Slashdot Mirror
Star Trek's Warp Drive Not Impossible
Trunks writes "No doubt trying to ride the hype train that's currently going for the new Star Trek film, Space.com has a new article detailing how warp drive may not be impossible to acheive. From the article: '"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving." One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang. "If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.' Simple, right?"
Didn't we just have an article on this exact same thing a few days ago explaining why this is definitely NOT possible?
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Isn't one of the doomsday theories surrounding the LHC that our section of spacetime will get shoved elsewhere in the universe?
arrow of time
...the exotic green women. ;)
It could work- all you need is one really big flux capacitor.
It's good to remind ourselves sometimes that such things may be possible. It's obvious from the articles length that it's publication is simply due to the movie coming out. How ever I think it's important not to simply shut our eyes and claim things impossible. Just a few centuries ago computers were impossible, as was flying and a great number of other things we think of as common now. The article though isn't much more besides an attempt to generate hits from the looks of things.
Some terrorist in 2303 is going to manipulate spacetime and totally "move" Earth into the sun; I'm calling it now.
The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity.
Duh!!
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Hasn't anyone seen Star Trek "First Contact"? The Vulcans have already done this. And they will bring the technology to us.
Best news I've heard all day. Some how I place more importance on things like this than really... anything else.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
So to paraphrase Cubert... the engines don't move the ship, they move the universe around it?
Maybe we know now why Mark Millis is the former head of the project.
#DeleteChrome
If we can skip through space and time, can we use this to skip commercials?
"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it"
Well that's the problem there now, isn't it?
"Instead of driving your car to work each morning, you leave your car in one place and rotate the earth until your car and workplace are at the same place. Simple, right?"
I'll believe Faster Than Light travel when I actually see it...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?"
You see that is where your going wrong, anything that involves trying to recreate big bangs is not a good idea.
I also though inflation theory was just a stop gap, its a model not as pure as the original big bang theory, yet doesn't quite close all the problems, so its a good starting point for progress but its defiantly not right!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
that sounds more like Guild Heighliner technology where they Fold Space.
"travel to any part of the universe, without moving".
It also avoids the acceleration/deceleration with WARP speeds :P
I was not here, I did not say this.....
If it does turn out that it is possible, isn't there the possibility that you would crash in to stars and space rubble, etc...
We should build all workplaces to the west of where people live. The since everyone will be going the same direction cooperatively the earth will move thereby reducing total mileage and commute time. Even if it's only a small amount, when you mutiply that by billions of commuters you will be saving many lifetimes per year in aggragate.
additionally you get a daylight savings time effect where the drive to work is better lit without sacrificing daylight at the end of the day
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Its also worth noting that, as well as the inflationary period shortly after the big bang, this is also believed to occur in close proximity to the event horizon of rotating black holes (specifically, within the ergosphere of such an object.)
OTOH, a tricky part of Star Trek-style warp drive is coming up with a way of generating such an effect that will selectively move the object you want moved at FTL speeds over a vast distance without disrupting a vast swath of the universe near the path of movement. While generating a rotating black hole with an ergosphere large enough to accommodate your starting and ending location may get you from point A to point B at better than light speed, its going to cause a lot of collateral damage in the process, even if you can somehow "turn off" the black hole when you have arrived.
All we need to do is create an engine that generates as much energy as there was present in the entire universe a few nanoseconds after the big bang... D'oh! Yeah, coating the entire surface of the Earth with gold foil to increase its reflectivity and eliminate global warming is technically possible too -- but that doesn't mean it's going to happen!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Who put the military in charge anyway?
Who is the General Relativity, and why does he think he can order us around; we're civilians, right?
-- Terry
So let's get this straight. It might have happened during the Big Bang. So, if we want to recreate it we're probably going to need to create a power source within a few magnitudes of the Big Bang. I don't know about you, but I don't feel comfortable using up significant percentages of the Universe's total energy. No need to accelerate the Big Freeze.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Warp drives have the same drawback as wormholes. You need exotic matter to create the gravitational repulsion needed to distort spacetime in this unusual way. Other schemes for warp drives have been proposed, which allegedly overcame this obstacle, but they have their own drawbacks. ... [I]n fact, Ken Olum and others have proved that any type of warp drive [requires negative energy].
...
There are limits to the lifetime of any given amount of negative energy. For wormholes and warp drives these limits imply that such structures must either be very small, or else the region of negative energy must be extremely thin
Warp drives, if anything, are worse. To travel at 10 times lightspeed (a mere Star Trek Warp Factor 2) the thickness of the bubble's wall must be 10^-32 metres. If the starship is 200 yards (200m) long, the energy required to make the bubble has to be 10 billion times the mass of the known universe.
Engage.
If we really wanted to be silly about things, one could make the claim that the rotating earth with the car in place, and having the car move across the earth are essentially the same thing. In our models we only say the earth is stationary in keeping with our sense of things and our coordinate system, but we could just as easily have one where the car is stationary and the earth moves. In fact old top down racers used to do exactly this.
This is my sig.
The LHC hurls particles with about as much kinetic energy as a flying fruit fly around. Earth is constantly bombarded with particles having orders of magnitude more energy, so if LHC could cause a black hole, we wouldn't be here to build it!
The point isn't the amount of energy (Earth is bombarded with higher energy particles constantly) but that it's finely controlled and we can observe exactly what happens when two sub-atomic particles collide with a respectable amount of energy to let us know what's really going on down at that level. And that's fascinating.
Could LHC cause the earth to implode? Perhaps with the same likelihood that Universe was created by a 7 foot tall bunny made out of spaghetti, used VHS video tape and lug nuts, or that all the subatomic particles in your body will suddenly decide to move together through the wall behind you into the ladies room on the other side and you end up convicted of a sexual crime, even though you are innocent. Possible? Yes, but don't think that "possible" means anything other than "all but infinitely unlikely except that it's near impossible to prove a negative".
And don't forget: there is a non-zero chance that the universe WAS created by a 7-foot tall bunny made of spaghetti, used video tape, and lug nuts! Everybody panic!!!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Isn't this how the Planet Express ship moved through space in Futurama?
Where do I sign up, I want my pendant keychain.
IF I had a stick 100 Million light years long. With me holding the stick on one end, and a tiny model spaceship on the other end of the stick and I move that stick left or right, would the ship not move faster than light?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
If you put it inside an F-15. You might need a pilot to actually fly the plane
Hey, if we can compress air to fly at high altitudes, why not time to fly long distances?
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
When do we get to have sex with them?
"Nothing is impossible. I understand how the engines work now. It came to me in a dream. The engines don't move the ship at all. The ship stays where it is and the engines move the universe around it." -- Futurama 2:10
In Soviet Russia, space-time warps you.
Is this how Natalie Portman got here?
Moving blobs of space-time: What could possibly go wrong?
TFA explains why I read this /. post yesterday.
How to leave Mom's basement.
It's working in the next Linux kernel.
If it already happened isn't that prior art?
Samzenpus can't spell "achieve". Editors must have beamed up.
and last but not least ... IANAL but isn't traveling faster than light illegal?
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
And the answer is that commercials actually skip you
In memory of the late Dom DeLuise:
"Pizza is going to send out for YOU!"
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
...it exists as a possibility and an impossibility at the same time.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
after all, it only requires energy equivalent of exploding star.
in a way, stars are like the next fossil fuel.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
We just have to build this:
Infinite Improbability Drive
> Just a few centuries ago computers were impossible,
as was flying and a great number of other things we think of as common now.
You mean... like chairs?
Maybe now even pigs with wings will fly... but then what would it be: swine or aviary flu?
any thing is possible. ;-)
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
This seems to be describing the Alcubierre drive. The Wikipedia article is much, much better than the crappy article linked to from the slashdot summary.
A few ideas to keep in mind about general relativity:
The structure of general relativity implies, on fundamental grounds, that to build anything like this would to require godlike mastery over huge amounts of mass and energy. This is because the basic field equation of GR relates the curvature of spacetime to its mass and energy content.
The structure of relativity also implies that any faster-than-light technology will also be a technology for time travel. This is because if two events A and B are separated by a distance x that is greater than ct, where t is the time interval separating them, then there are some frames of reference in which A occurs before B, and some in which B occurs before A.
General relativity does not forbid FTL on a totally generic basis.
A good book on the subject is Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, by Gott. (Yes, it's the same subject as FTL, because FTL is equivalent to time travel.)
Find free books.
How can you "move" space-time when motion occurs within space-time?
That's like saying you can heat up a temperature. A temperature is a measurement of heat. You can heat up an object, but not the measurement of it.
Silly rabbits.
It IS staying still. The Galaxy Express moves the universe around it.
The Enterprise does not move without actually moving but the Futurama spaceship does.
As far as I can remember (and I read the Enterprise technical manual over 15 years ago), the warp gondola create a field in which space-time is bended and thus much smaller. So, this vastly decreases the length of the space surrounded by the enterprise and thus it can fly through the shortened space with "normal" means in much less time, therefore creating the possibility to travel faster than light: light has to travel the "long way", outside of the shortened space whereas the enterprise can take "the shortcut" while traveling with nearly light speed, thereby going faster than light.
Why this will never work IRL is left as an exercise to the reader. (Hint: even in a shortened space-time, a mile is still a mile and a second is still a second when measured from within that space)
Now, the Futurama spaceship in contrast works by moving the universe aroud itself. Way cooler, isn't it?
This should be postponed until the Singularity. Warp drive is fairly complicated, and could use a post-singularity intelligence. It's coming.
They have already proven that this is possible on the event horizon of a black hole. It drags space time around the hole in a dragging motion due to the extreme gravity waves so that anything within that space time could conceivably move faster than the speed of light relative to an outside observer.
Just very, very improbable.
Some terrorist in 2303 is going to manipulate spacetime and totally "move" Earth into the sun; I'm calling it now.
Why would anyone bother moving that smoldering radioactive gravity pit anywhere? If they really wanted to strike at civilization they could try to move the subspace buoy out of alignment with its stargate coordinates. But the Universal AC inside the chrono-synclastic infundibulum would probably see them doing that and branch their reality off into a null timeline.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080923-dark-flows.html
In addition to the mysterious, and continuing observance of "Dark Flow", there is also the recently proven phenomenon of Frame Dragging, which was proven right here on earth. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7011/full/431918a.html
I dont think it unlikely that both frame dragging and dark flow are really the same thing; a distortion on spacetime caused by a static high energy aggregation. In the case of the earth and its impact on satelites, that energy source is the gravitational well of the earth, coupled with its axial rotation. In the case of dark flow, it could just be an emergent property of the local cluster having an unusual impact on the surrounding spacetime.
[begin wild supposition sequence]
Assuming that gravitational waves do in fact occur, it would mean that the periodic rotations of massive or energetic bodies (since mass and energy are equivilent under relativity-- a very low mass object with VERY high rotational energy could be equivilent to an object with heavy mass, and low rotational energy) could have a sympathetic harmonic reaction within the local spacetime-- Similar to how one can induce a standing wave in a pool of water with careful callibration of sonar transducers. http://www.mes.co.jp/Akiken/whatsnew/new20060724.html (page in japanese)
If similar properties can be measured and studied (in gravity waves), even small purturbations in a local spacetime could be greatly amplified by reinforcement from other sources, and produce "static" gravitational wells without the presence of a local causal mass. Viola-- Dark flow.
However, in order to create such a pocket of distorted spacetime one would first need to measure gravitational waves, then measure the effect of wave interference for the phenomena. Two things that have not been conclusively accomplished, and so, at this time it would not be possible to build the equivilent "wave tank" field generator for creating standing gravitational waves in the lab.
theoretically speaking, one could create "very" small gravitational waves using an array of off balance rotating masses, such as a lead weight on a motor shaft, as the source of the gravitational occilation. However, without a good measurement of rate of decay, or how these waves interact with one another, it is impossible to calculate what the "sweetspot" would be for creating standing gravitational waves, since you would not know how far apart to place the rotors, how heavy to make the masses, or what rate to turn them in relation to each other to produce the effect.)
If it could be accomplished, a wave amplitude far greater than could be generated by the standing masses, as a result of the accumulating energy in the reinforcement pattern introduced by moving the masses in such a precise manner. EG, the energy used for propulsion would be directly coupled to the energy used to rotate your small masses, accumulating in the local spacetime, and thus alter it's shape.
Rate of input would have to exceed rate of output for the accumulation to occur however, so we are talking a HUGE energy source requirement. Even an entire sun might not be enough to drive that kind of relativity curve, which is probably why we have only observed it in large star clusters. (Assuming this is indeed what causes dark flow)
Its better to think about whats possible than to constantly tell people whats not possible.
For something like 700 years, the speed of light was like 34 miles an hour. That's the speed at which a junebug, tied to a string, started to blur.
Science goes both in and out of accuracy. People don't like to remember it, but it's true. In fact, it's been just as inaccurate as certain Popes I'll not name.
Both cases are true: mankind doesn't understand something at some point. It's natural.
What doesn't *seem* natural is a book, written 1000+ years ago describes "The Earth is suspended from nothing" and talks about the plate separation forever changing it from a single land mass. Yeah, the Bible.
There's a lot more that's in there. No other old book comes close. Isn't that enough reason to look? Why are you urged to look away?
Which is more likely? Proof of God or warp drive? Before I start preparing for first contact and the "space bucks test" I'd just like to know where people are on the issue.
The word "possible" actually means that there is some evidence on which to base speculation in favor of an idea. The notion that "anything is possible", basically claiming that anything a person can imagine might exist or happen somewhere in the universe, is just plain wrong.
That is why people need to provide some evidence to support their favorite beliefs while those who mock their silly notions need do nothing but show that they're wrong.
Colonel Sandurz: Prepare ship for light speed.
Dark Helmet: No, no, no, light speed is too slow.
Colonel Sandurz: Light speed, too slow?
Dark Helmet: Yes, we're gonna have to go right to ludicrous speed.
Colonel Sandurz: Ludicrous speed?! Sir, we've never gone that fast before. I don't know if this ship can take it!
Dark Helmet: What's the matter Colonel Sandurz? Chicken?
IANA-Particle Physicist || Theoretical Astrophysicist.
I am however fascinated by space and the science (albeit the layman's view) behind our understanding of it. One thing I have read about is the expansion energy that seems to be pushing the universe apart. If this energy can be found and quantified how plausible is it to create a negative effect, or localized contraction of space, to facilitate a new type of travel?
I don't claim to understand the amount of energy needed but seeing as this energy is dark and pretty much everywhere maybe we don't need black hole-esque power to achieve warping space.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
Everyone knows that nothing travels faster then lint
*DrugCheese rants*
Trunks writes
"No doubt trying to ride the hype train that's currently going for the new Star Trek film, Space.com has a new article detailing how warp drive may not be impossible to achieve from the article,'
like I am really going to believe anything a time traveling Dragon Ball Z character tells me about faster than light travel.
I like that idea, faster than light travel should have happened during the big bang because matter did end up somewhere further than light can travel in that time.
Perhaps on that scale, however, or maybe before matter existed as we experience it, physics followed different rules entirely.
Or maybe matter didn't exist then and it was a form of energy that can travel freely and then later became matter and energy.
Or maybe the Higg's Field didn't exist until after the Big Bang.
Or maybe there was no Big Bang.
I still have ten minutes I have to do something with, but I'm out of or maybes.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Really? Specifically Star Trek's Warp Drive is possible?
So does that mean some day interstellar travellers will be able to disinfect their computer systems of a cheese virus by using the warp field to heat the ship? And we'll be able to travel through time by using it to fly around the sun? And rerouting Warp power through the deflector dish will be used to solve any problem?
...this still assumes you can move spacetime itself faster than the speed of light. Can you? I mean, an object can't move faster than the speed of light if you stick it in a box and try to move the box faster than the speed of light...
There's no such thing as proof that something ISN'T possible
The Michelson-Morley experiment proved that it is not possible to explain light as a wave in the 'aether'. The LEP collider at CERN showed that it is not possible to have a Standard Model Higgs with a mass under 114 GeV/c2. etc. etc.
The problem is that negative experimental results that prove that certain theories are not possible are rarely reported because they are less important that the ones which prove that a theory is correct.
The fact that you've identified a potential problem in a technology...
This is a scientific problem, not a technological one at the moment. We need a better understanding about the fundamental nature of space-time. Until that happens we have no reliable science for any technology to exploit and lots of contradictory results based on our current flawed understanding will no doubt continue to be reported here.
My dilithium crystal mine might pay off!
... except skiing through a revolving door.
If it was at all probable, then it is also probable that other alien beings are already travelling the universe at FTL.
In which case the probability of being visited by these alleged aliens is far far higher than Fermi or Hart have considered.
In which case Fermi had a very good questions. "Where are the aliens?"
All you have to do is say "engage"
Of course, since the metric expansion of space appears to be happening everywhere, and almost uniformly at the largest scales, it is easiest to model its behaviour as a slow rolling low energy scalar field that permeates all space, along the lines of the other fields in quantum field theory.
That is, in the absence of interference by the much stronger QFT fields that permeate all space, excitations in the inflaton field cause a spatial expansion in all directions away from the excitation.
In this type of theoretical framework excitations of the inflaton field propagate at c or slower, but high amplitude exciations cause a spatial coordinate expansion to separate formerly-adacent coordinates at speeds that would exceed the relativistic speed limit if measured by a stationary observer at infinity. However, observers embedded in the spatial volume undergoing rapid expansion would not measure a local acceleration -- they would see a (possibly highly anisotropic) recession (rather, a huge redshift and diminished angular measurements) in their local "sky" as a whole bunch of new space suddenly bubbled into existence.
There are a few problems here in practical ship-travel terms.
Firstly, there is no good evidence supporting large excitations in the inflaton field as it evolved after the Inflationary Epoch, and lots of evidence to suggest that the field rolls very gently and at enormous scales. That is, we don't see sharp peaks in the inflaton field breaking apart structures large, classically or QFT small (large being galaxy superclusters, galaxies, star clusters, star systems, even puny humans; classically small being individual molecules, atoms, nuclei, nucleons and other composite particles; QFT small being e.g. the electron field).
There is no current requirement that inflation had localized sharp peaks or deep troughs, although that may be necessary to explain supervoids, the CMB axis of evil, etc., however those are still more likely to arise from gravitation than inflation.
An absence of observed sharp local excitations in the inflaton field does strongly imply that they don't (or even can't) happen. Evidence of such excitations are more interesting with respect to the implications for quintessence-like models (can sharp excitations in the inflaton field bust apart structures bound by gravitation, electromagnetism or the strong force?) than for travel.
Generating a local excitation in a ship would introduce a lot of space between things previously near it, which is certainly a way of travelling "superluminally" fast away from something, but it has the side effect of creating a lot of space as "pollution". This new space would still have the relativistic speed limit (like all the space being created as the universe expands, and like all the space created during the Inflationary Epoch) for particles traversing it, so the return journey would still take a long time, as would future signals. The introduction of the new space also significantly warps space-time locally and will influence the freefall trajectories of objects passing through it; other ships and planets may not appreciate that.
This space-time warping would leave a real "fingerprint" on things propagating through it including excitations in the other QFT fields (i.e., we would see a form of lensing on photons). If it were a process that happened naturally with even a very small frequency, we would probably be seeing it in gravitational microlensing experiments already.
Moreover, for travel it's also annoyingly useless because it only moves one away from a starting point (and all the points "beyond" that starting point), but does not move one any closer to the destination:
If U.S.S. Enterprise travels conventionally to the edge of the solar system in the direction of Barnard's Star and creates a 5.9 light-year bubble or tube of inflation with the idea of using the expansion "warp" to move much closer to Barnard's star, what will really happen is that the U.S.S. Enterprise will indeed wind
> I like that idea, faster than light travel should have happened during the big bang
> because matter did end up somewhere further than light can travel in that time.
The trouble with your inflation drive is that you will always end up farther from both your starting point and your destination than you were when you departed.
In fact, the particles that comprise you will all end up farther apart then they were when you fired up the drive. That could have unpleasant side effects.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If you are interested in this type of thing, I suggest listening to the FIB podcast interviewing Michio Kaku or read his book Physics of the Impossible , which also discusses teleportation.
Think Deeply.
Yes but does it go to ELEVEN?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
This all sounds very complicated. I think I'll use my legs instead.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
This isn't science. This isn't even engineering.
I don't begrudge them this, but really, this is an attempt to cash in on the upcoming Star Trek movie.
And the end of the day, it's simple. Are causality violations an implication of this technology? If yes, then go back to writing science fiction.
Expansion doesn't have a speed. It's a scaling. Points will separate from one another at some speed, which is just the distance times the rate of scaling.
Consider ants on a rubber sheet. It's undefined to say that the rubber sheet is expanding faster than the speed of ants. You could say the ends of the sheet are separating at faster than the speed of ants.
On an infinite sheet, if the distance is great enough, you'll be able to find points separating faster than the speed of ants, even with a small scaling factor.
Big bang... Gravity... Mass... Ugg, to many wikitists (wiki scientist) on here.
You can only travel thru void (space) 2 ways. By moving traveling through a bend in space or traveling through normal space. Traveling through a bend in space depends on the weight of the bend. See there is no such thing as a 'rip' in space, space doesn't rip, because it is void and void is void, nothing, nata. Just pretend it just doesn't exist, because it doesn't. Black holes work by having such a large amount of mass. Remember, space is void, and when you 'feel' the pull of something or see a black hole eat up some light. It's not bending space, really, void doesn't bend, because it isn't there. The effect your feeling is a result of gravity, not gravity + void.
An large amount of mass creates the warping effect of gravity. So how does man create a warping effect? Well, there are 2 ways. Create an object that has enough mass to the size required in order to create the amount of warping. Well the Sun has some really nice mass, but actually to get some motion, you will need the power of a black hole. Not only will you need the amount of mass generated by a black hole, you'll also need the power to MOVE amd STOP it. That means you'll need the mass of a black hole to the 2nd power.
So, how do you create the mass of a black hole? And obviously your spaceship has to be able to avoid the mass of the blackhole so you can't have a big black hole in front of your ship and another one behind it to cancel it out, you'll just get ripped apart. So how do we solve that, we need it to be small, like in a engine? Well, the only way to create mass on a small scale is with ENEGRY. Yeah! Energy! Wuuuuuu.
Do you release the amount of enegry required to create mass? Well, it hasn't been done and most likely never will. Humans can't create mass/matter from enegry, if we could. Then we would have a transporter, like on star trek? But on star trek the warp drives existed before transporters? Thus is true. The amount of enegry required is so large, that the thought of it is just beyond belief.
The fact is, warp drive maybe possible. But by the time humans reach the level required to even prototype something like this, humans they will not be.
After the development of sufficiently powered engines the problem was not so much generation of lift, which Maxim and Langley had achieved, but the ability to control flight. The Wright brothers' use of three-axis control was crucial.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Brothers
Wilbur, stung with disappointment, remarked to Orville that man would fly, but not in their lifetimes. (in 1901)
Babylon 5 had it right.
It would be easier to send something non-corporeal through space/time. Why deal with the environmental overhead?
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Douglas Adams
Maybe the real problem to solve is just how to make everyone immortal. That solves the issue of it taking tens or hundreds of millions of years to go somewhere. If I were a lifeform that had a lifetime of 10 minutes, going from New York to California would seem about as daunting as us going to the nearest star.
We don't even have a theory that works. We have GR that breaks down as soon as gravity becomes too high, or it becomes too low. It will also not work at too small distances. We have QM which does not work beyond small distances.
Most scientists are not even willing to consider that the theory is broken, but are happy to extrapolate in places where it doesn't go.
There are very few who are even trying to work on a Quantum theory of Gravity. Without which talking about Cosmology and Warp Drives is meaning less.
-anand
Possible before the big bang fully crystallized the laws of nature.
And possible before dark energy took over and expansion started.
Only possible today at subluminal speeds... sorry.
We are going to need generation ships and the ability to live a lot longer.
The people which said that said it in the context that the engineering of such machine was impossible , and at the time they were right. Then came the brother wright and a few other which went on and USED SCIENCE and ENGINEERING from that epoch, got a bit of luck and a good deal of genius and put something together which worked. The problem is : most people use the brother wright as an example of science thinking something impossible and then it happens. IT IS NOT SO. What was thought is while the science allow heavier than air flight, the engineering would be impossible, so the BIRD FLIGHT is relevant, ESPECIALLY that the guy involved were all from the enlightenment period, most probably deist (so not really believing in god creator). And that was only a few individual mind you. Obviously other individual had another opinion. The wright brother example / flight is NOT an example of the limit of science, it is an example of the limit of expertise of individuals and that one should avoid making particular prediction on the possibility of ENGINEERING something. I bet a lot of people said the same things about calculating complex stuff with primitive calculation amchine in the 19th century.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
For all past times x, for some past time y, for some bird z, we have
If x is later than 1700, then for some y between x and x-1 hour, bird z was flying at time y.
Of course, this fails if you lead with "for some bird z".
Possible before the big bang fully crystallized the laws of nature.
And was possible before dark energy took over and expansion started.
Only possible today at subluminal speeds... at least that's what the brain slugs keep telling me.
We are going to need generation ships and the ability to live a lot longer.
I've had this chunk of space time in my basement, i can finally put some use to it.
Creating warp drive is definitely doable. I have demonstrated in controlled circumstances that you can move small objects through subspace at the speed of light. The problem is controlling the direction and distance.
Okay, here's how you do it: gather dark matter into a rotating chamber and use heat, humidity and static electricity to create energy fields that move small quantities of matter at the speed of light.
I tend to use a mixed blend of synthetic and natural fabrics to increase the static fields. This always guarantees a quantum flux field is generated.
The only problem is that the field tends to actually launch the fabrics into subspace and there is no telling where they will emerge; so the field usually shuts down after the smallest piece of fabric in the chamber enters the field.
Anyway - I get it to work all the time.
The recipe is quite simple. You can do it with items you have in your home.
- AC@LS
Yet another small article that doesn't say anything about anything. Just a couple of conjectures and ideas that have already been exposed and commented a long time ago.
"Nothing to see here. Move along..."
The reasoning in this article builds on the assumption that we can somehow rip out a region of space and move it along independently of the rest of space, which is of course nonsense. The geometry of space is basically equivalent with the gravitational field the permeates space, if you will. If we "move a region of space", we fundamentally change the geometry - just imagine a 2D coordinate system and move a region of that space around (0,0); you would either have to break the coordinate axes or bend them, both of which will have a huge impact on the geometry of the thing. If we were to move a piece of space along like that, we would see some really weird gravity distortions.
But apart from that, what Einstein's assumption was, was not that "it is impossible to do anything faster than light", but that it was impossible to transmit any signal that propagates through space faster than light. There are some unspoken assumption in this wording - like eg that a signal propagates through space in much the same way as through an elasic media; if one could find a way of not propagating through space in that fashion, perhaps things can move faster. Indeed, the famous "Ghostlike Action at a Distance" phenomenon must be of that category.
k ive had an idea and i would like too share it here maybe im totally crazy or maybe theres something too it i dont know.here goes... the big bang spreaded particles in our space creating many objects the further u get from the origin of the bang the thinner the particles are spread until u come across a border wheres theres no more particles in space wich is even emptier than our know space we are in. maybe ftl speeds are not possible here because there are too many particles here causing a drag on the craft... the faster u move the more particles u "hit" or encounter so then maybe u just need a device that removes the particles in front of your space craft under pressure or by forcing them aside so u get the empty space properties wich again cause less drag making close too or faster than light travel possible im just thinking out loud now so...
all of the atheists would be climbing over themselves to be the first to prove that god doesn't exist
Really? Because, you know, being an agnostic, I was pretty sure that's what atheists actually do.
That was beautiful.
I've done these calculations. It was seven furlongs per fortnight.
Wonder Nerd Powers Activate!
Warp speed (according to the tech manual) is achieved creating high-frequency space-time distortion pulses. As one field dissipates, it is replace/reinforced by the next expanding field, this is why the warp coils fire in sequence. To facilitate propulsion, The frequency and intensity of the fields are alter between the upper and lower hemispheric coils and between the two nacelles themselves. The point is not to create a huge bubble of distorted space-time, but to create very minor distortion at high frequencies. As seen as mankind figures out how to artificially bend space-time even slightly, we are already one our way.
Wonder Nerd Powers Deactivate!
He was the head until he revealed this ridiculous hunch of his, and that's when they made him "former" :)
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
DON'T PANIC.
I suspect TFA is connected with the publication of "Frontiers in Propulsion Science", a sort-of summary of the work of the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project:
http://www.amazon.com/Frontiers-Propulsion-Progress-Astronautics-Aeronautics/dp/1563479567
See also
http://tauzero.aero/
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
If a physicist tells you that something is probably wrong, make the working assumption that the thing probably is wrong. By carefully qualifying their remark, the physicist has shown themself to be reasonably careful when dealing with facts, and their opinion is probably worth listening to.
If a physicist tells you that something is definitely impossible (without careful qualifying explanation), assume the opposite - that their "impossible" thing is actually true. Because the physicist is no longer talking like a scientist, they're talking like a loud git in a bar. If they're being that careless then their opinion probably isn't worth anything, and the fact that they are so keen to convince you that a thing isn't true suggests that there would probably be some interesting consequences if that thing were true. So as a scientist and a researcher, what you've learnt from their statement is that (1) there may be some intriguing logical possibilities here to be studied, (2) that mainstream research (as represented by your sample physicist) hasn't covered those possibilities adequately, and (3) that mainstream researchers (as represented by your sample physicist) don't seem to be looking at the problem seriously, which suggests an opportunity for others to step in and do some decent work.
And even if you don't do that research yourself, someone else is liable to, which means that the more often you hear physicists stating that a thing is utterly impossible, the more likely it is that you'll hear in a few years time that the thing has actually been achieved.
Eric Baird
Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang.
I don't know about you, but I always take anything that a model suggests with a grain of salt!
Even some drunken idiot living in a shack and working on large scale home science projects in an abandoned missile silo could invent it.
Hasn't anyone here read "The Physics of Star Trek" first published c. 1995?
Seriously, nothing is impossible. We learn often that our understand of general physics gets challenged consistently when outside of our normal human realm of perception. That is, for things that we do not normally experiece; massive objects such as stars, black holes, galaxies, Gamma-Ray Burst/Super Nova, "dark" matter & energy, quarks & sub-atomic particles.... That is why we have quantum and theoretical physics. To say anything is impossible is dumb. You can not honestly tell me that we can not fold or move space-time (cringe using the word time like it is a natural occurrence) because no one has every tried it that we know of and if they have they were not successful.
Professor Hubert Farnsworth will invent a ship that moves space while standing still.
I saw it on TV so it must be plausible.
What I wonder is, will one be able to travel through planets like in star trek or will it be like in star wars where you will have to navigate between them.
Was the model a Blonde or a Brunette?
physicists and scientists have been researching this for years and coming up with the same conclusion we always lack the energy and funds... we need enough energy to be able to sort of squeeze together the fabric of space and move through it. i think they touched on how planets, stars and black holes compress space as well... i don't think its possible without destroying everything nearby. it probably has been done and might be doable on a small scale but the G's produced will probably kill everything inside. meh... send robots on the warp speed trip and half the problems are solved.
sorry but KingSatan@jsp.org > all
LHC
GP post was an awesome if unintended troll.
So many posts about this. Just stop people. The simple answer is you can only prove something is impossible if you completely know all the rules of the domain / universe - like math and logic.
In real life it's not possible because we don't know all the rules.
When you're not ANYWHERE at all?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
If you could go that fast you would be like a fish breaking out of your fish bowl to get to the other side of it.
Now the real question is: What happens to the water? If it doesn't stay in the bowl then the fish dies.
So therefore it can't be done.
However a dog can be trained to fetch. I don't have any idea what his has to do with anything and it don't make sense.
Neither does warp drive.
"Ya Canna Change the laws of Physics!!!!" ... oh ... wait ... never mind.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Red Matter? Sure, Spock will take the blame, too, and have double indemnity and double identity...
Live Long(er) and prosp(er)...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The problem with *any* way of moving yourself outside your light cone is that it automatically implies the existence of a time machine, which is to say, that the universe can be massively non-causal. It doesn't matter how you get from point A to point B... if you can do it faster than light, you have the ability to violate causality.
This might, of course, be the case (QM is certainly flaky enough that it might be), but so far there's no evidence of macroscopic non-causality.
Why is this important? Because it means that you can only ever use this trick to move further away from *everything*, not closer to any one thing, at faster than the speed of light. Indeed, this trick doesn't let you move at all.
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Light speed has already been surpassed. Please visit "Spooky action at a distance".
Our understanding of the Universe, the laws of physics, and our place in the universe is all severely lacking.
Over half the population is still speaking to invisible men in the sky for salvation, even though the anachronistic texts those fictitious characters are based on have been proven to be derivative from previous civilizations that ceased to exist in prehistory.
People just aren't that smart.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Really, all you have to do is travel forward in time, pick up acopy of "Warp Drives for Dummies" at Chapters and yer done.
I don't know what the big hoopla is all about.