NASA working on warp drive

[solletica]

Maybe not. According to NASA physicist Harold White, the energy problem may actually be surmountable by simply tweaking the warp drive’s geometry.

White, who just shared his latest ideas at the 100 Year Starship 2012 Public Symposium, says that if you adjust the shape of the ring surrounding the object, from something that looks like a flat halo into something thicker and curvier, you could power Alcubierre’s warp drive with a mass roughly the size of NASA’s Voyager 1 probe.

http://techland.time.com/2012/09/19...n-faster-than-light-warp-drive/#ixzz2AQJSHVhp

This is why it's so important to actually understand the theory as opposed to rural myths, i. e. "nothing can go faster than light."

 

[the_recruit]

Rural myths?

And we already had a thread on this.

 

[Deuce]

This is why it's so important to actually understand the theory as opposed to rural myths, i. e. "nothing can go faster than light."

Relativity is not a ****ing rural myth.

 

[solletica]

Relativity is not a ****ing rural myth.

That's not what I said.

 

[Harshaw]

This is why it's so important to actually understand the theory as opposed to rural myths, i. e. "nothing can go faster than light."

Good grief. Even your own article mocks you for saying something as silly as this.

Of course it is. Nothing can travel faster than light, right? To do so would violate the special theory of relativity, which stipulates that you’d need an infinite amount of energy to accelerate a particle with mass to light speed. We’ve all heard this pretty much since we were kids. Has someone finally proven special relativity wrong?


Not at all, but with respect to travel between the stars, someone did come up with a radical-sounding hypothetical workaround 18 years ago.


In a paper titled “The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast travel within general relativity” published in science journal Classical and Quantum Gravity in May 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre suggested a mechanism for getting an object from one point to another at faster-than-light speeds without running afoul of Einsteinian relativity.


Alcubierre’s idea: bending space-time in front of and behind a vessel rather than attempting to propel the vessel itself at light-speeds.

 

[Goshin]

I wouldn't have said "rural myth", but rather "much overhyped scientific dogma that is too widely accepted as being unchallengable."


If 500 years of science have taught us anything, it ought to be that no theory is the final be-all end-all "last word", and that there are exceptions to every rule.

 

[Harshaw]

They're not challenging the "dogma" in this. They're exploring other possibilities.

 

[solletica]

They're not challenging the "dogma" in this. They're exploring other possibilities.

Correct. The rural myth is the uneducated interpretation of the actual theory of Special Relativity, which merely prohibits faster-than-light velocities for real number masses within an inertial reference frame defined by a (flat) Minkowski space.

However, FTL velocitieis aren't necessarily prohibited within a spacetime that is not a Minkowski space, i. e. warped. There is nothing new discovered here. The prediction made by the NASA researcher is consistent w/Special Relativity theory; the spacecraft is contained within a bubble that is a Minkowski space and doesn't move within that bubble.

When scientific principles are stated in overly simplistic terms, then it's no longer science; it becomes propoganda, i. e. rural myths.

Hence, claiming that "nothing can go faster than light" summarizes the theory of Relativity is like saying that "human beings came from apes" summarizes the theory of Evolution.

 

[Harshaw]

Correct. The rural myth is the uneducated interpretation of the actual theory of Special Relativity, which merely prohibits faster-than-light velocities for real number masses within an inertial reference frame defined by a (flat) Minkowski space.

However, FTL velocitieis aren't necessarily prohibited within a spacetime that is not a Minkowski space, i. e. warped. There is nothing new discovered here. The prediction made by the NASA researcher is consistent w/Special Relativity theory; the spacecraft is contained within a bubble that is a Minkowski space and doesn't move within that bubble.

When scientific principles are stated in overly simplistic terms, then it's no longer science; it becomes propoganda, i. e. rural myths.

Hence, claiming that "nothing can go faster than light" summarizes the theory of Relativity is like saying that "human beings came from apes" summarizes the theory of Evolution.

Give me five examples of people who claimed "nothing can go faster than light" and didn't allow for possibilities other than pushing a mass faster than the speed of light, such as wormholes or folded space.

 

[the_recruit]

I wouldn't have said "rural myth", but rather "much overhyped scientific dogma that is too widely accepted as being unchallengable."

:roll: How can you say that? Look what happened with the OPERA neutrino experiment. Physicists across the world were absolutely buzzing about the possibility that something had gone faster than the speed of light.

Scientists are skeptical to dismiss relativity because it's one of the most well-tested theories in the history of physics, not because it's dogma. I believe, as the OPERA experiment showed, most physicists would actually be quite ecstatic to witness a discovery as shattering as FTL travel. Relativity is persevering because the science continues to support it, not because scientists are married to the idea of it.

 

[the_recruit]

When scientific principles are stated in overly simplistic terms, then it's no longer science; it becomes propoganda, i. e. rural myths.

What is your point? That you should take pop science articles with a grain of salt? Um, duh.

 

[PrometheusBound]

This is why it's so important to actually understand the theory as opposed to rural myths, i. e. "nothing can go faster than light."

An outside dimension would explain all the irrationalities presented by postclassical physics. Because of entanglement and other apparently immediate phenomena, there's reason to believe that the maximum velocity in an outside medium would be c squared--six light years a second, envisioned as going that distance underneath the universe we perceive directly. We should be able to transmit messages through that, submerging into it and emerging back into this universe at a desired point.

 

[Rainman05]

warp =/= FTL

 

[solletica]

An outside dimension would explain all the irrationalities presented by postclassical physics. Because of entanglement and other apparently immediate phenomena, there's reason to believe that the maximum velocity in an outside medium would be c squared--six light years a second, envisioned as going that distance underneath the universe we perceive directly. We should be able to transmit messages through that, submerging into it and emerging back into this universe at a desired point.

Have you considered what happens when the v in the Lorentz transformation is either > c or a complex number with an imaginary component?

Opens up a whole new universe

 

[VanceMack]

Crap. I read that title and thought it said NASCAR was working on the warp drive...

 

[Stopandthink]

Crap. I read that title and thought it said NASCAR was working on the warp drive...

Holy crap! So did I!

 

[PrometheusBound]

Have you considered what happens when the v in the Lorentz transformation is either > c or a complex number with an imaginary component?

Opens up a whole new universe

The mathematics demonstrated a fourth spatial dimension, but the physicists created a dimension of time instead of looking for it. E = m (c squared): Einstein could have explained this as a collision product. How can he have c squared when c is the highest possible force? Again, from outside the universe, a mother universe where c squared is the speed of light. Matter is trapped fourth-dimensional light; fission releases it so that it has the power of c squared even though the speed of it can't fit in 3D.

Entanglement: it's the same particle going back and forth through the fourth dimension. Instead, they create an impossibility of two particles immediately affected at a distance somehow (Corsican Brothers). What is wrong with these people? If they had been around in Copernicus's time, they would have said that Earth goes around the sun at 70,000 miles an hour and we just don't feel the speed because human beings are incapable of understanding higher physics. Instead, we had rational scientists back then who were compelled by the data to explain the appearances by the immense power of gravity. Unlike today's Quantum Quacks, they made it understandable why we didn't feel the orbit velocity. Today's "if it's weird, it's wise" dogmatists are neurotic people who get a perverse satisfaction out of not even trying to explain how the phenomena can rationally exist. There is only one way; the particles are on their way out.

 

[longview]

I think given an almost unlimited energy supply, it might be possible for a ships crew to perceive FTL
travel.
Consider a ship that can accelerate at 1G, It will never reach the speed of light, but as it gets close,
the ships time slows down.
At near the speed of light time on the ship could almost stop.
So A ship heading somewhere 100 light years away would take about 450 days to get up near light speed at 1G.
Another 450 days to slow down.
Transit time may be a few years of ships time.
So in 7 years or so of ships time, the ship crosses 100 light years.
Now the actual universe is maybe 120 years older, but the ships crew still just felt 7 years.
One way time travel also. (just say goodbye to everyone before you leave.)

 

[solletica]

The mathematics demonstrated a fourth spatial dimension, but the physicists created a dimension of time instead of looking for it.

Are 4-dimensions of spacetime sufficient to describe the most basic observable predicitions of Special Relativity and Maxwell's equations in the least complicated fashion?

E = m (c squared): Einstein could have explained this as a collision product. How can he have c squared when c is the highest possible force? Again, from outside the universe, a mother universe where c squared is the speed of light. Matter is trapped fourth-dimensional light; fission releases it so that it has the power of c squared even though the speed of it can't fit in 3D.

Entanglement: it's the same particle going back and forth through the fourth dimension. Instead, they create an impossibility of two particles immediately affected at a distance somehow (Corsican Brothers). What is wrong with these people? If they had been around in Copernicus's time, they would have said that Earth goes around the sun at 70,000 miles an hour and we just don't feel the speed because human beings are incapable of understanding higher physics. Instead, we had rational scientists back then who were compelled by the data to explain the appearances by the immense power of gravity. Unlike today's Quantum Quacks, they made it understandable why we didn't feel the orbit velocity. Today's "if it's weird, it's wise" dogmatists are neurotic people who get a perverse satisfaction out of not even trying to explain how the phenomena can rationally exist. There is only one way; the particles are on their way out.

The presence of "c^2" in the equations is unnecessary and only needed if SI units are used. Using Planck units, they disappear and mass and energy become equivalent (i. e. one of the two becomes superfluous).

Yes, entanglement can be mathematically modeled as one particle traveling at FTL velocities within the reference frame in which it occurs, i. e. essentially skipping through a specific distance in that space instantaneously.

IMHO, physics is the art of eliminating redundancy in science.

 

[The Giant Noodle]

They need to tackle important things first like sex robots.

 

[UtahBill]

They need to tackle important things first like sex robots.

The income derived from renting out sex robots would pay NASA's budget for a long, long time....

 

[UtahBill]

Holy crap! So did I!

if it can be done, NASCAR can do it cheaper....

 

[Deuce]

I wouldn't have said "rural myth", but rather "much overhyped scientific dogma that is too widely accepted as being unchallengable."


If 500 years of science have taught us anything, it ought to be that no theory is the final be-all end-all "last word", and that there are exceptions to every rule.

And I'd say you're provably wrong because they keep testing Relativity. Nobody is just accepting it on faith. And it's not just laboratory stuff either. The GPS system every freaking cell phone uses has to account for Relativity.

That's not what I said.

Yes you did say that. That you aren't aware of it just makes it worse.

 

[PrometheusBound]

Are 4-dimensions of spacetime sufficient to describe the most basic observable predicitions of Special Relativity and Maxwell's equations in the least complicated fashion?





Yes, entanglement can be mathematically modeled as one particle traveling at FTL velocities within the reference frame in which it occurs, i. e. essentially skipping through a specific distance in that space instantaneously.

Only disappearance into a fourth space can explain the Quantum Leap. Otherwise, it would be impossible. As with most discoveries, the effect reveals where the hidden cause lies. The only way to go from A to B without traveling on the line AB is to go to a different dimension that is not part of AB, as in flying over that line.

So entanglement (or the Close Entanglement of appearing to be in two places at once) is easily explained as the same particle going back and forth unobserved through the fourth spatial dimension. Since all matter was originally ejected by the underlying universe, its position in either universe is unstable.

It is impossible to tell the difference between immediacy and extremely fast travel, especially if it c squared: 6 light years a second! That would be the only thing making communication with extraterrestrials possible.

 

[Goshin]

And I'd say you're provably wrong because they keep testing Relativity. Nobody is just accepting it on faith. And it's not just laboratory stuff either. The GPS system every freaking cell phone uses has to account for Relativity.



Yes you did say that. That you aren't aware of it just makes it worse.

Newtons Laws lasted far longer than Relativity has yet, and proved themselves again and again under all manner of scientific and pragmatic tests... yet it was eventually found that while Newton's Laws were correct within a certain context, once you moved beyond that context they were no longer valid and new equations and "laws" were required... hence Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Newtons Laws still work perfectly well... as long as you stay on Earth and you're not dealing with anything moving faster than a cannonball, or dealing with very precise nanomeasurements or nuclear particles. Newton, therefore, was NOT WRONG... he was just limited by his working context. I believe it will be found that Relativity is much the same... correct and true within a certain context, but that there are frames of reference beyond that where Relativity is meaningless, just as Newton.

That was what I was saying... not that Einstein was wrong, but that his theories are not the all-encompassing be-all end-all... that one day we will surpass Einstein just as Einstein surpassed Newton.