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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.
... 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.
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."
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.
More like needing the radiation equivalent of a Catalytic Converter...
If one knows that some undesirable trait will manifest, look at ways to mitigate that undesirable trait.
Or, use that trait beneficially. If the act of dropping out of warp releases a fuckton of energy, find a way to harness that energy.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Did you post this from your quantum computer???
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?
Except in Star Trek: 90210 they went to warp only a couple hundred meters from space dock and dropped out in Vulcan orbit. Don't get me started on what else was wrong with it.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
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.
What happens when someone comes in behind you in the arrival lane? Since any FTL communication would by necessity be based on this unless yet another way to break the speed of light was discovered, you can't even send a "get the fuck out of the way, I'm coming in!" message without killing everyone in the arrival lane.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
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.
Bussard collectors (in the Star Trek reference) were for collecting particles to augment the matter storage of the ship. They did not keep the ship from building up these particles as it traveled.
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. ;-)
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23292/
http://omnis.if.ufrj.br/~mbr/warp/etc/cqg15_2523.pdf
sure exactly the thing we want for first contact with an alien race
alien: i like these humans! they keep sending us these tasty frozen dinners and microwaving them upon arrival so they are nice and toasty warm upon delivery!
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.
There was essentially one thing wrong: it was written by the same retards who did Transformers.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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...
There's no problem with that. Vulcan was already being destroyed, what's a little extra radiation?
Learn to love Alaska
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?
More like, every time you park your car, everyone within a half mile of the car gets hits by tires flying off the car at 50 mph.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
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.
Actually, more like a Vogon freeway.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
If it's like all the other complaint I have read, then.. nothing was wrong with it.
Slap an Ad Hom is not really a complaint.
" couple hundred meters from space dock"
Based on? You have no reference to scale the distance. Not that ti matters, they ahve gone to warp close to things many times throughout the series.
" and dropped out in Vulcan orbit."
so? No the first time the came out of warp in an orbit.
Here is Bender, with more shocking news for you old people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8H5_l9E3s
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...every single thing discussed here 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.
I've heard about this kind of ignorance, but I'm a bit astounded to find it on Slashdot.
Basically, we still haven't found the Higgs boson. Yet physics has advanced far beyond that point, leading to several breakthroughs that we are enjoying the benefits of. And with time, we're eventually going back to prove the Higgs boson. I could name similar "theory points" in almost every science where something has not been proven, but the evidence is enough that we can move forward making assumptions and make other breakthroughs. And we can enjoy the benefit of those breakthroughs long before we verify the 'unproven'.
I weep for the mindset that you have where, if something is not yet proven, you believe that we shouldn't be funding anything beyond that point. That strikes me as very penny wise, pound foolish.
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.
Have something like the old railroad signal flares. If you can read this, you're too close.
Also if you launch these particles off at FTL speeds they're going to hit something. We'd need something to stop it, maybe a giant wall or something. As a nice bonus it would also freak out first time travelers a bit too.
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.
obvious:
You send a smaller craft going a slightly faster warp.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Because if it is possible, in theory, then we can look into WHAT makes it possible.
You would have us d no science unless we can predict what the outcome will be head of time. If we could do that we wouldn't need science any more becasue we would no everything.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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.
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
I have watched the animated series. In the cartoons, you had giant robots that had big plates of metal as armor. In the movies you had giant robots with vast amounts of intricately moving parts that are completely exposed. The robots in the movie look like you could take them out with a well placed stick.
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.
You know. There has to be something in DSM IV to describe the sort of neurological malfunction that can lead someone to watch, let alone like those fucking awful movies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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/
But you see, the Transformers universe is occupied by humans with Shia LaBeouf's intellect. People like that would have a hard time not picking up a stick and doing themselves real harm long before they could ever stick it in an exposed cog.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Actually this sounds like the equivalent of KERS. I am sure the FTL Ferraris will harness the breaking energy to gain a speed advantage (esp. over cars of lesser teams like the FTL Minardis and FTL Super Aguris) at the long intergalactic straights.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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...
...I weep for the mindset that you have where, if something is not yet proven, you believe that we shouldn't be funding anything beyond that point. That strikes me as very penny wise, pound foolish.
Really? I weep for what we have financially created today, for we have all been FORCED to become penny wise, because plenty of leaders have been very foolish with the pounds, which was kind of my entire point here. Of course there's value in science and research, but with increased pressures on budget cuts and overall spending, one would be a fool to not look at research like this with a bit more scrutiny, and therefore question its derived value.
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.
How many shitloads are in a fuckton?
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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.
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.
I always wondered about the two dimensional thinking of that. Why not go UP a few light years at full impulse and then have Scotty stoke the warp core and Sulu floor the gas pedal.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Bussard collectors (in the Star Trek reference) were for collecting particles to augment the matter storage of the ship. They did not keep the ship from building up these particles as it traveled.
That's kinda the point, if you prevent the ship from building them up then you can no longer collect them, silly.
you damn kids get off my solar system.
1024
20.
Central Ohio Home Theater Installation - The Theater People
Actually, they never really said exactly everything that the Bussard collectors did. They very well could have also been used to suck up said particles just before exiting warp. I'll be in my parent's basement if anyone would like to discuss this further.
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).
If life gives you scorching radiation, don't toast marshmallows, make life take the radiation back! Get MAD! I DON'T WANT YOUR DAMN RADIATION!! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS!?! DEMAND TO SEE LIFE'S MANAGER! Make life rue the day it thought it could give CAVE JOHNSON RADIATION! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's going to BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN. With RADIATION.
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!
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...
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
I'd rather get rid of useless wars and defense funds, to be honest.
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.
Nope. But I hear that they have added it to the DSM V.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Why not go UP a few light years at full impulse...
Because impulse power moves the ship at less than c. So you're basically suggesting that they spend a few years moving orthogonally from the path to their destination.
That would make those damn, drawn out "push off" sequences even MORE boring filler.
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.
The big difference between this and KERS / a catalytic converter is that the energy you're trying to collect cannot be collected from inside the vehicle at all. A better analogy is an aircraft trying to collect the energy from its own sonic boom.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Actually, oddly enough it seems to me that much of science fiction is actually limited to a one-dimensional view of the solar system, much less a 2D view. The reference to Pluto is a good case and point.
Everyone seems to think of the planets in such a fashion that they're strung together along a (long) straight road such that to travel "out" of the solar system from Earth you would have to pass along each planet in turn. Who's to say for any given year which planet (if any) you'll pass heading outward (opposite the sun) from Earth even while staying within the ecliptic plane.
One may retort that this usage is just shorthand for each planet's orbit. But the problem is deeper than that. For one example, consider Tony Daniel's Superluminal. The entire series is about an inter-planetary war. The "geography" of the solar system is intrinsic to the plot - which planet can attack which, etc. And it's all wrong for the year of 3017. The book describes a group heading towards Triton for an attack with half the group "continuing on" to Pluto. Trouble is, from the starting planet during that year Pluto and Neptune are in very different directions (almost opposite).
With regards to the warp drive, the ecliptic plane seems hugely relevant. For any inter-stellar travel, just plan things for one (or more) midpoint stop(s) such that your final leg has you heading relatively perpendicular to the ecliptic plane of the destination star system. Then pop out of warp slightly beyond the ecliptic plane (presumably near your destination planet) to dump the energy.
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.
That's on the basis that the car just explodes with energy.
In this case, the energy just continues forward as the transportation mechanism slows.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
just ask blizzard how the protoss do it
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...
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.
Yes, because the economic state is entirely NASA's fault.
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...
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?
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.
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 ?
Solving the problem of actually getting to warp would be far harder than dealing with this.
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 might be more interesting if we find that there *isn't* a Higgs boson. And that's beginning to look more plausible. Most likely energy levels have already been investigated. OTOH, since there aren't that many more places to look, the current searches can be more focused.
But if there is no Higgs boson, then we need a new theory. (Well, we already know we need a new threory...but this would make it clearer.) The question is, what is the evidence that this new theory would need to establish itself? Knowing that the current theory is wrong doesn't tell you how it should be improved. (Which has just recently been shown to be an NP hard problem.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Stellar 9/11, that's what happens. The founding of the Galactic Empire and the war against the Outer Rim separatists.
Ok, I'll go the geek route. In the STNG: Technical manual by Michael Okuda, the use of the Bussard ram scoops is explained. They aren't constantly active, there is even an episode that shows the Enterprise D using them (they actually open up and "scoop" material...
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!
And I bet the waste was on wars, bailing out banks and insurance companies and other forms of corporate welfare, plus money thrown at the "right" kind of dictator with very little, relatively speaking, "wasted" on increasing our knowledge of how the universe works. I'm glad that your government and mine "wastes" money on this kind of thing because mankind would never have gone to space if all that was important was the $5 (warning - number pulled out of arse) a person it would cost.
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!
I'm in it now! I'm not saying they aren't used that way. In fact, that episode you mention actually features them blowing hydrogen OUT too. I'm just suggesting multiple uses, of which one might be scooping up the excess particles grabbed by the warp field. We could go over to Trekbbs and ask Rich Sternbach about it. He wrote the tech manual and actually posts there sometimes. ;-)
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
Unfortunately there are still many Ford Explorers still on the road.
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.
Well apparently you had to go past pluto at impulse otherwise. I would assume by traveling "up" you would only need to get as far away from earth as you would otherwise have to travel away from pluto before you can safely go to warp.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Pluto is only about 40 AU from earth (average), which is about
7*10^-4 light years (per google's converter).
Big difference at impulse speeds (traditionally, about 1/4c, I believe). 22 hours at impulse ought to do it.