space science. Fundamentalist overseers and corporate lobbyists are running the show at all the agencies.
His peers have more to lose than Hansen does. Everyone is just waiting for the Democrats to take back the government so they can breath again.
Any of you guys Star Trek fans?
Apology: I didn't mean for that post to be as cranky as it sounded.
I also think that you can take this behavior as an example of why government should never be involved in such endeavors. Surely your saintly Democrats will right everyting but what do you do when they and their corporate overlords are not in power?
Same shit, different name, is all.
So I click on the story link, and in the sidebar I get ads like: Negative magnetic energy cures cancer, magnetic unipoles, alien autopsies, levitation techniques, etc, etc, etyechhetera. If this story is as reputable as the sidebars, it's more than totally bogus.
this is how a 4.5 yr trip to the next solar system would be, also the lead spacewith water lead space with water would be how it would be heated and protected form radiation as well
the water being heated could be funneled about the ship providing heatingand hte planets and possibly even animals like a kinda ark like that one sci fi tv show where they had biospheres and such.
more realistic to go slower as at fast speeds htings like meteors and small particles are deadly
still interesting. and id say a true trip to next solar system is about a 40 year trip aka, one generation grows up on the vessel.
Top Ramen has fueled many a university student for 4 years why not astronauts? The last .3 years could be spent drinking the remainder of the animal beer in celebration of making the trip!
"Everthing else [in science] is simply theory. Which is based on some authority and never allowed to be questioned."
Wrong, wrong, wrong, and a thousand times wrong!
The whole basis of science is that everything is open to question. There are few things more prestigious in science than to refute a previously accepted theory. Ever heard of a guy named Albert Einstein? Yeah, thought you might have. Used to be that Newton's theories were the accepted way in which the universe worked, but Einstein showed differently.
The main reason it seems like some theories are "unquestionable" is simply because most of the ways in which people choose to challenge them have been shown time and time and time again to be false.
If you get 100 people a day proposing a design for a perpetual motion machine using a series of cogs, wheels, and magnets, you're not going to take the time to explain to each and every one why their design won't work, instead, you're just going to tell them to bugger off and leave you alone.
Of course, scientists are human, and at times they will reject things inadvertently which they shouldn't. However, if you think you have a good explanation as to how/why we can, in fact, travel faster than the speed of light, instead of whining to Slashdot about how stuck in the mud scientists are, why not publish it? You'd be the next Einstein!
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
I go 55mph each day, that is "near" light speed. It's all relative.
This could be just what we need to get rid of all the religous wackos who are so eager to meet God.
With the ability of the device to accellerate large masses they could even take a few hundred pounds of inflatable virgins with them, just in case.
Bon voyage!
there is no such thing as decelleration, it's just accelleration in the opposite direction of travel.
in other words, anything that can accellerate TO near light speed can stop FROM light speed just by doing the exact same thing but in the opposite direction. The only reason we find a difference is due to friction, gravity, air resistance effecting us, which doesn't happen in space.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
...but nobody really understands it. Main issue seems to be adding a couple of dimensions to our existing model of space-time: http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg1892533 1.200-take-a-leap-into-hyperspace.html
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Replying to my own post, as I forgot to mention something else, and Slashdot's "edit post" button has undergone a total existence failure...
The parent also mentioned that scientific theory is based on authority. This is utter nonsense. Authority counts for nothing in science.
We accept Einstein's theories as being correct. Why? Because he was a really smart guy, and therefore must have been right? No. Because he showed exactly how and why his theories were correct.
If I tell you that water turns to ice or steam sometimes, and that's the way it is, because I say so, and because I'm smarter than you, then you'd probably tell me to get stuffed (and rightly so)
On the other hand, if I tell you that cooling water to 0C causes it to freeze into ice, and heating it to 100C causes it to boil, giving off steam, then you can try for yourself in your own kitchen. It doesn't matter if you think I'm a genius or a raving lunatic - it doesn't even matter if I actually AM a raving lunatic. The only thing that counts is whether it works or not. And the things we accept in science are those that work - and if we don't know, we run with our best current explanation based on the avaliable data until a better one comes along.
That's the wonderful thing about science. It's perfectly possible for some unknown, uneducated nobody with a bright idea to overturn hundreds of years of accepted science.
(of course, it's also rather unlikely, as the simple fact is the vast amount of unknown, uneducated nobodies who try to do that are completely off the mark, and don't have the first clue what they're talking about... doesn't mean it can't happen though.)
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Fuck me!
Could you just write a full fucking sentence please?
I'm not "Arguing from ignorance" I'm just pointing out that accellerating to near light speed is hard enough - getting all the crap out of the way (like one random hydrogen atom every cubic meter - at light speed the energy adds up...quick) would be really difficult, and even a grain of sand (of which there is a lot) drifting through space could prove explosively dangerous at near light speed. Accleration is only one part of the game. The other part is preventing collsions with tiny objects and the rest is delivering your payload (probe, nuclear bomb, whatevaahhhh) to your target (planet, space colony, etc.)
I'm of the opnion that the vast majority of people who will EVER go into space have already been there.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
....
Priority Override - breakup target into component materials.
Yes, but 1G is an enormously difficult acceleration to sustain for any length of time. Any technology capable of sustaining that for even a few days, let alone a few months, and still delivering a useful payload, would definitely be in the indistinguishable-from-magic regime.
Basically, controlled fusion and a whole lot of engineering should get you there (days, probably not months, unless you're talking some sort of tam jet). Certainly not doable today, but not that far past (say) a beanstalk or reasonable intellectual property laws.
--MarkusQ
Spoiled rotten twat, people CAN actually survive on a very "limited" diet that doesn't require daily trips to Starbucks.
BTW, fucktard, you mispelled "its."
So this is how physicists spend their Valentine's Day?
Libertas in infinitum
I wondered for a while, and recently found out; what's the speed of gravity?
Aperently it's the speed of light; which lead to my next thought; If an object moves at nearly the speed of light, would it build up a 'gravity boom'; like a sonic boom before an aircraft moving at the speed of sound?
If you imagine the effect of gravity as a dip in 3 dimensional space (like a bowling ball on a mattress) imagine the theoretical near light speed object as putting a serious kink in the mattress. I'm thinking it would be shaped like a convex lens, and would distort any matter or energy that intersects it, pulling the photons toward a 'focal point' behind the wavefront. Perhaps that point would be an ideal place to collect hydrogen and photons to use for supplemental fuel. Eliminating the need for the large magnetic field that a Bussard Ramjet would use.
If you traveled close enough to light speed, perhaps the gravity dip could become intense enough to collapse into a 'Black Wall' which would obliterate anything in it's path, and be undetectable until the wave crashed over your unsuspecting planet.
At least it probably wouldn't hurt for long in absolute time; but perhaps the crushing would take an eternity in subjective time.
Would the astronauts get paid for their local elapsed time or for the huge time that passes by on Earth?
The whole anouncement (which was put out by inventors own mini-company) is not a sound physics. There is no way 'of finding a way to move near speed of light' for the first time since we are all, whole Earth, moving at near speed of light already (with respect to some remore objects, like quassars) http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=60 5720
A common mistake is to consider 'moving at high speed'
to be a state of the object - like high temperature.
People moving at high speed (with respect to us) do not see
themself squashed into a pancake.
In 'reality' - they are not squashed at all.
This is re:
Re:Make sure you account for everything (Score:5, Informative)
by Plunky (929104) on Saturday February 11, @05:51PM (#14696407)
Surely time dilation [wikipedia.org] effects would significantly lessen the
amount of air and food that needs to be carried?
2) It is necessary to differentiated between 'B looks like a pancake'
(to A but not to B) and 'is a pancake' . The 'is' is reserved for invariant
concepts (such as Minkowski distance, see 1)
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=43 3561
Relative to it's fixed point of ORIGIN a photon travels at C, this does NOT mean that a photon leaving the same point of ORIGIN but traveling in the opposite direction causes both photons to travel at twice C. It DOES mean that the SPATIAL distance relative to each other is increased over TIME at a rate of twice C. But not the velocity of either photon, which is of course still C. The same logic applys roughly to any other object at any other velocity. Space and time are the relative factors in the equation not the velocity. This how I understand things anyhow.
I would love it if some nut in a basement could find a way around these things. But I expect to wait until I die to explore the far reaches of the universe, and thats not exactly a sure thing either, again in my view anyway.
Matthew
Why does my firewall report port scans by slashdot.org @ ports 6588 and 3382 when I first select to preview this post?
I totally had that idea before this guy published it. I was thinking of a way for people to accelerate in a car without their organs stressing on the walls of their body, and I concluded that artificial gravity would accelerate everything simultaneously. Crazy.
Safety Not Guaranteed Though
Felber's research shows that any mass moving faster than 57.7 percent of the speed of light will gravitationally repel other masses lying within a narrow 'antigravity beam' in front of it. [...] In the 'antigravity beam' of a speeding star, a payload would draw its energy from the antigravity force of the much more massive star.
So, in order to accelerate close to the speed of light, you just need to accelerate "a massive star" to more than 57.7% of the speed of light? Well, that sure makes things easier.
Seriously, effects like this have been known for a while, but it's unlikely that they help getting close to the speed of light for practical reasons.
Personally I'm a bit skeptical about his claims,
Why? For rotating masses, you get frame dragging (experimentally verified), so for masses moving linearly, it seems like you ought to get something. Whether his particular solution is correct remains to be verified.
no physical phenomenon can operate only for masses travelling above a fixed speed like that because such a phenomenon would violate Lorentz invariance.
The "0.577 c" threshold seems to be the relative velocity of the two masses, which makes sense for this kind of effect if you think about it.
That means he's made up some new physics, something completely untested, and is therefore a crackpot.
I like that definition, because it supports my long-held assertion that most mainstream physicists are, in fact, crackpots as well.
Wow, you really mathinated him good.
First it came from climate science, but now we have have wholesale abuse of the scientific method in other disciplines where we don't bother submitting research papers for even the limited review of scientific peers, let alone skeptical review, replication or empirical testing (which used to be the cornerstones of science).
Now we have the internet, we don't have to sweat the small stuff. We announce our results, get slashdotted, and behold! A new scientific paradigm is born!
Only a few days ago, a schizophrenic got his anti-science drivel slashdotted, for which this loon was immensely grateful.
The TFA mentions that this is a "noted physicist". Noted by whom? Was he noted for actually producing useful theory, a better mousetrap? Or was he simply noted by the article author?
This isn't science. This is a celebrity system based on spin, hype and wish fulfillment.
If I had a genuine solution to the "Pioneer Anomaly" for example, I would not dare announce the result like this, for fear that my scientific career would be permanently tarnished.
But then, I'm not a "noted physicist", am I?
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I'd like to note that I, for one, would rather not have anyone have the ability to direct anything, weapon or not, into the planet at an apreciable fraction of c.
How much damage would 1 ton of Jell-o brand instant pudding(just because that would be degrading to be beaten by pudding based weaponry) hitting Moscow at
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"the year is 1987, and NASA launches the last of America's deep space probes..."
The key to understanding what nonsense this is is the prediction that "New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century..."
Does that make any sense at all? We're gonna be lucky to be established on the moon, much less Mars by then.
True, that's how science is supposed to work - and mostly, it works this way. Being a scientist myself, I have to add that unfortunately, the whole show is run by humans. So, every now and then, you still are confronted with arguments from authority, and in some cases, new views are only able to be established by waiting for the current authorities to retire or die. As every human business, science ain't perfect in this regard.
This comment does not exist.
relative to what?
The article seem to suggest that an object at high speed could gravitationally push another object. Both would be moving at about the same speed, so relative to each other, the speed is low. This phenomenon should therefore be readily observable: just pick two object at rest with respect to each other. Both are moving at say 0.6c with respect to some suitable reference frame, therefore they should repel each other.
Somehow they don't. Looks like pseudoscience.
57.7% the speed of light relative to what? Measured relative to the light itself, you're always stationary (c is constant, so if you tried to measure speed in the normal way you'd come out with 0), measured relative to the object you're trying to accelerate you're going to get all kinds of confusion with the speed changing as you accelerate it, and measuring relative to anything else doesn't make sense because the speed required would no longer be constant.
If the "pusher" is travelling at exactly 0.557c as soon as the object in front is accelerated at all, it will stop, so you can only actually accelerate an object to the speed of the pusher minue 0.557c, and as c is the max speed of the pusher the max speed of the pushee is 0.443c, which hardly counts as near the speed of light.
I'm guessing the guy that worked this out isn't that stupid, but the guy that wrote the article clearly is, or he'd have explained it better.
Engineering ? Status report.
Thursters. online.
Warp engines. online.
Lieutenant ? WARP 1 !
... so there is no need for them to stop ...
Heim Quantum Theorry (1955)
allows for faster than light travel,
and free energie.
So I am not impressed.
I wait for the testing of the theory which should happens on the Z-machine.
--
God pray for you.
"Why do you hate God?"
Because EVERY YEAR as a kid I wrote a letter to him asking for a Junior Evil Mastermind Science Lab Kit, and EVERY year the smug bugger flew in on his reindeer, came down the chimney, and delivered nothing but SOCKS. I WILL have my revenge.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Yes, sad but true. I probably should have mentioned in my post that I was talking about how science is meant to work - and naturally, due to human failings, that isn't always the case.
As you say though, it's the same in all human endeavour - a doctor's job is to heal people, and for the overwhelming number of cases that's what they do, but sometimes they make things worse, usually by accident*, but sometimes even on purpose**. Again, that's human falliability.
*recent case springs to mind of a girl in the UK who was given 17 overdoses of radiotherapy treatment, and may be left with brain damage or even paralysed.
**For example, Harold Shipman, who used his position as a doctor to murder his patients (and I'm not talking about euthanasia)
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Don't be silly. Any scientist who challenges Einstein sees his career going down the drain, so he is well advised to burn any results that he cannot reconcile with General Relativity.
This means only the nutcases who have nothing to lose do try to publish.
When Einstein came in, the ether theory was already half-dead, and therefore enough scientists were open to new ideas. Remember that Einstein was described as over-zealous and therefore often going wrong by the established scientists. If Einstein had come in earlier, his ideas would have disappeared under the carpet for 50 years or so, and it might have taken someone to unearth them, just as we see some new interest in discarded, once outrageous theories today.
Nobody goes looking for a perpetuum mobile because the laws of thermodynamics say it cannot exist. Of course those laws are based on _observation_, so as long as nobody goes looking...
(I do think the laws of thermodynamics hold, but the circular reasoning may apply to other areas as well.)
In theory, science may be science, but people are people.
Don't be stupid. There is a large published literature on alternatives to general relativity. Look at Brans-Dicke scalar-tensor gravity, STV gravity, TeVeS, conformal gravity, teleparallel gravity, R^2 and other extended gravity, supergravity, Kaluza-Klein theory, etc. — not to mention all the quantum gravity theories like string theory, loop quantum gravity, causal dynamical triangulations, Euclidean quantum gravity, and so on.
I mean, really, why do you think we continue to test general relativity? Because we're so sure it's Einstein has been proven and cannot be wrong?
Actually, Einstein's work was rapidly accepted by most of the eminent scientists of his time, including his closest competitors.
That's possible, not because the "Establishment" would have been too reactionary to accept it, but simply because there wasn't any experimental evidence in GR's favor at that time; it would have been viewed as an answer in search of a problem. It's easy to make up theories, but making up theories that are connected to evidence is another matter.
Before we get to the near lightspeed antigravity technology, lets do the warping of spacetime with the magnets that was in the previous article, or better yet, the mars base Russia keeps saying they're going to build over and over and over.
I have developed the technology to make myself travel at the speed of light to any location. the technology is called mirror. Basicaly the device (mirror) has to be at my destination and i can transport directly to the new destination instantaneously. the only problem is gettin out of the mirror (device) into the new location. but new research is looking into resolving this problem all together.
Those who have read the article say that he's not making that claim, but one which is much more reasonable. (I haven't read the article, but I tend to believe the reports of those who claim to have done so over the /. summaries.)
He's actually claiming that the anti-gravity field exists at all velocities, but that it's normall so weak that it's imperceptible, however as the relative velocities increase, it's relative potency increases. The 57.7% of C comes from the relative speed at which the anti-gravity effect balances the ordinary gravitational effect.
This could be wrong, but it's not inherently implausible.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I wish /. would quit promoting physorg, all they do is grab news and press releases from other sites and post them WITHOUT LINKS TO THE SOURCE as if they originated the story.
Another copy of the press release.
STAIF 2006.
Hehe, I thought I'd get knee jerks out of that.
I'm glad to see that not everyone is a robot. Though I did not spot one scientist in among the responses.
Authoritarian is what the school system is.
As far as Einstein, would it not be interesting if it turned out he was not correct. Not being able to go faster than light is a hypothesis based on this mans work. You call it observations. I put it to you to review how those observations were made. Since he made them they have more or less been followed blindly.
According to the impact effects calculator, a 1-meter, 1000-kilogram object hitting rock at a 90-degree angle at 150000kps would (assuming the atmosphere had no effect on it) release about 1410 megatons of energy. Splat.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Effective relativistic travel is better than no effective relativistic travel. However, though I hope he's right, I doubt it. Oh well.
I have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in
I bet that's because you forgot to put a tooth under your pillow first!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So you're a troll.
Continuing to demonstrate how little you know about scientists. I am a physicist. Read my my post again.
In many cases, yes. However, that has little to do with the scientific community.
Of course it would be interesting. That's why we continue to test Einstein's theories all the time.
Oh go read a goddamn book. Try Cliff Will's Was Einstein Right? It documents a century's worth of experimental tests of Einstein's theories and proposed alternative theories. Einstein has never been "followed blindly". There's no quicker way to achieve fame and fortune (well, fame at least) in physics than overturning Einstein.
At best, we still could only get to around .001 percent of light with todays technology. Even if what this guy claims is true, and I'm far from believing it, it still would take alot of progress to achieve 57 percent the speed of light. no weapons, no spaceships for a long while.
so....laser guns are out then? damn!
Try this calculator to see the highly nonlinear effect of increasing distance on elapsed shipbord journey time. With acceleration equivalent to earth-normal gravity throughout the trip (switching to deceleration as you pass the half way mark) it takes 9 years to travel 100LY. It only takes half as much again to travel ten times as far. So you may as well just point your ship in a direction where there are plenty of stars, launch, and decide where you're going while you're actually en-route.
I remember reading a few years ago in Discover... this ... (this was just the first link google turned up, but it looks like a similar story...) matter attaches, yada yada yada, photons slow, yada yada, still about 186,282 mps through a vacuum, yada yada...
also interesting, if not related, try googling "loop quantum gravity"... neat little idea there...
*Note the use of elipses; I don't care much to finish a thought when I'm already workin' on a new one...
Paul: If you're reading this, pick your shoes up out of the hallway. I keep tripping over them. Slob.
Although it is impossible to travel and exceed speed of light, Einstein would love to see yur face shrinking inside the spaceship. Everyone knows that time stops, gain infinite mass, and would shrink if u travel at the speed of light, right? So, even if u travel close to speed of light, there is no point going anywhere else with that speed. Just let photons have fun travelling with that speed. And I have a question, Does light have mass or momentum even if it's not trapped inside the box?
Look, not at sqaures and force. We revolve around circles. Travel, not by energy or mass. You'll see. 2042.