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The Downside of Warp Drives: Annihilating Whole Star Systems When You Arrive
MrSeb writes "The dream of faster-than-light travel has been on the mind of humanity for generations. Until recently, though, it was restricted to the realm of pure science fiction. Theoretical mechanisms for warp drives have been posited by science, some of which actually jive quite nicely with what we know of physics. Of course, that doesn't mean they're actually going to work, though. NASA researchers recently revisited the Alcubierre warp drive and concluded that its power requirements were not as impossible as once thought. However, a new analysis from the University of Sydney claims that using a warp drive of this design comes with a drawback. Specifically, it could cause cataclysmic explosions at your destination."
It's not the destination that matters, it's how you get there. Nothing stresses this as much as blowing up your destination when you get there.
Downside? Sounds like a perfect weapon system for interstellar conflict.
Great for our first intergalactic war!
This is old news, discussed in March:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/02/1741252/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside
Warp drive becomes warp weapon.
That's why you drop to impulse _before_ you go into the star system
If we have enough tech to make a warp drive we can probably disperse energy on route as opposed to all of it at the end of the trip.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
FTA:
"Although we often think of space as empty, there are loads of high-energy particles shooting through the void. The University of Sydney research [PDF] indicates that these particles are liable to get swept up in the craft’s warp field and remain trapped in the stable bubble."
And
"All the energetic particles trapped during the journey have to go somewhere, and the researchers believe they would be blasted outward in a cone directly in front of the ship. Anyone or anything waiting for you at the other end of your trip would be destroyed."
Looks like SOMEONES never heard of Bussard collectors....
That's right. You have to slow down first.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This will GUARANTEE it will be made. It is now a military project, warp cruise missle, set it to the destination via a nice long route and have it drop out of warp near the other planet or star...... KABOOM!...
Freaking A, take that Omicron Persei 8!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"it’s the stopping that’s going to ruin your day" showed up complete in the preview...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Science fiction stories always said you can't use warp drive inside a star system. Pay attention, scientists.
BULLSHIT. Stop, I order you STOP!!!!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Now we know why we've seen signs of other civilization: FTL Doomsday Weapons.
Once the military finds out, NASA's funding problems will be a thing of the past.
for visiting the mother-in-law.
The simple solution is to point the ship slightly above the galactic plane when accelerating and slightly below the galatic plane when landing,. The damaging wave leaves the galaxy and dissipates before doing damage. Well except to any possible intergalactic ships.
Than turn around and come back. As long as the energy has the room to dissipate between the stars nothing should be hurt.
Seems to me that genocidal (in that any intelligent life in that star systems is wiped out) deceleration qualifies.
Advanced civilizations might have this drive, and prevent too much particle buildup. It might not be perfect though, so every once in a while a handful of particles come along for the ride. How else do you explain a proton with the kinetic energy of a pitched baseball?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So, THIS is what's preventing warp drive from becoming reality. OK.
The dream of faster-than-light travel has been on the mind of humanity for generations
I'm guessing that that's 1, 2, 3, or 4 generations, since we've only known that the speed of light is a problem for space travel for about 100 years.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Weir: You destroyed three-quarters of a solar system!
McKay: Five-sixths, but it's not an exact science.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
>> Alcubierre
It's spelled Albuquerque as in "I knew I shoulda took dat left turn at Albuquerque!".
That's right. You have to slow down first.
Kind of like when you fall off a building.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
http://mimg.ugo.com/200902/14768/Spaceballs.jpg
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The "Vin Diesel."
The "Chuck Norris."
The "Houseguest."
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
River Song: OK. I've mapped the probability vectors, done a foldback on the temporal isometry, chartered the ship to its destination and... parked us right alongside!
The Doctor: Parked us? We haven't landed!
River Song: Of course we've landed - I just landed her!
The Doctor: But... it didn't make the noise.
River Song: What noise?
The Doctor: You know, the...
[imitates Tardis noise]
River Song: It's not supposed to make that noise - *you* leave the brakes on!
How come everywhere we go there is nothing there? Are you sure there was a planetary system here? Let's go back home. Hey where's home?
Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
From TFA
That's why you have a deflector dish! Don't these guys even _watch_ Star Trek? ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager's_Return
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Original:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/02/1741252/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside
Ether all Intelligent Life is aware of this problem and thus conclude they should't, or they use it wiping out so much potential life that no one can spot each other. Since the Earth hasn't been wiped out and Colonized in what... almost 700 million years... I'd say it's more likely they don't use it. Then again we might just be lucky.
I swear there was supposed to be a planet here...
...and hasn't let go. Letting my girlfriend know that TIL: i've learned that the downsides of creating intergalactic travel could cause annihilation of your destination.
Chat about this over coffee?
It's not the fall that hurts, it is the sudden stop at the end.
Well it used to not be one, anyway... Let's go home, Porkins.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
. The ring would have to be made of an as-yet unidentified kind of dense exotic matter capable of bending space-time.
You can always warp somewhere where there isn't a star or planet in front of you, I thought sci-fi reiterated this fact on a per series basis, but here it is one more time. Warp outside the galaxy > discharge your beam of death into the void > fly into the galaxy. Now about that material... does Wal-Mart carry it?
Wasn't this the subject of the Randall Garrett short story "Time Fuze?"
>All the energetic particles trapped during the journey have to go somewhere, and the researchers believe they would be blasted outward in a cone directly in front of the ship.
At that energy levels particles will be converted to gamma radiation, expelled outward in a burst. Maybe sombody already invented those ships.
Did anyone else notice that they used a football as their central "pod" for the ship in the article's graphic? It looks like a bad copy/paste job involving circa 1998 Bryce 3D, MS Paint, and a TI-83.
...it's nothing compared to Ludicrous Speed!
It's our Manifest Destiny; I say full speed ahead -- the ecology and natives be damned.
Man wonders what lies just beyond the horizon. Man develops ability to travel beyond horizon. Man annihilates whatever was over there.
is a short story by Randall Garrett. The crew of the first starship narrowly escape the supernova from their destination star by escaping back into warp. They realize that this isn't a coincidence: their warp drive blew it up on arrival. (They eventually realize that it blew up their origin star too: the Sun.)
This is nothing new and was posted on /. earlier this year (although s different article)
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/02/1741252/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside
The word you are looking for is jibe, not jive.
To one man this collection of energetic particles is a bomb that must be defused and destroyed. To another man this collection of particles is a source of energy.
Would it not be cool to have a vehicle that starts the trip with half a tank and ends it with the full tank? The energy can be used on non-FTL vehicles or permanent installations.
Admittedly I am just an old country accountant who doesn't know about all of these things. But why not just try to not make a warp bubble and instead make something for lack of better words, more aerodynamic. So the particulate flows around the warp bubble rather than sticking to it.
Maybe that's what these gamma ray bursts we observe are all about.
You could just stop a few months / years ahead of your actual destination, and then continue using traditional propulsion for the last leg of the journey? Would still be much faster.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
I'm surprised nobody brought up the ram scoop yet. It looks like that'll actually kill two birds with one scoop if there's a way to use the collected particles as fuel.
Nothing is enough for whom enough is too little - Confucius
Just stop and start again every lightyear or something. No big deal.
If this were true, then aliens would have wiped us out if they had ever visited us.
As some others have noted, you could always hook into your destination and cause all those hitchhiking particles to be shot into the nearest black hole. Then no one gets huts unless that cross in front of that traffic while its heading to the black hole.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
......THAT's not very neighborly....
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Join the Interplanetary Navy, where you travel to new star systems..... and blow them up!
sudo make me a sandwich
http://what-if.xkcd.com/
It talks about matter smacking into a planet at different energy levels.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
We cant stop. We're going to fast.
Shoot, now I'll have to go someplace else for Thanksgiving.
This isn't really such fresh news. And, I already fixed it for you: simply take shorter warp jumps, so not as much energy builds up. You're welcome. Patent pending.
All you have to do is travel for a short period, say every 3 light hours traveled, stop for a nanosecond to discharge, then resume.
Yes, the added nanoseconds add up, but it will still be way faster than light.
One nice thing about it is that you get a light/particle trail traveled by the ship.
Ok, so technically you could have enough energy to blast a planet at the end of your journey. But... how long a trip would it take to build that much up? Would a 10 light year trip be enough or would you have to travel billions of light years to gather up that much power? That is what this sky is falling article is missing.
If the energy is still enough to be somewhat dangerous, make sure when you warp in, have it aimed at the star you are traveling to. Even planet busting power blasts would do little to notihng to a star, which is perfectly capable of vaporizing a planet all on its own.
that plus a time machine will get you where you need to go
LUKE: What's going on?
HAN: Our position is correct, except...no, Alderaan!
LUKE: What do you mean? Where is it?
HAN: Thats what I'm trying to tell you, kid. It ain't there. It's been
totally blown away.
If it's a viable technology and successfully invented by an advanced civilization, would a search for it's signature be worthwhile? If it exists, that civilization would have probably tested it to verify it's destructiveness; if it was a problem, they either stopped or figured out a way to suppress the side effects.
So, it's not a transport mechanism, it's a weapon. Awesome!
Proverbs 21:19
1) I wonder if perhaps that explains life being hit here over and over.
2) Perhaps that might explain the asteroid belt
Not likely for either, but perhaps another civilization(s) have visited and made mistakes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not a physicist here, so maybe someone who is (or knows more than me could answer) - could we find a way to absorb the energy from these particles, and maybe pump that energy into the warp drive? one of those "the faster you go, the more energy you collect" kind of things?
"Attention, Schrodinger's Cat is possibly arriving at gate 42 in five minutes..."
Table-ized A.I.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun."
http://schlockmercenary.wikia.com/wiki/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenaries
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Since we are talking future science here it would make sense to harness the incoming blast way and convert it back to energy that can be used for the next flight. The problem is building the infrastructure to do this at the destination, but if they can figure out how to go faster than light I'm sure they can find a way to make this a reality too.
jibe
verb (used without object), jibed, jib ing
to be in harmony or accord; agree: The report does not quite jibe with the commissioner's observations.
jive
verb (used with object)
Slang. to tease; fool; kid: Stop jiving me!
Why not arrive outside of said star system where there is allegedly nothing to destroy and then just coast on in :-P
I for one welcome our new interstellar overl..[KABOOM!]
According to Philip Dick, if they do the wiring properly, there won't be any explosions: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/32154/pg32154.txt
("The variable man", free ebook)
Do the math!
E=MC^2
For every atomic mass unit that intersects your warp field, that mass unit times the square of the speed of light is how much energy will be added to the "flash".
Now.. fly your starship through the greater megellanic cloud, or through the crab nebula.
How big a boom indeed....
There's no reason this needs to blow up the arrival (or departure) port; it's loosely analogous to supersonic travel producing sonic booms from stacking pressure waves. Supersonic aircraft don't blow up the airports or home cities.
Besides, we need to figure out negative mass before this is a big deal.
Of course, maybe that just means the universe is acausal. Weird, and a bit troublesome for our puny simian brains to wrap themselves around, but I suppose the universe doesn't care.
Crap, now the Environmentalists are going to get involved. It will never be built now.
...to the Universe.
Wrap the ship in a massive ESD bracelet.
It's "Somebody set up us the bomb!"
Get it right.
So perhaps this is why we're not finding anything behind those gnarly gamma ray bursts..
Awesome.
Build it, and if the environmentalists don't want you to use it, volunteer to meet at their place to discuss their concerns.
paintball
Someone in the middle ages conceptualized the modern car. Others thought it can't possibly work because it would destroy the gate when the driver arrives home. They didn't think it would be possible to park _near_ the house and walk a bit of distance, rather than crashing into the gate. It'a just as inconceivable that an Alcubierre spaceship aimed at slightly off of the destination, and after deceleration, slowly and carefully arrived at the spaceport from an angle.
Or perhaps just delusional...but I love the fact that we have progressed from 'Can't go faster than light' to 'could in theory but too much energy' to 'let's do some lab experiments and work out the practical engineering details'.
This was an interesting paper, but the summary presents the result as much more general than it really is. The authors assume planar symmetry (i.e. everything is a function of [t,x] only, instead of the full [t,x,y,z]), and this restricts incoming particles from the front into either passing through the bubble or accumulating in front (which happens depends on the particle velocity), with the latter corresponding to the cataclysm at the destination.
However, if you look at a more realistic case without the planer symmetry, it is possible to distort space in ways that totally avoid this problem. Where the design they study compresses space in front of the ship and expands space behind it, other designs would make space flow around the ship, taking incoming particles with it, and thus preventing this buildup. Such a design is described here: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110086.
Before people get too hopeful, though, I should say that while researchers are looking into the possibilities of warp drives and wormholes, this is mostly as an interesting thought experiment. Nobody in the field thinks these are anywhere near remotely feasable in the forseable future. It is not just an engineering challenge: physics must be different than we currently understand it to be for these to work. While general relativity allows for these solutions, the standard model of particle physics does not.
I guess Zefram Cochrane was wrong - the Warp Bomb is a reality
... with a few fireworks to let folks know you've arrived?
Anyway, it's not clear whether they looked at a pure Alcubierre warp, an Alcubierre-Broek thin-bubble warp, NASA's latest, or what.
In a 2006 paper by a whole laundry list of authors (Hart, Held, Hoiland, Jenks, Loup, Martins, Nyman, Pertierra, Santos, Shore, Sims, Stabno and Teage), "On the Problems of Hazardous Matter and Radiation at Faster than Light Speeds in the Warp Drive Space-time" (which begins with the monumentous understatement: "A warp driven vehicle travelling at a speed faster than light may collide with objects in front of the ship, which would be hazardous to the ship and its crew") had this to say: "the gravitational gradients in Broek regions will disrupt hazardous objects in the ship's neighborhood. This is a property of Broek space-time, any natural object will be disrupted and deflected" (bold added)
Certainly worth looking into further, but it's still too early to say exactly what the properties of an actual warp field will be.
-- Alastair
This could be repackaged as a weapon, and the military industrial congressional complex would want to get involved.
Let me know when we get to Iscandar.
aww man, I was hoping to get to Alpha Centauri before I die...
i turn on my lights , driving in the dark is also said to be dangerous....
your shoving these out front of you , if your further out the bubble must be thus the particles are shoved out more....
one could i guess think of scoops or inverted scoops that make the bubble differant shapes that might mitigate the waves of particles on stopping OR cause one wave to smash another and then be slowed....
Think of the shapes of star trek ships which one might be best at that....
they also aren't doing mach 1 downtown streets either....
The problem seems to be that the particles which are collected during warp, are all at once released when the warp field collapses.
This only seems to be dangerous if the trip is long enough though.
Seems to me that if you stop frequently enough, you will be able to leave the particles scattered accross the universe, without them doing much damage.
Or somehow decrease their momentum from inside the warp field.
Jut make your initial destination someplace nobody cares much about, e.g. Texas. Big explosion, all good, no one really wanted it anyway.
Then use impulse engines to get to your final destination.
Sounds like a great way to replenish mass for power generation,
Absorb or collect it.
i mean, if we can build a powersystem capable of generating those ammounts of energy, we must be able to convert it between mass and energy. would make for perfect storage.
Just put one of those anti-static strips that hang off your car. problem solved.
now the next challenge is finding truck-nuts that big....
Yeah, but what happens if something goes wrong and you don't end up stopping at the angle you intended to? It might be you can safely pull of the move 9999 out of 10,000 times, but it only takes something going wrong once. . .
"We'd like to come visit your star system. Don't worry, we've visited thousands of star systems and only obliterated 2. We're *very* careful to aim the wave of destruction out into the intergalactic void."
Unless the particle buildup actually affects the craft itself, this isn't an issue.
It's a reason for navigational protocols.
If, as the article suspects, it gets blasted out in a cone?
Simply orient your arrival point so it doesn't have your destination directly in its path. You arrive and the particles get blasted out into interstellar space.
Or, if they're wrong, and the particle accumulation is omnidirectional? Simply take the trip in two stages.
The first stage has you arriving out of range of your destination and shedding the particle buildup.
The second stage is a shorter hop from the waypoint to your destination. You may still build up a few high energy particles, but far less than, but far fewer, and something that can be ameliorated by simply "popping out" in a safe orbit in the system so you don't destroy anything nearby.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You call it a bug, we call it a feature. Every warp drive is sold with a handy dandy star system sterilizer so that when you arrive at your destination you know it will be clean and tidy, not infected with any despicable life forms!
Jive??? The word is "jibe".
This is why you have to decelerate gradually.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
What is new i see:
They try to use energy that is already condensed into an unknown matter. This makes it theoretical. Impossible to manufacture.
Small satellite could be accelerated by a small 'Uuo' or heavier material 30cm ring. That jumps to somewhere and jumps back with the data and photos. It has to be aimed properly: one jump is inaccurate. What if it goes 40 lightyear away or more. One jump to the half, one jump to the half of the remained distance and repeat until 1 light year distance. And jump to distance. Repeat it back to earth. It must have built in galactic map if error occurs. Almost impossible to jump to the proper position, the error is increasing by the distance. It has to tell where is it actually that is almost impossible, because the stars will be in different position. You don't know where you are. You are really lost. There is no time to use a Kepler to recognize stars, where to go next. It cannot use radiowave to communicate because it is like getting drown, it will never reach goal. It needs prealigned particles for quantum teleportation to communicate with the Earth (quantum channel that is faster than light).
Acceleration in a space bubble theoretically does not affect the body of the human. Even if the bubble accelerates, everything in the
bubble accelerates with 0. You are there in the next second. But: mass is teleported this way to otherwhere else. It can cause a problem. What does it do?
It is said that it is emitting particles which is dangerous. It can be led by a laser that will drive these particles into one direction. It was mentioned to propel them back to move the ship.
It would be a really good advantage to make this bubble-jump drive. Travelling in the space with an ordinary propelled drive in extremely dangerous because of the microscopic black holes. I think this warp (bubble-jump) drive omits black holes, even they are in your way, or not, it is a good question. Other dangers are micrometeorites that can kill a spaceship on a long time space travel. Using electromagnetic shield can waste up batteries.
With warp drive you don't have to send travellers to sleep, you are there immediately.
Non warp drive case: hibernation is not a good idea, even if melted up, you can go mad, it can waste the full cost of the travel and the spaceship. Instead of hibernation you can make people sleep with modified infrared ray, it keeps cells living and you don't realize time passing. Brains floating in blood is better. But you have no body, it is not a problem if you don't have to land and do something.
In this case it is not necessary to be human in the spaceship. Electronic components can go defect that should be changed by human. Change electronic components to raja and other sea animals those can be taught with electric stimulation to behave like FPGA and delete every other thing from their brain no to eat to others. A good isolated spaceship does not loose heat. These animals can drive it to the target. They can go defect, they would be changed by other animals, that are taught to change these animals. For long time space travel using full human body is risky in the case of acceleration and decceleration. You need a sphere
that turns so that you can stand but it is only ok for Earth gravitation and not 100 more. 50g or more can tear apart body, so you need a special suit. The best thing is not to bring body. I think a raja can bear 400g.
Transporting masses of human with full body needs a slowly accelerating ship. That makes them sleep with a non-destructive infrared ray and continuous hipnotizing. Maximum distance would be 20 light years i think for them not to go mad.
The spaceship has to be built in the space and travellers would have to be transported one by one to the spaceship.
It is harder to travel without warp drive, and it is easier to die.
But what if they go to the wrong way? How will they know where they are? Stars are in different positions, they will never recognize.
Even if you teach the picture of all the stars to the raja. Like drowning in somewhere.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Now that it's suddenly a planetbuster with free ammo, chances of it getting built just skyrocketed! =P
Let's put the genes back in Genesis.
...you can make an omelett without breaking some eggs...
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
What's the mass of a warp speed object? Is it possible that gravitational effects will send everything in your path flying towards you? Even without stopping could a warp drive ship cause catastrophic damage if not from pulling planets out of orbit then from tidal storms and such?
You can't go home again.
Please! Jibe: agree with, to be in accord
A little understanding of the blue shift phenomenon will lead you to see how a perfectly doable sublight vessel that got near to the speed of light, which is what you'd need to get from star to star without FTL, upon aiming the drive forward in order to decelerate would bombard the destination with enough hard radiation to sterilize it good.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I hear fast has some nice food. I should go there too.
this link will bring you to the specific one in question, the above link is only for most current.
http://what-if.xkcd.com/20/
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Not being a physicist (but based on what I know about particles known to travel at relativistic speeds (such as the Oh My God Particle & similar particles in accelerators)) I think it would be safe to assume that most of these high-energy particles would be protons. I make this assumption based on the fact that protons have both charge and (compared to electrons) significant mass, making them both easy to accelerate, and massive enough to matter. Therefore, I think the obvious solution would be to imbue a positive enough electrostatic charge on the warp-capable vessel as to drive particles around it. The problem I imagine with this approach is that it would have to be significant enough as to affect particles outside the warp bubble, and with enough force to get them out of the way.
Upon thinking about this more... I do not think this would even be a real problem. The warp bubble would bend the space around it, making it (in my mind) essentially impossible to enter it while the drive was active. I would like to believe what I just said, but it seems like a simple resolution to me. Still, no reason it can't be both simple and correct.