Slashdot Mirror
Warp Drives May Come With a Killer Downside
An anonymous reader writes "Alcubierre warp-drives (theoretically) allow rocket ships to travel faster than the speed of light, while staying within the rules of Einstein's general theory of relativity. New research (PDF) has shown that as such warp-drives zip through the universe, they gather up particles and radiation, releasing them in a burst as the warp-drive slows down. This is bad news for family and friends waiting for the ship to arrive, as this intense burst will fry them."
Duh
>thisfuckingguy.jpg
Yup.
If this is our biggest barrier to developing one tomorrow, then why don't we have these already? I mean besides NASA budget cuts...
bussard collectors. /thread
... May the force be... uh... ummmm... so, sorry!"
Open Standards Portal
They came to that conclusion now? Every newly certified spaceship pilot knows that you must drop out of warp no less than an AU from destination.
Now it can be funded.
WhatMeWorry!
So you drop out of warp outside the Van Allen belts and everybody gets a nice light show.
Worst case you only use Warp Drive as far in system as Mars and use more conventional means from there to Earth.
Hell using Warp drive through the Oort cloud or Asteroid Belt might be troublesome if you just start picking up crap when passing through dense matter. You slow down and all of the asteroids and comets you picked up are on a colission course for Earth. I suggest some different approach vectors might be the first precaution.
This is what the deflector array is for. Like, the original purpose, not the solution-of-the-week it usually gets jury-rigged for.
Makes a visit to the Mother-In-Law worth while now!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
This is why we need lasers to instantly cryofreeze humans and use this burst to our advantage to insta-defrost us back to our normal state.
Why do you want to irradiate all star systems other than Sol's?
I say we build all our space ports in North Korea.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
For the most part, in Star Trek they intentionally didn't go to warp in-system unless it was an extreme emergency. Even in The Motion Picture they're at sublight until they're well past Pluto.
You mean, as in:
Data: Geordi, in my experiments to become more like a human, I seem to have lodged Captain Picard up my positronic rectum
Geordi: Wow, Data, I mean, um.... Maybe I don't want to know. But I tell you what, we'll set up a tachyon burst through the deflector array and that should cause your mechanical sphincter to open. If we're lucky, it will also fry his brain so he won't remember you stuffing him in there.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
not different than a car, you don't go 200 miles an hour in tiny streets unless you are prepared for some serious dammages :)
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Just like an airport, there are specific take off lanes and pre-defined flying paths and alititudes. So in the case of faster than light space flight, there are specific channels that are not directly pointing at any hospitable planets. So all super-accelerated particles get flung off into space without mass genocide.
Now where's my lab coat and rocket science degree?
...it's rather more like "non" news, since every single thing discussed here (with the exception of Albert Einstein himself) is based on theory, which tends to make me scratch my head as to how much we're spending funding research like this. Kind of hard to put the cart before the horse when you haven't even invented the wheel yet.
Sent from a long distance, nearly undetectable, essentially unstoppable. When it arrives, its arrival is itself a weapon, plus whatever payload it is carrying.
What's that smell? Ah, that's my karma burning...
If this is our biggest barrier to developing one tomorrow, then why don't we have these already?
Because nobody has figured out exactly how one would warp space, only that it's theoretically possible.
Free Martian Whores!
Just fly past your destination before slowing down. Then the burst is traveling away from the family back home. You then turn the ship around and go the rest of the way on impulse engines. Why did someone even bother with this if it is such an easy solution.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Think of it as the space version of a signal cannon.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
These starships would be so unwelcome wherever they arrived that there would be little point in going there in the first place.
That is what I call a "feature", or wait is that Microsoft?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
In Space:1999, the Alcubierre warp-drive was known as the Queller Drive. There was an episode about this exact subject (the drive killing everyone) in the first season episode, Voyager's Return: http://www.fanderson.org.uk/epguides/spaceyr1eg3.html#Episode%20Twelve. In an almost unbelieveable coincidence, I happened to be watching it at the exact moment this Slashdot story came in. Spooky.
If you warp a drive to destroy data, isn't it just easier to wipe it with thermite?
This is a great thing! Now we know how to wipe out all our alien competition!
the deflector dish protects the ship. it does not protect anything outside the ship.
those particles and radiation are consumed as fuel during the trip.
It would keep the particles from collecting in the first place. Try to at least read the summary.
Not sure about the theoretical effect of stopping, since the original theory postulates that once riding that warp bubble there's no way to stop...
Urban renewal?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The warning was given before here:
http://deepthought.newsvine.com/_news/2010/08/24/4961498-einsteins-missing-pages-the-doppler-shift-and-information-loss
I thought that it was impossible (theoretically) to go faster than the speed of light.
Would a warp drive have the same affects on time for the observer as normal high speed travel would?
Unless the resulting burst is a Gamma Ray Burst we should already have seen other aliens using this kind of tech.
In the case of forward-facing particles the outburst can be very energetic — enough to destroy anyone at the destination directly in front of the ship. “Any people at the destination,” the team’s paper concludes, “would be gamma ray and high energy particle blasted into oblivion due to the extreme blueshifts for [forward] region particles.”
I do not see anywhere where it is mentioned how far in front of the ship the blasted into oblivion effects will occur. How close is directly in front of the ship?
Gamma ray bursts and other transient particle jets are intergalactic smog from commuters dropping out of warp?
It causes abnormally intense tetryon fields. This requires that all ships must travel under warp 5. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Force_of_Nature_(episode)
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
so they're really only Alcubierre drive-equipped ships slowing down in our direction.
I hate to be the party pooper, but:
All the energy for those high energy particles has to come from somewhere, which means that it'll take ridiculous amounts of energy to create an Alcubierre drive, it it's possible at all.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
And here I thought we were going to get a warp drive without having to solve any difficult problems!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Except that in the 23rd Century way back then, Pluto was a PLANET!!!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
... and very slow rockets. There are only behind the ship deadly. ;-)
The warp drive was never supposed to work by gravitational space distortion, as I recollect new research into Quantum Mechanics revealed that there were more dimensions than the three that we have (plus time) but a myriad of different dimensions that formed the structure of space. It was hoped that an investigation into these other dimensions would allow for a lower energy distortion of space to occur, or for a shortcut to be found (warp conduit tunnelling or “hyper-space”.) This is the “Tech” that was “borrowed” by sci-fi researchers and not the Alcubierre thought expreiment which relies on a tech that turns you into a singularity / black hole in about 2 seconds flat! :0)
The purpose of existence is to make money.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23292/
http://omnis.if.ufrj.br/~mbr/warp/etc/cqg15_2523.pdf
... couldn't you unwarp and rewarp really quickly and focus all that radiation and energy IN to your ship?
You could fuel your ship with all those particles you pass through on your journey, you wouldn't even need to dip in to a sun to refuel and slowly destroy your ship over time. (damn Ancients, what were you thinking?)
The radiation and particles would fall out of the gravity wells, possibly go fusion, by then you'd have already rewarped and some of the energy would have fallen back in to the warp bubble, the rest would be recaptured as more radiation, which on the next rewarp would release and fuse even more particles you have collected, until you have stopped.
How to stop the explosive energy on arrival, however, is a hard thing.
I guess one thing you could try is dissipate the energy by making successively larger rotating warp bubbles, in turn cancelling out a lot of the momentum of the explosion, but equally adding a lot of stress to your ship in doing so.
All theory, but it is an interesting thing to think about if we ever crack gravity and / or Higgs.
Can injure boarding/deboarding passengers with the intense amount of static electricity that builds up on the rotors. Getting fried by discharge of built-up charged particles is not a new downside to travel methods.
Automobiles may come with a Killer Downside.
Summary:
You can get hit by a car.
This is bad news for family and friends waiting for the ship to arrive, as this intense burst will fry them
Not only that, but since you're traveling faster than light they wouldn't see you coming in time to duck.
Jet engines (theoretically) allow large metal objects formed into a lifting body to fly though the air at great velocities. This causes them to accumulate great momentum. This is bad news for family and friends waiting on the runway for the aircraft to arrive, as this momentum will cause the aircraft to run into them and kill them.
Can't they wrap the dock in tinfoil or something?
No sig today...
This sounds the technology needed to reproduce the photon torpedo. This would certainly make a Hellacous weapon.
So, what you're saying is that this situation calls for WD-40 rather than duct tape? I suppose you must be correct, excellent work good sir!
The falcon, being the first spaceship in the SW universe to be seen going into (and out of) FTL, makes Han Solo the first fryer. Stuff it George Lucas!
But seriously, wouldn't solar winds and a habitable planet's magnetic field tend to deflect the vast majority of this crap? I mean, without either of these, we'd be getting fried by our own sun.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Actually using Mars as a dumping ground to add more Mass and Heat, that was in Red Mars right?
Have they never watched an episode of star trek before... you drop in or out of warp drive at a safe distance from any other planet/lifeforms
so you would never hi warp drive until you actually where outside orbit...a safer distance then this guy thinks it would be...
How dare someone interject reality in to my SciFi visions of the future!
On the more serious side, I'm sure that by the time we could develop something that could warp space, we will also have developed some sort of frictionless space flight. If we flew in space without friction, we would not be collecting all of those loose particulars.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If you warp a drive to destroy data, isn't it just easier to wipe it with thermite?
If you'd properly encrypted the drive to begin with, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Now shut up and pass the ammunition.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
So basically, Asimov was right when he predicted that any interstellar travel would require death. See I, Robot chapter "Escape!" (or short story "Paradoxical Escape") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape! He was just wrong about whose death it would be.
Well as long as we're talking about stuff that doesn't exist, it's an easy solution: just add a dampening field generator.
or else!
Easy to fix. It's just like in Mass Effect 2: there would be a "safe zone" for where ships traveling at FTL speeds to come out of FTL safely. The zones would just have to be large enough to accommodate the largest of ships. The station where you would disembark and your family would be would be outside this zone.
Also, if you are a Star Trek person, you will remember the episode of TNG where the ship had to be evacuated at an orbital platform so that it could be "cleaned" as it built up particles along the hull from many light years of travel. So even fictional space ships still had these types of problems!
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
If this is our biggest barrier to developing one tomorrow, then why don't we have these already? I mean besides NASA budget cuts...
Well, there is that whole problem with creating a bubble of negative energy, something we've not quite figured out how to do (or even what it means).
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I thought the deflector array was for the protection of the crew, not for the inhabitants of the destination.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
make toasted marshmallows.
In many fictional universes, you must drop out of warp drive while you're significantly far from your goal for various reasons (Niven's universe, because ships in hyperspace disappear too close to a gravity well, Star Wars and many Asimov stories, affects navigation or some such hand-waving, Drive comic, causes collateral damage, etc.). This is often for dramatic purpose, else there's no fighting your way in or out of locations, but it's become ingrained in our collective conscious to a certain degree. (Funny how a significant number of people believe something, and it turns out to be true. Maybe Pratchett was right...)
Trek has been somewhat wishy-washy about this, in some cases using impulse to get to a respectful distance, in other cases warping from wherever they happen to be, at the whim of the writers apparently.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Whoosh?
Because nobody has figured out exactly how one would warp space, only that it's theoretically possible.
I generally put a rock where I want to warp space. It's like a paperweight, except it holds downs space. -- not that a physicist would ever perceive it this way.
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
My starship, the U.S.S. Wedgie, releases a burst both before and after it travels faster than light speed on Start Trek Online. It doesn't seem to bother anyone. Just sayin.
More specifically, they've figured out all the neat things they can do with warped space, but just not how to accomplish it in the first place. Gravity, energy, magnetism, and mass all can warp space, but not in useful ways yet. I'd bet magnetism is going to be the way we do it, if ever.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
That's why you need navigation shields.
Can't they wrap the dock in tinfoil or something?
That would be for First Class arrivals only. Non-refundable fares friends and family, will only get tin beanies, and little tin cups to hold in front of their genitals.
For now, since the warp drive has a serious side effect ( 0.0 ). I rather put my money on the VASIMR prototype for now until "further research is done". Nasa has over 100 guys working on this project with AAR right now. So this one is very promising
Remember when the Millennium Falcon jumped out of hyperspace and Alderaan was gone? What we now know is that the dust on the leading edge of the ship is what actually destroyed the planet, arriving just before the ship, leaving it in the middle of an "asteroid field". However, this would have been mighty embarrassing for the Rebellion, so they made up this myth of destruction by the "Death Star" (which wasn't even operational yet!) as the killer. Who do we have to prove otherwise, Leia? She's from the planet that got destroyed and head of the Rebellion; of course she'd lie to protect it (remember, she'd never consciously give it up)! Let's stop the propaganda in its tracks!
Oh, and when Kenobi felt that disturbance in the force: it was a premonition of what they were about to do, but Mr. "I've seen a lot of crazy things" didn't believe in some "force"
Actually, my ex wife can create an enormous bubble of negative energy with only a moment's notice...
This could be an application for a Bussard Ramjet - collect the forward wave's particles for power or thrust. TFA said the problem is mostly blue-shifted components in the front wave, just remove the problem.
Also if Alcqubiere Drives are possible, they will make terrifying weapons. It's a neutron bomb for an entire solar system. *shudders*
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Well, I want my money back.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Just find a reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaly heavy rock. Then they'd agree with you.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Just about every warp ship I've seen re-entering normal space, does so with a light show. Sometimes it looks like they've even ripped a hole in local space.
If you want to understand the true suckage that is the Star Trek movie, here is a good review that explains it.
http://www.theonion.com/video/trekkies-bash-new-star-trek-film-as-fun-watchable,14333/
That just means the airport is going to have to taxi spaceships even longer since we have to wait for them to take off, land, and fly far enough away from the space line to begin take off. I hope we have more comfortable seating and entertainment
I'd argue the Earth's warping of space so I tend to stay near it is really, really useful. That and the sun's kindly keeping us in its vicinity.
I believe one could argue that the people at your destination would have a deflector as well.
Why do you think all warp capable vessels in Star Fleet have deflector arrays? Gosh, kids today not paying attention in interstellar physics...
The signature should be predictable so any species using warp technology should be easy to spot. The problem is since it's a single burst more than one radio telescope would have to detect it or it couldn't be proven scientifically.
No problem. Family and friends will be really old by then.
Think this was already known.
In ST:TNG, this is the flash when ships go into and drop out of warp.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
In other news, standing in front of an arriving airplane leads to being chopped up by the prop. Clearly we can't invent powered flight.
Try reading the article, you will find your answer. I know, surprising huh?
you damn kids get off my solar system.
1. Requires negative energy, which is only a theoretical construct at the moment.
2. Cannot be controlled from the inside.
3. There are also radiation issues inside one.
1 and 2 are show-stoppers, 3 is kind of serious too.
I thought the deflector array was for the protection of the crew, not for the inhabitants of the destination.
In this case it might protect both. If all of the radiation and particles get deflected out of the path of the startship at warp then there wouldn't be anything to build up within the bubble (which protects the crew) and therefore also nothing to get expelled outwards when the ship leaves warp (which protects any nearby inhabitants).
All trajectories would just have to terminate pointing in a direction calculated not to cause harm, say directly at the local star with no important intervening objects.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself! And Spiders!
Theories like assholes, are everywhere and you can safely assume that they stink, unless you personally smell them and document the experiment with appropriate peer review.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Im no physicist and I'm sorry for voicing a direct opinion, however this sounds like a crock of horseshit. Captain kirk, give us more warp speed for the diarrhea repulsion, This really can be a result from force feeding poor dumb animals Metamucil and ex lax flurries. If this were true "Warp speed accumulates atomic explosive energy particles", than the light from the sun colliding with the earth, we would all be toast. H O R S E S H I T !!!!! None the less, stupid people shouldn't talk about physics, instead they should be figuring out the OTHER side of the equation.
Proposing to use your ex as fuel is taking it a bit far...
A thick coating of molasses will make the particles stick to the ship!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Certainly impossible to spell.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Kind of like the Gun on Ice Planet Zero then?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'm pretty sure it was to deflect high-energy particles from colliding with the ship. As in, space isn't empty, and you're traveling at immense speeds, so you're bound to collide with something that will kill you unless you deflect everything.
Damn right...
We should use exes as ammunition, instead.
Maybe if they figured out if warp drives can exist first...
seriously. at warp-speed, navigation through a solar system is VERY dangerous. this radiation isn't the biggest hurdle to warp-drive space-craft. having accurate space-maps and sensors so that you don't warp into an 'asteroid' or 'comet' the size of a gumball and explode is the biggest obstacle.
Who is this German foreign alien to impose an absolute speed limit? Our founding fathers did not create this country to obey some weird laws dreamt up by European commie librul snobbish scientists. I demand immediate congressional action to repeal the theory and the limits immediately. It will create gazillion new jobs.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
DUH.... WTF you think they're for? looks?
The article also mentions that it may dump radiation out from all sides but the worst would be the front.
Then just pull in backwards, like I do when pulling into my garage! Problem solved.
yep, I'd agree, gravity certainly is an attractive Earth feature
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
its a bubble right
"This is why you drop to impulse in a solar system"
Except that on impulse you are limited to sub light speed, which means it would take several months to travel from the outer solar system to the inner planets.
Something about requiring absurd amounts of exotic matter (for example, things that somehow have negative mass) - to the tune of orders of magnitudes more than there is matter in the universe.
No, then some pedant would come along and berate you for calling the rock "heavy" instead of "massive".
Peope. First we must have the shit, then you can worry about the shit that make it shit. lol
Not according to Wikipedia.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's the old question of what happens to a photon traveling at 99% the speed of light
when it achieves a gravity boost from a black hole?
It maintains it's speed but releases a particle or radiation. Conservation of energy.
So no matter how you obtain a FTL craft you've got energy that needs to be released.
(didn't read the PDF, can't do the math so why bother)
Well the solution is rather obvious, just keep turning it on and off again. You don't need to travel in one jump. No build up, no problem.
Technically (as technical as one can get on fictional technology) the array produced an energy shield around the ship and could be expanded to encapsulate objects nearby even small craft. It kept micro meteroites and asteroids away from the ship during normal navigation. It could also deflect primitive weapons. I believe (but cannot verify) the idea was expanded to cover areas of the ship that lost life support and were open to space (to hold air in) as well as reinforce hull integrity in extreme situations.
Yes, exactly like that! Nothing says "I'm here" like rampant destruction.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Wikipedia is not and is not supposed to be a credible source by itself. It does, however, link to a credible source, which would have been better to use in your message.
We'll get Zefram Cochrane to figure this one out.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
So, in effect, the Picard Maneuver has been scientifically confirmed?
Stop over-analyzing your analizations
If that's the signal they dropped out of warp then point our radio observatories at it to see if they broadcast anything else. If they used any form of EM communication we might be able to pick it up if we know where to point the equipment.
Screw that... I prefer the idea of targets.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
For certain untestable versions of theory.
Party at your house this weekend?
if i now that my ship is going to shout out deadly particles and radiation. I would just slow down before you get to a place where you can kill people and use sub or near light drives to get me the rest of the way (no biggy) lets build a warp drive.
just ask blizzard how the protoss do it
use a metamateriel to hide from the radiation and a magnetic field to hide from the high energy particles
Either that, or move it far enough away that you can use an electromagnetic field to bend the radiation away.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The deflector array would stop the build up of particles and radiation.
I've long thought of if a near-light speed vehicle would generate a 'light boom' like a sonic boom produced by aircraft.
Science requires sacrifice...
So I know that if go on a round trip to Alpha Centauri near the speed of light while my twin brother stays on Earth and nails my wife, when we meet again I'll be at least 10 years younger than him and would probably have ditched her anyway. But what happens if I go on a FTL ship? Will I'll be MUCH MORE younger than him? Be the same age? Be younger than him and probably greet my self on the way out?
How about if I spend a year at the 'Tauri on a (artificial?) planet (that's no moon/whatever) of the same gravitational force than Earth at an orbit equivalent with the gravitational pull of our Sun?
But... the future refused to change.
It's called a no-wake zone.
Coupled with some sort of scoop/intake device to harness those particles and use their energy at every stop?
On a completely crazed spinoff, this effect might prompt the development of extremely destructive FTL weapons. Imagine a weapon that will fry a planet as big as the distance it traveled? Stuff of nightmares.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
No no, my friend. You're not thinking this through.
Please, allow me a small thought experiment to illustrate my point.
Assuming you miss the target and hit the stopwall behind it, what happens to the target?
Assuming you miss the target and hit the stopwall behind it, what happens to the bullet?
He fired ONLY. Greedo NEVER fired off a shot. Go watch the original actual movie.
It's fucking fictional, you worthless fuckbags.
This outcome always seemed like common sense to me, but then I've never studied wave theory so I could be completely off.
If you're traveling faster than a wave propagates, you compress it until something goes boom. That happens in stages, and the one people are most familiar with is the sonic boom. I'd imagine an optical boom would be seriously devastating.
This drive gives the old saying "you never really can go home" a whole new meaning.
Actually, my ex wife can create an enormous bubble of negative energy with only a moment's notice..
Proposing to use your ex as fuel is taking it a bit far...
You've never been divorced, have you?
maybe something to do with not being able to access and control enough energy to bend space on itself and pierce through it (as far as i think i understand how it would work)
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
I have a theory that its impossible
Solving the problem of actually getting to warp would be far harder than dealing with this.
Well, everyone knows that!
Am I the only one picturing a space time cattle catcher in the front?
I assume none of you have read the Halo novels? In it, two researchers (Shaw and Fujikawa) develop a Faster Than Light drive that cuts its way out of normal space, and into slipspace, an alternate dimension in which matter moves much faster. While in Slip (stream) space (as long as the ship that enters it is functioning and interacting with the SlipSpace Matter), the ship will move many times faster than normal space, oftentimes allowing the ship to arrive at its destination BEFORE it actually departs, due to the warping of space and time. Because they are not technically moving through normal space, these problems that you all mention do not apply. All that exiting from SlipSpace does is release a small amount of radiation (and since United Nations Space Command ships generally enter normal space many hundreds of thousands of miles, if not millions of miles, from their true destination, this is a non-issue). I think that tearing out of THIS FUCKING DIMENSION would be about as easy as WARPING THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, if not easier.
From "Space 1999"
(1975)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
So to wipe out the aliens and take posession of their infrastructure, all we have to do is... arrive nearby?
This is what baryon sweeps are for.
Don't forget your saddle.
If I need to go anywhere I just take the TARDIS!
A warp drive that we can't afford isn't feasible because it'll nuke the planets we can't get to?
'psch, new life... so gaudy'
Always remember to raise shields BEFORE going into hyperspace.
They are going in the wrong direction with Faster Than Light Travel. Read up on Nicola Tesla's physics. He found a way to combine relativity, and quantum mechanics. I have already said enough.
Well one we don't know if exotic matter exists that *can* warp space the way that is needed. There are no particle candidates in the standard model either. The next big problem it that you need more energy than in the entire visible universe. There are a bunch of other problems, like that it does not conserve some things that are widely held to be conserved. etc...
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Thanks guys! Finally a plausible explanation for all those small GBRs we have been registering!
PS: To those out there: Thanks for not stopping by!
If the particles and radiation would cook the ship's passengers: Simply make internal shielding to protect the passengers.
If the particles and radiation didn't cook the passengers like a microwave potato, but would fry things around while slowing down: Simply have the vessels begin slowing down a safe distance from its destination.
What would be needed (other than perhaps the deflector dish / Bussard Ram scoops mentioned above) would be a static discharger that would bleed off those particles as they built up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_discharger
Never understimate the power of human stupidity -Lazarus Long
Bacteria being in the micrometer range, and we in the meter range, 1 million factor difference, are you implying that there are some alien out there , about 1000 kilometer size ignoring our existence and we ignoring theirs ? That's funny. See the difference between those bacteria and us, is our system of collecting systematically data, analyzing it, and comparing to what we know. Not so much for bacteria.
Why do you think you're not supposed to travel at more than 1/4 impulse out of space dock to the outer warp limit?
Just like you should speed a boat to the point of having a wake when you're boating through a river community....you should have a minimum safe distance to engage or disengage warp engines.
The navigational deflector array pushes "stuff" out of the way of the path of travel, thereby reducing the amount of particle buildup.
gamma ray bursts!
My guess would be that the fictional deflector array would deflect all the photons and radiation and such along the way, never allowing them to build up in the first place. It's main function would still be to protect the crew, the side effect would be to protect the destination.
So we have FTL sorted, except for a few little details -
We don't know how to start it
We don't know how to stop it
We don't know how to steer it
and
We don't know how to build it.
We're almost there.
--
On large numbers - almost all numbers are larger than you can imagine.