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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.
This is old news, discussed in March:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/02/1741252/warp-drives-may-come-with-a-killer-downside
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....
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.
BULLSHIT. Stop, I order you STOP!!!!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
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"?
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
That's why you should stop putting parts of your post in the subject. It's called the Subject field, not the body field, for a reason.
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 swear there was supposed to be a planet here...
It's not the fall that hurts, it is the sudden stop at the end.
>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.
...it's nothing compared to Ludicrous Speed!
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.)
The word you are looking for is jibe, not jive.
......THAT's not very neighborly....
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Now that's an interesting (and also disturbing) thought.
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...
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.
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.
A nice idea, but the physics does not work that way.
Think about it this way:
In front of the ship, you "compress" spacetime with an artificial gravity well. At the rear of the ship, you create an inverted gavity well. (Imagine, a gravity "hill"). The hill pushes the ship forwards, and the gravity well pulls it forwards. The two phenomena are perfectly cancelling. (Well is just as deep as the hill is "tall")
The combinaton of these two fields creates the warp bubble.
The warp bubble is necessary, because the ship simply cannot travel faster than light speed, using normal forms of propulsion. Special relativity makes it impossible to achieve lightspeed. (Requires infinite energy!)
Instead, the "massless" bubble gets accellerated, while the ship stays stationary inside! The spacetime bubble has no imposed speed limit, and can easily go FTL.
The problem cited here, is that any particle that comes into contact with the high velocity spacetime bubble will quantum tunnel inside the warpfield, and get carried along. This includes "virtual particles."
Virtual particles are not really particles at all, in the literal sense. They have measurable effects, but cannot themselves be measured. They are really random energy anomalies that form and disapear out of the vacuum of space. (Another, more accurate term for them is "vacuum fluctuations") basically, these events occur as mutually exclusively charged waves, that exist for tiny fractions of a second before cancelling each other, giving spacetime a rough, or "foamy" texture at the quantum mechanical level.
A curious effect of these virtual particles, is that if they can exist long enough to be directly observed (and not just their effects), they gain energy, and become real particles. (This is the basis behind hawking radiation)
Much like the event horizon of a black hole, the edge of the warp field acts as a barrier for quantum tunneling. There is a nonzero chance that some of these quantum virtual particle pairs will have one of their members become trapped behind the bubble's edge as it zips by, preventing mutual annihilation, and forcing the captured particle to become real. The longer the bubble stays up, the more particles will get trapped.
(Quantum tunnelling is what results from the "fuzzy" probability clouds of a particle wave intersecting a thin barrier. The more the fuzzy probability field intersects with the barrier, the greater the chances the particle will suddenly be on the other side. This phenomena is real, and has been scientifically verified. Quite literally, the sun would not shine without quantum tunneling, because nuclear fusion would be impossible without it.)
When the warp bubble drops, those captured particles are released as a dangerous energy wave.
Because the capture occurs as a direct result of the warp bubble's very existence, no amount of "aerodynamic shape" will prevent the steady accumulation of this radiation in the event shock.
The effect would be greatly exacerbated by the ship flying through a nebula, or other gas cloud. The mass energy of those particles is immense, and even small traces like those of interstellar clouds, would result in unbelievable releases of energy when the bubble is turned off.
"Deflectors" are not an option, because they would have to be projected from the starship. The warp bubble causes the starship to cease being causally connected to the outside spacetime, where the gas and dust particles exist. As such, it is impossible for any effect generated by the starship, other than the warpfield itself, to interact with those particles. The ship will simply have to plow through them.
Once the captured particles are tunneled inside the warp field, it might be possible to capture some of it, but more than likely the particles become photons, which can't be herded that way, making en-route collection unlikely.
This leaves the "deadly gamma ray flash" when the ship returns to being causally conncted with the rest of the universe.
Crap, now the Environmentalists are going to get involved. It will never be built now.
Build it, and if the environmentalists don't want you to use it, volunteer to meet at their place to discuss their concerns.
paintball