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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?"
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.
Summary of the previous article: Here's a technical problem, which no-one will ever figure out how to solve, therefore it's impossible.
Summary of the current article: Here's a tiny shred of scientific evidence that it may have happened before, therefore it is not impossible.
Note that the previous article was just a logical fallacy. The fact that you've identified a potential problem in a technology that doesn't even exist does not rule it out as a possibility.. it just shows that it is hard, duh, we knew that already.
Note that the current article is just wild speculation.. they're trying to say that if space warping happened slightly after the big bang then that might actually mean it is possible to do it now. And people tend to read what they want to read, namely, they confuse "possible" with "practical".
How we know is more important than what we know.
So which is it? Neither. It's viral marketing piggy-backing on the hype surrounding the new ST movie. No news here. Nothing to see.
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.....
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.
they're trying to say that if space warping happened slightly after the big bang then that might actually mean it is possible to do it now.
Well supposedly space is warped slightly by ordinary particles, right? (gravity?) If there was a "big bang" then what happened shortly after the big bang would be more than "slight".
I think the point they were trying to make about the big bang was not that it's possible to warp space (which happens), but that it must be physically possible to warp space to such a degree so as to allow matter to travel faster than light. The theory is that, at the time of the big bang, space was expanding faster than light, so that one year after the big bang particles would be more than 1 light-year apart from each other. So that would mean that those particles were moving faster than light, and it would be an example of faster-than-light travel already happening.
Of course, I don't know how they know how fast things were moving after the big bang. Even if you were there to observe it, there wouldn't be anything periodic to compare the motion to (no sun for the earth to go around, and so no "year" measurement). But then even ignoring that, I'd think that an event like the big bang would distort time, too. But I guess some really smart mathematician must have figured it out, right?
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?
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Your nitpick is wrong. More than one light-year away from each other after one year would require a relative speed greater than light speed, which would be sufficient to demonstrate an exception to the general principle that light speed is the greatest possible relative speed.
I knew it was a mistake to give up trying to solve the Halting Problem!
I thought the Inflatinary Era what what happens in a few years when the trillions we've been printing catch up with us?
Actually, the Inflatinary Era is just a big WTF in current cosmology. Everyhting makes good consistant logical sense back to a certain point, with lots of hard evidence thans to the recent CMBR stuff. But then we have to invent a whopping great cosmological constant to makes sense of it all. I think that's probably as full of shit as each previous cosmological constant.
I suspect there are better theories for why the CMBR temperature is so uniform, and given the fantastic progress that cosmology has in recent years, the whole Inflatinary Era idea may be abandoned by cosmologists by the time it's a reality for economists!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Debating the astrophysics of a warp drive tops that in my book. Now, where's that carburetor rebuilding thread?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!