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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?
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.
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!!!
The first rule of the universe is : "don't talk of the Spaghetti Bunny" !
What did they teach you in advanced physics class ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
No it would not, the motion of the stick on your end would not propagate instantaneously to the ship.
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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.
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?
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.
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..."
I used to puzzle about that. But the problem lies in the material of the stick, which is made of atoms held together by electromagnetic fields. All real materials are slightly compressible and slightly bendy. Even in the most unbendy material, the atoms only stick together because they are exchanging photons moving at the speed of light, so no signal can move down the stick faster than light. If you waggle the stick back and forth, you just end up with a wave travelling down the stick.
If you kept the stick moving in just one direction - so it's sort of whirling around your head - then you are really just a kind of thruster. The ship would continue to accelerate around until it reached relativistic speeds (assuming your stick is made of unobtanium and can't snap), and you'd notice the ship becoming mysteriously harder to move: its inertia appears to be increasing, and you'd find it harder and harder to add more speed. Pretty sure this is normal relativity for an accelerating object - although there is the subtlety of the additional acceleration provided towards the center by the tension in the stick.
I know it says Anonymous Coward, but admit it... You're Whil Wheaton, aren't you?
No, this is Wil Wheaton: http://slashdot.org/~clevernickname