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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?
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.
If we can skip through space and time, can we use this to skip commercials?
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.....
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
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.
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.
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!
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?
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)
Heisenberg compensators. Gosh!
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
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.
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.