Not Sure, But... FTL!!

[Robert Comsol]

We are talking about some "exotic" energy but we still have no clue what it is and how to harness it, correct?

On the other hand, we do know how nuclear fusion works (because of our sun), but we are still struggling to find ways how to use it on an industrial level. I have books from the 1970's and 1980's that expected that within the next 20 years we'd know how to overcome the technical obstacles, and still there is no breakthrough in sight.

I think that just illustrates that just because we know the principle, the execution is a completely different matter.

Bob

 

[Metryq]

We are talking about some "exotic" energy but we still have no clue what it is and how to harness it, correct?

Maybe some exotic energy. The Daedalus fusion rocket is in an entirely different category. It is essentially a reaction motor, just like the rockets we use today, only it employs a power source that we've incompletely harnessed. We can create very fleeting fusion reactions with bombs and expensive lab gear.

This "warp drive" idea is on extremely shaky ground. "But Einstein proved that space warps." No, he didn't, and there are many competent researchers who have challenged both Special and General Relativity and have empirical tests to back it up. At the very least, that means the science is not settled. (Matters of science never are.)

The warp drive researchers have detected fringing with an interferometer, but they have no idea what caused it. Like redshift, it could have been caused by many things. (That's right, redshift has numerous mechanisms, but astronomers seem to be aware of only one. At least publicly.)

So we can't go concluding that any tiny warp bubbles have been generated in the lab, but it's probably good for funding.

 

[Dryson]

^^yeah, but! Way. Too. Cool.

...this would be a reason to live a couple of hundred years to see if it really can be done...

...still, it is that pesky E=MC^2...

True HIjol except that E = MC^2 is only relative within a gravitationally confirmed environment of which the four largest sources of gravity would be in order of their magnitude : The Center of the Universe(either large sun or blackhole), The Center of a Galaxy (either large sun or blackhole), The Center of a Solar System (sun most of the time but could be a blackhole) and a blackhole itself.

You remove these gravitational constants from the Universe and the engines that create gravity and eventually E=MC^2 what formula do you have now?

I think the formula would revolve around something different involving exotic matter like dark matter and dark energy....which brings me to another question.

With all of the energy requirements needed for FTL based on E=MC^2 then wouldn't dark matter and dark energy be such a base of unlimited resources of the FTL Drive based on E=MC^2?

How do you define a constant for velocity based on the inconsistent? You discover a new consistency within the inconsistent.

I used to think that space was really nothing at all. But if space is really nothing at all then where did the spark of creation come from?

I believe that the Universe is built like an atom and when conditions are correct an electron will jump to a higher orbital, in this case when the higher orbital jumps it jumped into being causing the Big Bang too occur from which other electrons jumped into higher orbitals to create new atoms.

Not getting off topic but this theory could also theoretically prove that subspace exists where different realities would be present and functioning just like we are but on a different orbital of creation. Einstein did say that everything was relative.

 

[sojourner]

(That's right, redshift has numerous mechanisms, but astronomers seem to be aware of only one. At least publicly.)

Careful, you're letting your conspiracy quackery show.

 

[HIjol]

Well I watched it and I have to say that it was, from a layman's point of view, scientific conjecture the same way as all discussions of this topic are. Perhaps some of the astrophysicists on the board could say whether anything new is being put forward here.

I think the fact that they are actually performing tests takes it a step beyond "conjecture".

It's not so much a hoax as it is deeply, deeply speculative. This is a variant on the Alcubierre drive, which requires "exotic matter" that has a negative energy density. Even though the math is being done by people who really, really want FTL to be real, they have a hard time making the numbers fit so that we could move a warp ship out of our solar system without needing energy on the order of Jupiter's mass on up to several suns. In other words, under the best guesses of people who desperately believe this is possible, the numbers show it's laughably impractical.

Recently some scientist at NASA who is working on this project said that they didn't need that much energy because they worked out a better way of using a warp bubble that required less energy. So instead of something with the mass of a star, it's something with the mass of the Voyager probe. I think that was the exact one he choose in the article.

They still don't know where to get that energy, so we won't be making it to Vulcan in time for dinner anytime soon.

to Possum...maybe Breakfast!

Please, help me, All...I understand the analogy in the video regarding the submarine, in effect using the medium (water) as "fuel"; pushing off on it while traveling in the opposite direction...but how would we be able to detect the strange particles, the quarks (I know, he is at the Dabo table) and positrons and such, in order for us to use to propel in space?...I have less difficulty understanding dark/black/shrouded matter, as we have discovered so many exotics in Theoretical and Particle and Astrophysics, but how in the Moons of Nibia could we sense and use these strange particles that "...pop in and out of space..."

...and who says space cannot bend or warp?

...this is SUCH cool stuff, you gotta admit!

 

[HIjol]

Never mind that shit. Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Seriously, you can't go outside the light cone and screw your own grandmother.

Jesus Tits, I would hope not!

 

[HIjol]

^^yeah, but! Way. Too. Cool.

...this would be a reason to live a couple of hundred years to see if it really can be done...

...still, it is that pesky E=MC^2...

True HIjol except that E = MC^2 is only relative within a gravitationally confirmed environment of which the four largest sources of gravity would be in order of their magnitude : The Center of the Universe(either large sun or blackhole), The Center of a Galaxy (either large sun or blackhole), The Center of a Solar System (sun most of the time but could be a blackhole) and a blackhole itself.

You remove these gravitational constants from the Universe and the engines that create gravity and eventually E=MC^2 what formula do you have now?

I think the formula would revolve around something different involving exotic matter like dark matter and dark energy....which brings me to another question.

With all of the energy requirements needed for FTL based on E=MC^2 then wouldn't dark matter and dark energy be such a base of unlimited resources of the FTL Drive based on E=MC^2?

How do you define a constant for velocity based on the inconsistent? You discover a new consistency within the inconsistent.

I used to think that space was really nothing at all. But if space is really nothing at all then where did the spark of creation come from?

I believe that the Universe is built like an atom and when conditions are correct an electron will jump to a higher orbital, in this case when the higher orbital jumps it jumped into being causing the Big Bang too occur from which other electrons jumped into higher orbitals to create new atoms.

Not getting off topic but this theory could also theoretically prove that subspace exists where different realities would be present and functioning just like we are but on a different orbital of creation. Einstein did say that everything was relative.

...seems to me, if you remove Gravitational Constants, then you would HAVE no Universe...and unless I am amiss of my theories, there would still be the problem of infinite mass...as to the Spark of Creation, I leave that to more spiritual minds than I, but I will say that we are more likely to answer FTL questions than Spark questions...ever...and what of the energy released in your "Atom/Universe" model...constant obliteration?...

..as to the consistant/inconsistant, the way I see it, there would be no such thing as a "consistantly consistant" within an inconsistant model...and maybe that is more to the point of all of this...

...relativities and realities certainly relate in some substantive ways, but in the case of other realities, touching or tapping into for fuel or resistance to push against or using as conduits or boundaries is about 47 Far Cries from living and interacting in them...which would make them actual realities...relatively

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Never mind that shit. Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Seriously, you can't go outside the light cone and screw your own grandmother.

Jesus Tits, I would hope not!

Yes, I posted after I'd had a drink or three. Negative energy would allow you to do all kinds of weird stuff that the physical underpinning of the Universe probably doesn't allow: break causality, create perpetual motion machines, time travel...

 

[iguana_tonante]

The Center of the Universe(either large sun or blackhole)

...wait, what? WHAT?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'm the centre of my Universe and I ain't no steenkin' black hole.

 

[HIjol]

Isn't "Negative Energy" just another way to say "Anti-matter?"

 

[Deckerd]

The Center of the Universe(either large sun or blackhole)

...wait, what? WHAT?

I love it when Iguana stumbles into these threads. I've nearly always just taken a mouthful of a drink, unfortunately.

 

[Mudd]

Getting small payloads into Earth orbit is challenging and tremendously expensive, and that hasn't changed much over time.The richest country on the planet can't even allocate resources sufficient to get a small expedition back to the Moon, which we visited half a century ago.

Tell me again how close we are to FTL starships.

 

[HIjol]

Getting small payloads into Earth orbit is challenging and tremendously expensive, and that hasn't changed much over time.The richest country on the planet can't even allocate resources sufficient to get a small expedition back to the Moon, which we visited half a century ago.

Tell me again how close we are to FTL starships.

Yeah, but I stumbled onto some little-known (250,000,000 views) YouTube Secret Videos about WHY we have not gone back to the moon...seems the place is lousy with Aliens!!!...
Yeppers!...according to "sources" and "secret documents", there are any number of colonies of Aliens on the Moon...so that's why...but it is Top Secret, so...yeah...

Dennis, I weep openly as I take your point....many is the time I have had similar thoughts/laments...Jesus, at this rate we will never get there...I know there are all kinds of priorities and problems on Spaceship Earth, but look at the progress and pride and accomplishment that existed when we were spacesuit deep in Mercury and Gemini and Apollo...ah, crap...where is Carl when we need him...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Isn't "Negative Energy" just another way to say "Anti-matter?"

Sorry, but no.

http://www.askamathematician.com/20...ence-between-anti-matter-and-negative-matter/

 

[HIjol]

Isn't "Negative Energy" just another way to say "Anti-matter?"

Sorry, but no.

http://www.askamathematician.com/20...ence-between-anti-matter-and-negative-matter/

Thank you...love learning new things!

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Isn't "Negative Energy" just another way to say "Anti-matter?"

Sorry, but no.

http://www.askamathematician.com/20...ence-between-anti-matter-and-negative-matter/

Thank you...love learning new things!

In fact, the article slightly glosses over the fact that there are subtle differences between matter and antimatter known as charge parity (CP) violations:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/24/cern-antimatter

 

[Maxillius]

Getting small payloads into Earth orbit is challenging and tremendously expensive, and that hasn't changed much over time.The richest country on the planet can't even allocate resources sufficient to get a small expedition back to the Moon, which we visited half a century ago.

Tell me again how close we are to FTL starships.

Yeah, it's not so much "can't" as "won't" as our governments are too busy blowing each other to hell or threatening to blow each other to hell. To be honest, as long as that attitude persists, I would hope that any aliens we encounter if we do crack FTL would escort us back to the home system and crack some heads together with some vague threats of total planetary annihilation if we come back out while still fighting each other.

 

[publiusr]

Jefferies instinctively got it right.

I would think that the nose or tail of the ship would stick out in front of or behind the coil much at all, as the ring ship here:

http://arcas-art.deviantart.com/art/Traveller-Starship-Size-Comparison
-375080388

In the same way early MiGs and Saberjets looked like one another--or the twinjets of today--all warpships will have to look pretty much alike.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Well, Walter Matt Jefferies had an outspoken aviatic background and I can't help the feeling that a lot of Star Trek allusions are deliberately included (the FTL vessel's name is Enterprise, Mike Okuda participated in the design etc.) to stir up some public interest.

Essentially the whole thing looks to me like a PR maneuver to get people interested in spaceflight again, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Bob