It's official: FTL is impossible

[ChristopherPike]

Just as long as any advanced unfriendly aliens out there, realise that too... Then everything will be alllllllllright.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

This elaborates on what Einstein is heard saying in the video (Einstein"s views on the aether, near the bottom of the page). The last sentence, in my view, points out the problem here: that most physicists today don't go along with Einstein's concept of the new aether (as opposed to the 19th concept), which would be the zero-point energy, virtual particles, or whatever term you like.

Einstein's concept of aether was that of a mathematical construct, basically a "space energy tensor," what modern writers generally conceptualize as the "curvature of spacetime." In some field equations this is expressed (IMO, more accurately) as a measure of density in the energy field. Which makes more sense to me: since mass and energy are equivalent, you would expect an area that contains alot of mass would contain a higher density of energy.

But that may already be changing--slowly. And that's the key to the concept I've explained about addressing this background energy to get around the lightspeed limit, as well as provide interial damping and fuel for your craft for interstellar or even local flights.

A field-based drive or artificial gravity type drive would be inertialess by its very nature. It wouldn't provide you a constant speed like in Star Trek, though, it would be more like the inertialess field drives in "Pushing Ice." Constant acceleration, no g force.

 

[Bill Morris]

Now this is some deep shit.
If it's a hot area, do you actually have some recent research papers/conference publications that you can link us to?

Here's an article from Nature on repulsive Casimir effect achieved at Harvard, which is a small step forward in the field of nanotech, since the Casimir effect caused by the not-really-empty vacuum creates a problem with tiny gears, which repulsive Casimir could solve nicely once developed well enough.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/0901...ws.2009.4.html

Aside from that, there's a lot going on with zero-point energy around the world, most not well funded, But the annual black budget is huge, and that must be where the really well-funded work on that is taking place, and we don't get to hear about it until there are results, and maybe long after. So it's more immediately useful stuff like that, rather than spaceship propulsion, that has priority.

Just as long as any advanced unfriendly aliens out there, realise that too... Then everything will be alllllllllright.

Well, to answer that, I just archived a Word file on my Web site of quotes by presidents, astronauts, astronomers, the original Blue Book researchers, etc. basically saying in their own words that there are manufactured things occasionally seen in the sky that must be alien. Aside from that, there are hundreds of publicly known cases in which pilots, with corroboration by others, such as pilots in other planes, targeting radar, ground radar, cockpit crew and passengers, and/or ground observers, have had clear sightings, as well as experts such as those in charge of launching and monitoring the once-top-secret Skyhook balloons, in which case several team members (and in one case an astronomer), who not only observed, but took measurements with theodolites and used those data to confirm their extreme acceleration and deceleration. That's all well documented. So it would seem what I've described has already been invented a long time ago. But if the aliens were hostile, we'd already be toast.

http://lcars24.com/UFO-quotes.doc

A field-based drive or artificial gravity type drive would be inertialess by its very nature. It wouldn't provide you a constant speed like in Star Trek, though, it would be more like the inertialess field drives in "Pushing Ice." Constant acceleration, no g force.

That's what I've been saying, repeatedly, You can have extreme acceleration without spilling your Earl Grey. It's an automatic by-product of this type of propulsion, not a separate system.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Um, in most of the quotes in the linked file the people claim that the objects seen in the sky must be UFOs, not that they must be alien? There are only 3 occurrences of the word “alien” up to page 90, and 9 in the whole file of 140 pages. There are only 27 occurrences of the word “extraterrestrial”.

 

[Deckerd]

I think LCars24 just undid 5 pages of relentless hard sell.

 

[JarodRussell]

Now this is some deep shit.
If it's a hot area, do you actually have some recent research papers/conference publications that you can link us to?

Here's an article from Nature on repulsive Casimir effect achieved at Harvard, which is a small step forward in the field of nanotech, since the Casimir effect caused by the not-really-empty vacuum creates a problem with tiny gears, which repulsive Casimir could solve nicely once developed well enough.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/0901...ws.2009.4.html

That link goes to nowhere.

 

[Bill Morris]

Um, in most of the quotes in the linked file the people claim that the objects seen in the sky must be UFOs, not that they must be alien? There are only 3 occurrences of the word “alien” up to page 90, and 9 in the whole file of 140 pages. There are only 27 occurrences of the word “extraterrestrial”.

Why should they nail themselves down about the source? A lot them were just admitting that the evidence showed some weird stuff going on. But if you speculate that advanced aliens somewhere out there might be viewing Earth with large space-based telescope arrays, that's not hard to imagine, since we've already started getting some data on exoplanets ourselves and would want to someday send probes, if possible. Maybe our first interstellar robotic probe will work on the principles I described in this thread. If people want to think they're extradimensional, ghosts, or time machines from the future, I don't want to hear it. These days some civilian sighting would be of secret U.S. planes, but in the early 1900s the U.S. Weather Bureau included a few UFO reports in their regular monthly publication, and those things could have been man-made balloons if not for the upwind flights extreme speeds reported.

I think LCars24 just undid 5 pages of relentless hard sell.

You never answered my question about a triangle with three right angles. It's an example of thinking out of the box, and I assume the answer would be easy to find on Google.

And in a previous thread when I suggested an easier way to get astronauts to Mars with a rocket, you guys complained about that, too. But it would only take two days or so to get there with a full day of acceleration at 1 g followed by one day of deceleration at 1 g, which is too much for a chemical rocket, but I explained how to produce antielectrons in space by gathering sunlight with an array of sausage-shaped balloons to power a laser to zap gold plate, which produces a shower of antielectrons that can then be stored in magnetic bottles to be used by moon and Mars shuttles. It just takes a lot of balloons and their support equipment if you want enough fuel to go to Mars. And it takes time a fill a bottle. But that bottle would contain in very compact form a large percentage of all the energy from sunlight that fell on those balloons in that time. Of course, it's cheaper to do it the more conventional way, hoping that astronauts can retain their sanity coasting in a small craft for six months each way.

Now this is some deep shit.
If it's a hot area, do you actually have some recent research papers/conference publications that you can link us to?

Here's an article from Nature on repulsive Casimir effect achieved at Harvard, which is a small step forward in the field of nanotech, since the Casimir effect caused by the not-really-empty vacuum creates a problem with tiny gears, which repulsive Casimir could solve nicely once developed well enough.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/0901...ws.2009.4.html

That link goes to nowhere.

That must have been my fault, losing a character in the link. Here it is:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090107/full/news.2009.4.html

 

[YellowSubmarine]

You never answered my question about a triangle with three right angles.

My guess is nobody has answered you that question because what you suggest it is actually impossible. You see, it's trivial to prove that it's a complete impossibility – the angles of a triangle add to ᴨ, the angles of a figure with three right angles add to 1.5 ᴨ, so either the figure is not a triangle, or the right angles are not three, or 2 = 3. Before you try thinking of any tricks to do so – a triangle is a plane figure, if you have projected the plane on another 2D surface the triangle is no longer a triangle.

You can have a musical triangle with three right angles though. Especially if it is a four-sided musical triangle. There aren't any theorems for musical triangles though.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Hint: non-Euclidean geometry.

 

[Bill Morris]

Hint: non-Euclidean geometry.

Of course. It's obvious that you know the answer. But the question was for Deckard.

Time's up.
If you draw four lines pole to pole 90 degrees apart on a sphere then draw the equator, you've divided the surface into eight equilateral right triangles.

How about some more basic ones?

1: Why is the sky blue ovehead on a clear day?
2: Where does that salt in the sea come from?
3: Why does the moon look larger on the horizon than overhead?

Those don't really require thinking out of the box, but this one does:

How can you cut a hole in a letter-sized piece of paper big enough for an adult human to step through?

 

[sojourner]

I thought you were going to give us the answer on how to draw a triangle with 3 right angles? The answer you gave is how to draw lines on a sphere in essence creating 3 dimensional constructs. A triangle is 2 dimensional. Well outside the scope of the original task.

There is "thinking out side the box" and then there is "disingenuous".

Besides, those are parlor tricks for children, not evidence of the ability to come up with an (effectively) FTL drive.

 

[Bill Morris]

I thought you were going to give us the answer on how to draw a triangle with 3 right angles? The answer you gave is how to draw lines on a sphere in essence creating 3 dimensional constructs. A triangle is 2 dimensional. Well outside the scope of the original task.

There is "thinking out side the box" and then there is "disingenuous".

Besides, those are parlor tricks for children, not evidence of the ability to come up with an (effectively) FTL drive.

Well, then, here's the YouTube link to see Daffy Duck lay a golden egg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B7VzMr2gz0

The triangle thing should require no further explanation, but in the Wikipedia article Triangle it's explained in detail under the heading Non-planar triangles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isosceles#Types_of_triangles

This one has an illustration of one with angles of 90, 90, and 50 degrees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Euclidean_geometry

In both, the word triangle is used.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Well, to be fair, the figure is still called a “triangle”, it's just a distinct object from the one that's understand when you say “triangle” in the standard geometrical context. But yeah, it's disingenuous, it misleads by substituting two non-equivalent categories with the same name and thus changing the original question. I'm not a fan of riddles that rely on not defining the problem well enough unless the result is particularly amusing or unexpected. When somebody asks me a riddle like that I usually give the “wrong” answer on purpose.

In order to be fair, the question should ask something like “how can you draw a triangle with three right angles on the ground”.

 

[Bill Morris]

What I've suggested is:

1. Using zero-point energy as the basis for a means of propulsion that allows travel at any desired speed, including FTL, without g-force or time dilation experienced by the crew, which I have explained in simple-enough terms.

2. Using that same zero-point energy as the craft's fuel, where the vary act of harvesting it in the desired direction of travel creates a vacuum in the zero-point field, in effect creating the artificial gravity well needed for this kind of propulsion, as well as powering the craft's machinery.

I searched around and found some articles, each of which goes on and on about one or the other but not both. There are many more and probably some out there somewhere that put it together just as I have suggested. Here's a sampling of papers that include some of it:

http://www.utahspace.org/special/zero_point.html
Quantum Vacuum Forces Project
http://www.intalek.com/Index/Projects/Research/UGC-QE-final.pdf
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/Q/Quantum_Vacuum_Forces_Project.html
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/Z/ZPE.html
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/V/vacuum_energy_drive.html
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/secret_projects/project301.htm
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/overview.html

One other guy Skunk Works guy has made claims similar to what I mentioned coming from former CEO the late Ben Rich is Boyd Bushman, who dispite his impressive credentials and accomplishments, sounds full of beans to me. And if they really are working on this in a black project, they shouldn't be talking about it, anyway. I'm sure they must be, but that true status of what they're doing is likely to remain highly classified for a long time.

This article mentions some government projects on this:

http://rense.com/general7/sci.htm

 

[sojourner]

Zero point energy is a wonderful idea waiting to happen... and waiting... and waiting..

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

So Einstein's theories are validated yet again and the universe's speed limit remains intact. This is in no way surprising, nor even disappointing really.

Exactly so.

 

[JarodRussell]

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/overview.html

That is the only really worthwhile link, as it actually gives proper references.

Unresolved Approaches

[...]

Inertia and Gravity Interpreted as Quantum Vacuum Effects:
Theories are entering the peer-reviewed literature that assert that gravity and inertia are side effects of the quantum vacuum. The theories are controversial and face many unresolved issues. In essence this approach asserts that inertia is related to an electromagnetic drag force against the vacuum when matter is accelerated, and that gravity is the result of asymmetric distributions of vacuum energy caused by the presence of matter. [35-38] The space propulsion implications of these theories have been raised [39], but experimental approaches to test these assertions are only beginning to enter the literature. [40]

[...]

The stuff you are talking about is this:
Puthoff, H. E. 1993. Gravity as a zero-point-fluctuation force. Phys. Rev. A. 39: 2333; Comments, Phys. Rev A. 47: 3454.
and
Rueda, A. & Haisch. 2005. Gravity and the quantum vacuum hypothesis. Ann. Phys. (Leipzig), 14(8): 479-498.

 

[Bill Morris]

Right. Those explain what I've said about gravity and ZPE, and if you view it in that way, it shouldn't be hard to see that if you can use that elusive energy as fuel, the very act of taking it in at one point on the periphery of a spacecraft would result in propulsion of a type that circumvents Special Relativity and allows you to fly at whatever relative speed you like, with quick stops and starts and even sudden changes in direction, as well as being exempt from the lightspeed limit that applies to rocket-propelled craft, all with no g-force at all felt by the pilot, crew, and passengers. It's not the Trek scenario, but sure looks ideal to me. It's warp, impulse, and RCS all in one package, with no need for inertial dampers. The only other thing is the need to deal with space dust, trace hydrogen, and other obstacles. And the computer system should be LCARS, not Windows.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I think LCars24 just undid 5 pages of relentless hard sell.

Dang!

And here I was thinking the magical Series of Tubes had finally discovered the meaning of life.

What I've suggested is:

1. Using zero-point energy as the basis for a means of propulsion that allows travel at any desired speed, including FTL, without g-force or time dilation experienced by the crew, which I have explained in simple-enough terms.

2. Using that same zero-point energy as the craft's fuel, where the vary act of harvesting it in the desired direction of travel creates a vacuum in the zero-point field, in effect creating the artificial gravity well needed for this kind of propulsion, as well as powering the craft's machinery.

And after five pages of you demanding to have your opinion respected, THIS is the part where I get to ask you whether or not you actually have a degree in theoretical physics.

I know you think very highly of your reasoning skills, LCARS, but there's a reason why internet hobbyists rarely make meaningful breakthroughs in science or engineering (except, of course, for COMPUTER engineering, in which case you're probably wasting valuable time that would be better spent on developing a working LCARS operating system).

One other guy Skunk Works guy has made claims similar to what I mentioned coming from former CEO the late Ben Rich is Boyd Bushman, who dispite his impressive credentials and accomplishments, sounds full of beans to me. And if they really are working on this in a black project, they shouldn't be talking about it, anyway...

Until your research budget exceeds "google search and a redbull," probably neither should you.

 

[Bill Morris]

I'll just skip responding to any trolling posts. The two links JoradRussell posted above cover part of it pretty well. One more is from 1997 but is nicely written and uses the term ZPF (zero-point field), which may be less confusing than some of what's going around:

http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_11_4_haisch.pdf