Warp Drive Possible!!

[Tenebrae]

No, no - technological progress isn't expontential...

 

And it's a common misconception to think that things like the Space Race or WW2 lead to practicable and useful advances in technology. The free market economy is responsible for the vast majority of all technical advances - even Teflon, common misconception it was invented for the space shuttle - lie.

 

NASA won't ever do anything useful with space travel because it's a government organisation that is powered by a political agenda. Spaceship One is a step in the right direction but if you read some papers, the US military has had such vehicles since the 1980s... but at the end of the day, commercial and not governmental concerns.

 

At the moment though, space travel isn't a very profitable concern.

[Finner]

Actually technology does advance exponentially.

 

As written here by Ray Kurzweil

 

"Technologies, particularly those related to information, develop at an exponential pace, generally doubling in capability and price-performance every year. This observation includes the power of computation, communication – both wired and wireless, DNA sequencing, brain scanning, brain reverse engineering, and the size and scope of human knowledge in general."

 

To go on, accelerated technology equals accelerated change: " Moore’s law (exponential increase in processing power), Gilder’s law (exponential increase in communications bandwidth) and Metcalfe’s law (exponential increase in connected intelligence) - the combination is producing results that are unfolding with awesome speed - bringing irreversible change to the human species. "

 

To go on : "Evolution took millions of years to progress to the development of primates and then Homo sapiens. It took humans only thousands of years to get to the industrial revolution, following which technological developments continued with an exponential rate of change - performance doubling in half the time. Towards the end of the last century, significant changes in the human landscape occurred in just decades. In this next century, technology speed-up will continue with major evolutionary consequences. "

 

I suppose it is a theory, like many others. But it isn't a theory that should be discarded without proper thought.

 

 

 

 

 

[Tenebrae]

Moore's law is a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy - he openly admitted that.

 

And I hardly think that the process of evolution can be included as technical progress...

 

I suppose I'm simply weary that at some point it's possible advances will plateau but yes, I'd say that new inventions tend to prompt others. So yes, an accelerating pace - which would make it exponential.

[greyCell]

i still think the alcubiere drive is the way to go.

 

here are its pros over other theories:

we know that the space bubble\wave "depends on how you look at it" is theoritically possible , meaning that such a phenomena is not a violation of any know law.

 

we know tat if such a wave existed it would be able to carry an object inside and transfer it to a distant location in FTL speeds.

 

we have 3 main problems 2 of them are actually the same one only in revese

 

first we need to know how to make such a bubble in a practical way.

 

we need to know how to get inside it and how to get outside off it once we reached our distination.

 

oh and all that sorry for the word B$ about antigravity before

i think some people have replied to the anti particle thing not gonna repeat that.

but anti sound no such thing.

 

on wikipedia it suggests using a ring of half matter and half anti mass "negative mass" mass with anti gravity effect. of course no one actually know if there is such a thing.

[Megalith]

I remember the story of the signal being transmitted at 5 times the speed of light but the signal was recieved instantaniously as a single unintelligable garbled pulse. If we do send a physical item at FTL speeds the presumption would be that the same thing would be the result, a mess.

 

If technology is accelerating exponentially then a huge paridigm in our concept of the universe is enevitable, where a discovery will be superceded by an improvement instantaneously. This would be a truelly bizarre world kind of like the infinate improbability drive used in the books by douglas adams.

 

Perhaps given such a universe FTL travel would be practical to achieve and its cost would be reduced to nothing within a few microseconds.

 

Of course the FTL drive would quickly become obselete and replaced by a form of instantaneous travel to any location merely by the power of thought and a miniscule device attached to an individual somehow.

 

Is the human mind ready to adapt to such a world? Time will tell.

[motoxjesse]

Well either way were in for big trouble, when we do create our first warp drive capable ship we will have gone beyond the general understanding. Since i believe that technology advances faster then we can evolve then we could creat even larger problems for ourselves, tho it might not seem like it at this point.

[Tenebrae]

Given that evolution for humanity is pretty much at a stand-still - I'd say it's fair to say that technological progress is moving considerably faster. After all, computers double in speed every 18 months. How much smarter are people now than 10,000 years ago?

[Steveo]

The problem in defining that is the use of the ambiguous term, 'smart'.

 

We know more thanks to exploration and technology, but are we more intelegent than our ancestors? Put a baby born 10,000 years ago into a modern life, will it grow up any less able than a baby born today, soely by virtue of it's 10,000 year old genetics?

[greyCell]

people i have something important to say:

some people seem to think that we humans would be the first to do FTL, people this has been happening in special ways naturally in the universe all the time it is happening right now.

 

it first happend right after the big bang where spacetime it self expanded at rates faster than light and bodies drifted apart from each other at speeds faster than light , but in the same time no body ever actually moved faster than light.

 

think of the universe like a big 3 dimensional thing that is like a big rubber membrane only 3 dimensional. the rule is nothing can move faster than light, but a body could be carried along if the membrane is stretching . and it would move away form a certain observer at speeds faster than light but it wouldnt actually be moving at FTL, none of the predictions of conventional FTL like the experiment with the signal mentioned before:

If we do send a physical item at FTL speeds the presumption would be that the same thing would be the result, a mess.

this doesnt apply for the upcoming reasons,

first of all this disputed and later on proven that nothing actually moved FTL. the explination is complex but it has to do with the quantum property of entanglment and what is know as the tunneling effect. i do not want to go into details any one can find them online but the important thing is nothing in this actually was accelerated beyong the speed of light. what happpend was that the signal took a short cut so although it moved a large distance in very little time that one would think it must be FTL. what happend is the tunneling effect did a sort of shortcut that made it actually move less of a distance.

 

the second reason this doesnt apply is that the alubierre drive is based on a very different concept. nothing in the warp travel actually moves faster than FTL.

 

let me mention a current example on things in our universe that race away from us faster than light. as you all know the universe expands so that a body at certain distance fromus would be moving away from us at a speed proportional to the distance between us "hubble theory" this entails that at a large enough distance a body would be moving away from us at speeds FTL, but it is not actually moving at speeds FTL in repect to our frame of reference. and this is not a violation of the special relativity. i cant really explain this more than that except if i am allowed to actually explain it mathimatically but i think that this wouldnt be a good thing because some people here wouldnt be able to follow up and that is not the actual purpose behind this thread.

 

as alcubieree shown the FTL warp drive he put the theortical basis for is tottaly safe theoritically. one the ship is actually inside the bubble it is as safe as we are safe on earth. the only problem is when entering or leaving the bubble. because very intense gravitational forces are present there, which leads to what is know as the speggiti effect. which arises from the fact that not only the gravitational forced very intense but also they are very varied with the change in location meaning that as the ship approaches the boundaries fo the bubble to try to leave it, that the force excerted on the fornt parts of the ship would be sevral million times the force excereted on its back which would make the ship streatch in femto seconds to the shape of a speggiti.

 

however we also have a theoritical solution, it is possible to make a worm whole between regions inside the bubble and outside and if the wormwhole is created and actually mantained stable for a few minutes the ship would be very safely leave the bubble. we know what we need to maintain a stable wormwhole, a special kind of matter known as exotic matter. we know the properties of this exotic matter needed only problem is no one even theortically sais that such a thing does actually exist. relativity sais nothing as such exists but relativitty is not final and we know it is only a good approximation of another wider theory that may allow the existance of such exotic matter, quantum mechanics sais that such a thing could exist, but weather or not our universe is one of those few types of universes possible under quantum mehcanics where exotic matter can actually exist is still an unanswered question.

[motoxjesse]

Well i thought it was as easy as "you turn the machine on, and yer in the bubble, turn it off and yer out", is this correct or am i missing the bigger picture?

[bones2097]

maybe it wors like this..

 

 

the mag fields produce a grav so large that it actuall compresses space & time around it thus moveing at conentional speeds would result in a greater distance travled???

 

i think this is called hyperspace......

 

there was an interseting need on a well known bt serach engine yesterday too...

[motoxjesse]

Now i dont even understand any of wat u just said.....well accept for the begining, wasent hyperspace disproved or something?

[greyCell]

ok im back

 

first of all it is not as simple as:

 

Well i thought it was as easy as "you turn the machine on, and yer in the bubble, turn it off and yer out", is this correct or am i missing the bigger picture?

 

you see the machine doesnt maintain the bubble, the machine only makes the bubble ,"actually it is better when viewein it from that point of view to talk about it as a wave , the only reason we call it a bubble is that it is thre dimensional. once you start the wave it would carry you along, the way proposed to leave it is by creating a stable worm whole between the space time inside the bubble and outside it. we can probably get inside it the same way. there are alot of things that i do not know about what is known as the alcubbiere metric and was hoping if somebody hear studied physics could answer them like:

 

how fast is this wave relative to normal space time.

 

is this a wave in space time. and if so does this mean that it would sweep anything it comes across, or is some sort of a hyper space time that slides parralell to normal space time.

 

now we know that the observer inside the bubble will not experience and relativistic effects because everything inside the bubble is moving at low speeds relative to him, but let us say an onbserver got into a bubble travelled 50 light years got out looked around took some pictures and created another bubble in the opossite direction got in and got out near earth, how much time would have passed from his point of view and from the point of view of an observer on earth. in other words what is the time difference between the 2 events of the observer leaving earth and the observer returning to earth from the POV of both observers.

 

the mag fields produce a grav so large that it actuall compresses space & time around it thus moveing at conentional speeds would result in a greater distance travled???

mangnetic fields produce no graivty at all, and no matter how high a magnetic field it would never compress space, the only thing that compresses space is gravity.

[Megalith]

I remember studying the theory of time travel in relationship to FLT travel, the calculations are very simple greycell and involve a speed in relation to the light constant and the distance travelled in relation to light years, so to calculate this then you need a simple time/distance graph accounting for acceleration, deceleration and time stationary in simple terms(presuming acceleration and deceleration are instantaneous) if you travelled 1 light year at say 4 times the speed of light and stopped for a fraction of a second to take the pic and then returned at 4 times the speed of light the same distance then you will have been gone for 1/2 a year (2 light years travelled at 4 x light i.e. 2/4) but would be returning 1/2 a year before you set off if the speed was 8x Light you would be gone 1/4 a year and return a year before. This leads to the ability to witness your own birth, now say you are 40 years old and your craft can travel at 8c (light constant) and acceleration/deceleration are again instantaneous then to travel back in time 40 years you would need to travel 1/40th of the distance light travels in a year.

 

The problem tho is acceleration and deceleration but it is easy to calculate.

[greyCell]

i think what you are talking about is actual FTL like in the case of techyons where the bodies move faster than light in its own frame of reference, where the tachyon actually travels backwards in time reaching its distination before it leaves its source. this doesnt apply here, because the body is not in anyway accelerated to FTL speeds which is impossible in releativity and probably mostly impossible in QG.

 

alcubbiere drive is very different, what is known as alcubbiere metric is an actual very intense warping of space in fromnt of and behind the space ship one bieng normal warping via matter/energy which contracts spacetime the other is using exotic matter that expands spacetime, anyhow that is not the point at all.

 

what you are saying is completely true for tachyons, but since we are not made of tachyons such actual FTL is forbidden for us under relativity and probably mostly foridden under QG.

 

let me give you an example, as i said it has been discovered that because of the expansion of spacetime since the big bang and becasue space time as a continuim is expanding mostly throughout at the same rate except for local effects, that means that something twice as far away would be moving away from us twice as fast, now that does not mean at all that the distant star is actually accelerated to that speed, the fact is that stars far enough move away from us at the speed of light, but the funny thing is that at that exact distance is what we call the edge of the universe. a question arises here why would we not be able to see things that are moving away from us at speeds higher than the speed of light not be visible i mean once light has actually left the body it should just toddle along and eventually reach us right?! wrong. first ill say if that were true then what if we looked at it in reverse, the distant star sees us moving away from it at the speed of light, so to it we are moving at the same peed the photons leaving it are moving at hence those photons should never reach us. so how can that be, the answer is phtons wouldnt actually reach us, but not because anybody is moving FTL, rather because the actual path in spacetime which the phton should cross is expanding FTL.

 

now that is in a way releated to the alcubbiere drive only it is more localized. the problem is that space time warping is far more complicated than relativistic movment of reference of frames it involves general realtivity tensors which seem like a horror element thier shape alone let alone how they are calculating could give you nightmares, very few actual general relativity problems are practically solvable, others are fat to complicated even for super computers.

[Megalith]

Ok I agree with your points greyCell and this thread after all is about Warp Drives not necessarily FLT travel although with curvature or stretching/compressing spacetime this could indeed be possible. phsical acceleration beyond the speed of light is highly improbable due to the infinate masses required to reach such velocities.

 

In the Heim model stated on the first page of this thread it has suggested that a warp engine could get us to a star 10(ok it was 11 but 10 is a lot easier to work with) light years away in 80 days so in order to achieve this effect then the local space would need to be considerably distorted but the effect would be FLT travel.

 

so 1 light year would take 8 days so we would in effect be travelling about 46 times the speed of light. the curvature required can be calculated using ellipsoid algorithms but relatively speaking you would be travelling at 46 times the speed of light. You mentioned that from the stars perspective that the particle whilst moving would never reach us it would however when we became stationary so the same mathematics would still apply.

 

It has also been mentioned on earlier posts that maybe a new form of mathematics would need to be invented in order to allow these calculations to be computed which in essense would mean the discovery of the UFT which would of course simplify things to a few easily understood equations.

 

As to the likelihood of such an engine i would say that to say it is unlikely is as wrong as to say it is at the moment. No scientist worth their salt would say something is impossible because it cant be proved or disproved. However plenty of them will and have done when it comes to matters like extraterrestrial life or the existance of God.

[greyCell]

i always thought that the exestance of GOD is a matter of faith. asking does god exist and expecting a logical answer is like asking me why do you hate molokhia?*. i hate molokhia and i do not think anyone can blame me just because there isnt a scientific logical reason.

 

same thing some people beleive there is a GOD, if there is a GOD then by his own words in the bible and the quran he is above science, al the miracles that happend to his prophets are above science. so it doesnt make anysense to say that GOD logically does not exist, the problem happens when they faithful say but GOD logically exists. as long as those faithful do not impose thier relegion on others or do not commit crimes in its name i beleive that relegion is as private as choosing your own choice of food, and no one can claim that a faithful man is less logical, the only problem with the bible is that it actually contradicts with science, i beleive and sorry for that is that this is because of the so many copying and writing, for example scientests go mad when christians say that noah's flood was a global phenomena, and that all but the people on the ark died, however the quran never sais it is global and only saus that bad people from the tribe of noah died. so if i were christian i would say due to the way the bible evolved it contains alot of mistakes because people in so long ago centuries re wrote it according ot thier understanding, and also it contains alot of metaphors. there are some contradictions in the quran but they are alot less for example the theory of evolution , i mean if just the relegious people would agree that GOD never interviened after the BIG bang i would be really happy, and since the big bang is the begining of physics "time and space" nothing that happend before it is effective in our understanding of time "actually it is more accurate to say nothing happend before it". another contradiciotn supposidly that god taught adam the names of all things, however all scientists agree that language evolved in very recent times "between 6 million and 2 million years ago".

 

belief in GOD is just like the 12 steps system or the NLP or anyother thing of these types, anybody is free to say i beleive in ........ but just dont try to tell me NLP is science, if you just say that the things those people say sounds good, it is a good way to motivate myself , fine i cant touch you, but if youre saying that this is a way that complies with the way the brain works, i mean exeuse me.

 

so let me clarify where i stand i hold science above all in scietific matters, no way can anyone convince me evolution is flawed because it sais so in the bible and backs it up woth alot of bad science then sais do you really want to beleive that you decended from apes. science is not about beleif in the results if we cant prove the argument is wrong we cant claim the result is wrong, just because we do not like the result.

 

does all this mean i am an athiest, well no. i have been programmed to beleive in GOD, plus relegious freedom in islam is either very impared or later people than the prophet misinterpreted the things he said, yes you are very free to join islam if you want even if islamic forces took control of the country you are in or if you have moved to an islamic country, but you are not free to go, even if you were born a muslim which means you didnt even have a choice to begin with. i like alot about islam, the prohibition of alcohol, bieng faithful in marriage. but id really like to see silamic states alot like turkey where relegion is seperated from state,and to allow everyone to practice islam as he beleives it is as long as he does not break the civil rights of anyone.

 

ok ive branched off a little bit, but i needed to say this alot of athiests make the mistake of acusing relegious people of bieng illogical, relegion is only illogical if you choose to say that miracles are physical phenomena, we do not apply logic to everything, can anyone tell me why i like heavy metal and hate pop logically?

 

* molokhia: a traditional egyptian food.

[avagriffon]

Warp Drive according to the 1701-D Interactive technical manual is 'continuim distortion propulsion' in other words the space in front of the vehicle, in direction of travel shinks while space behind increases for less than the smallest quanta of time in a sort of back and forth motion. In Trek they achieve this by using 'suspace fields' what ever that means. In reality you would need enormous gratiton (if they exist CERN still haven't found them yet but they might when they finish building the LHC) fields that would most certainly destroy all matter within the event horizon including the vehicle as it would be the singularity - plus there is a slight problem of navigating - let's say you could go 2c (twice the speed of light) 660 000 km per second - at night I like travelling at speed where I can see the road for 10 secs ahead (kangaroo's are hard to dodge I have hit 8 over the years at great expense to my vehicles) if we use the same princible for space travell at 2c you would need effective sensors that worked FTL to a distance of 6 000 000 km and thats just to see what your going to hit in 10 secs at warp 2 not to mention inertial problems of dodging and slowing down.

 

It will take a MASTERY of particle physics maybe even Grand Unification Theory before we even come close..............

[greyCell]

actually alcubbiere shown the spacetime inside the bubble would be nearly flat "like our local spacetime. the place where there will be off the shart gravitational fields is near the edge of the bubble insude it and outside that is why entering and leaving the bubble is a problem.

 

the problem of navigation is really not existant , warp driving is not driving, everything should be calculated before leaving, i do not even think that you would be able to sense anything outside,how will we know when to get off, by calculation, we know how long it takes "in the frame reference inside the bubble" to reach our distination. if youre asking how will we manuvaur around obstacles well we wont. we wont be able to i think because the light will not be able to penetrrate the wave from the front because the lead of the wave would be expanding faster than light, at least light would go through very wierd trnasition phase while crossing the lead of the wave and would reach the ship in a totally unsyncrounous time.

 

the problem with this model is unlinke the unreleastic subspace of ST here the warping is dont in normal spacetime which means the wave would sweep away everything in its pass, which means that if you want to reach a place you should plot a course that doesnt intercept with any important objects "ie planets stars etc, not because it would be dangerous i thing it will have no effect such an enormous gravitational field would suck the object into the lead of the phase but that planet would be anhilated.

 

 

[Megalith]

wow a miniature deathstar huh, If this is the case tho surely this distortion will riple out thru space for hundreds of light years and would not the earth (presuming we start on earth) be subjected to these enormous gravitational fields such that there would be no earth left to return to?