And the Unicorns in question have to come from Altair IV so...
"IS WARP DRIVE POSSIBLE?" - A discussion
- Thread starter CLARK NOVA
- Start date
And the Unicorns in question have to come from Altair IV so...
I reiterate my previous statement.
I'll add that were it possible to build such technology, aliens would be ubiquitous hereabouts. It seems that at least one of the following is true:
- It is so difficult to travel between stars that it is rarely done
- There are no sapient aliens at all
- There are no sapient aliens that have developed the required technology
- We are the first sapient lifeform
- We are first sapient lifeform to consider developing interstellar travel
- Earth is off-limits until humans (or something else from here) develop interstellar travel
- Sapient aliens exist but we are wilfully ignoring the evidence
- Something else I've overlooked
- Cloaking devices/duck blinds are in common use.
They won't reveal themselves until we stop making episodes of Single Female Lawyer.
Oh Lurr... Will you ever stop obsessing on that stupid show?
Scientists create exotic, fifth state of matter on space station to explore the quantum world
https://www.space.com/exotic-matter...erated an exotic,liquids, solids, and plasmas.
Well, it looks like we already created exotic matter.
Huh... would this mean we'd need to just bring all those researchers together for making both an Impulse and Warp drive technology?
I mean, if you can make Warp... then fast sublight (without needing massive amount of power or exotic matter) might be doable since both would use same principle (except on different scales).
We can then use sublight for our own solar system (and construction of a Dyson Swarm at first) more efficiently and Warp for automated surveys of other solar systems.
https://www.space.com/exotic-matter...erated an exotic,liquids, solids, and plasmas.
Well, it looks like we already created exotic matter.
Huh... would this mean we'd need to just bring all those researchers together for making both an Impulse and Warp drive technology?
I mean, if you can make Warp... then fast sublight (without needing massive amount of power or exotic matter) might be doable since both would use same principle (except on different scales).
We can then use sublight for our own solar system (and construction of a Dyson Swarm at first) more efficiently and Warp for automated surveys of other solar systems.
Sorry to break this to you but a Bose-Einstein condensate is not the type of exotic matter that is required for time travel, Krasnikov tubes, Alcubierre drive, and other types of spacetime manifold manipulation needed for faster-than-light space travel. What is required is matter with negative energy density, that is, negative mass. In fact, it only really needs to be negative energy, in which case it might be possible to simulate this by developing techniques such as the Casimir effect or destructive quantum interference to suppress vacuum fluctuations. As someone else mentioned upthread, negative energy might not even be required to warp the spacetime metric in a suitable way according to some recent research, but I don't know what is proposed.
If we did have a warp drive wouldn't it be a problem to hit space dust at those speeds?
Do any of the current proposals for warp engines fix the time dilation problem? If not it would explain why we haven't seen any aliens that nobody wants to lose thousands of years of their planet's history to make a one way trip to a possibly hostile planet.
Do any of the current proposals for warp engines fix the time dilation problem? If not it would explain why we haven't seen any aliens that nobody wants to lose thousands of years of their planet's history to make a one way trip to a possibly hostile planet.
In the Phys.org article I posted a page before this one, the researcher stated the following:
"The energy required for this drive traveling at light speed encompassing a spacecraft of 100 meters in radius is on the order of hundreds of times of the mass of the planet Jupiter. The energy savings would need to be drastic, of approximately 30 orders of magnitude to be in range of modern nuclear fission reactors." He goes on to say: "Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude." Lentz is currently in the early-stages of determining if these methods can be modified, or if new mechanisms are needed to bring the energy required down to what is currently possible.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, with the potential energy saving mechanisms mentioned (that is, if they pan out at 30-60 orders of magnitude), they would allow nuclear fission reactors to power the Warp bubble with energy to spare... so, there'd be no need for negative energy in the first place?
Its either that, or you may have meant the white paper that was posted:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20110015936
But that white paper still talks about exotic matter which was downscaled to the size of Voyager 1 probe... so no, I think you may have meant the Psy.org article I posted (but I could be wrong).
On the other hand, there have been some proposals on creating negative energy in the lab:
http://www.earthtech.org/publications/davis_STAIF_conference_1.pdf
I think that the space dust is effectively negated with the Alcubierre Warp drive because the bubble compresses the space in front of the craft and expands it behind... so the craft isn't actually moving.
Also... it was already established that Alcubierre Warp drive has nothing to do with time dilation. If for example, you accelerate at a significant fraction of light speed using conventional engines... say 0.1 c... that would mean that you'd be at a 'threshold' of when time dilation would actually begin, and therefore, minimal/negligible compared to the observer from Earth.
The Warp bubble enhances speed yes, but since it effectively compresses space (redrawing the distance), it doesn't actually accelerate the craft itself (which still moves inside the bubble at 0.1c)... it moves the surrounding space at a 100x faster rate (compared to normal engines).
Yeah but space is time, are you sure time would move at the same rate for those inside the bubble if it’s surrounded by compressed space time?
What you propose suggests that from the perspective of the destination the ship would start at the destination and move backward.
What you propose suggests that from the perspective of the destination the ship would start at the destination and move backward.
Last edited:
The spacetime warp bubble would still be able to run into things - photons, dust particle or larger - and these would be subject to tidal effects, frame dragging, and acceleration. Any of these effects is potentially disruptive and destructive. I'm not sure how well protected the craft inside the bubble would be. It is stationary with respect to the frame of reference of the bubble but probably not with respect to anything that enters the bubble.
Such a drive could potentially by used for time travel as well as space travel - so where are the time travellers and the causality violations, never mind the aliens?
Such a drive could potentially by used for time travel as well as space travel - so where are the time travellers and the causality violations, never mind the aliens?
I use mescaline from cacti for all my trips
Yes! I've heard about it. I think this is very cool news. According to new calculations, the warp drive will not require negative energy. It is unlikely that we will see it in the next 100 years, but it is already pleasant to know that we are gradually approaching the creation of such an amazing thing.
Will the plasma rocket engines that Princeton talk about helping us with that?
I assume if spacetime manipulation is perfected, someone uses it to travel back in time and kill off all the aliens. I mean, who's going to stop them? We've got to do it before an alien tries to do it to us.
Why assume that any potential alien species with ftl capabilities (if they even exist) would mean us harm or that we need to harm them?
See this is one of the reasons I'd prefer humanity cleans up it's own act on earth first before going to space. If we don't change our behavior, we will just bring existing problems with us and create them in a new environment.
Technology and science evolve exponentially, not linearly , so there's a good chance we will actually develop a real prototype very soon.
The next 5 to 10 years will likely blow the minds off most people... Nevermind the 20 years after that.
As stated in Asimov's Foundation's Edge (1982), the activity of the time traveling Eternals, to select a reality that favors interstellar colonization by mankind, was the legendary explanation for why there were no competing aliens in the Foundation universe.
However, in his The End of Eternity (1955), the stated relation between the aliens in the galaxy and humanity is framed somewhat differently, almost oppositely, according to the premise that tinkering with timelines must be abandoned in favor of going out into space so that humanity will not have lagged behind the aliens and lack worthwhile star systems to colonize.
But since the former was published decades after the latter and the accounts differ, one might either regard the account in FE as a sort of revision, or presume that the intent is to imply a loose or weak canonical association between the texts rather than a strong or literal one, or both.
Of course, in the Foundation universe, IIRC it was possible to power hyperspace drives using fossil fuels. I doubt that's possible in our reality.
The Borg are just so fluffy and cuddly, aren't they?
ETA: In one of my favourite TNG stories, which is actually the PC adventure game A Final Unity, you could have Picard choose to kill off the Borg in the past so that they would never threaten the Federation. Typical of TNG, taking this path had an unfortunate consequence (I won't reveal exactly what though) that was supposedly worse than the Borg.
Last edited:
Similar threads
