ST Warp Speed and BSG's Jump

[Gepard]

The problem with this is that the original would still be at the original location!

I was under the impression that any (theoretical) way of "reading" the original object to entangle the particles would also destroy the object in the process, what with the "Quantum No-Clone Rule."

 

[Verteron]

The only thing I've heard of which MIGHT make a "jump drive" plausible is the semi-factual (ie, we have a tiny bit of evidence which MIGHT support it) theory that you can "couple" particles instantaneously over large distances.

This could give a "jump drive" which would effectively create a perfect duplicate of you at a remote location with NO time effects (or so the theory goes).

You're probably thinking about using quantum entanglement in some fashion to do this. The problem with this is, at some point, the two particles need to have been together interacting with eachother to get entangled in the first place. So it's not directly allowing FTL, because you'd need to send one end of your entanglement communication/transporter to the other end at relativistic speeds first.

This is one of those things that would have to be the basis of any "real" Transporter device (if we ever actually come up with such a thing), and could provide some form of FTL "propulsion."

Maybe, maybe not. The fundamental problem with any matter or information transport at speeds faster than light is that theoretically such effects would allow you to break causality, meaning from the perspective of some observers, events would happen in the wrong order, cause before effect.

So let's say you send a message using your quantum communicator from A to B, then B sends the message back to you. You may well find the message arrives back with you before you ever sent it.

It's just how the universe it. To enable FTL you'd either need to find a way around causality or cope with the implications of breaking it, if the universe allows this.

 

[BolianAuthor]

There's a gadzillion other things that won't be preserved if an object suddenly disappears from coordinates XYZ, or appears in coordinates X'Y'Z'. Apparently, the balance always goes to "jumpspace" or "subspace"...

BSG's jump IS instant... on at least 2 occasions, we have seen a FTL jump, in-process, from a first-person POV... the first time, when Kara leads the team back to Caprica, and the second, when she goes looking for the Base Ship near the gas giant. BOTH times, the transition from point A to B has been absolutely instant.

Or then the BSG jump drive acts like a stasis field: the trip takes a couple of moments in Newtonian timeframe (that is, we'd see the ship blink out at XYZ and then reappear at X'Y'Z' a few moments later if those coordinates were close to each other), but the traveler doesn't experience any passage of time during the trip. Asimov milked the ambiguities of this to a good effect in one of his positronic brain / Powell&Donovan crossover short stories...

Timo Saloniemi

If i may... I have another theory on how the BSG jump may work... AND explain why it is "instant".

What if the ships jumping are not physically moving at all? What if the ships are forcing the UNIVERSE to move around them? What if what they are doing, is pinching space? How is this possible?

What if the jump drive really does, is create an artificial singularity of some sort, like a mini-wormhole, or black hole... some form of hyper-powerful gravity well, that allows the jump drive to physically "draw" or "pull" another far-off region of space right up to the ship, thereby "pinching" space? This may actually be plausible, because on some occasions, when Galactica jumps back out, and is released from the FTL wash/wave, the ship almost appears to be "expanding' back into view, as if it is coming out of an implosion.

I know it's far-flung, but it's one idea I have not heard talked about.

 

[Verteron]

What if the ships jumping are not physically moving at all? What if the ships are forcing the UNIVERSE to move around them? What if what they are doing, is pinching space? How is this possible?

What if the jump drive really does, is create an artificial singularity of some sort, like a mini-wormhole, or black hole... some form of hyper-powerful gravity well, that allows the jump drive to physically "draw" or "pull" another far-off region of space right up to the ship, thereby "pinching" space? This may actually be plausible, because on some occasions, when Galactica jumps back out, and is released from the FTL wash/wave, the ship almost appears to be "expanding' back into view, as if it is coming out of an implosion.

Unfortunately as nice as such explanations sound in to the ear, as soon as you start trying to delve in to anything deep, physics kicks in to tell you that it's just not possible.

Gravity waves travel at light speed (as far as the majority think anyway), so even if you could pinch space, you could only bring a remote point closer to you at light speed or less. If you could open a stable wormhole, you'd still need to take the other end someplace, again at lightspeed. And none of this gets around the causality problems.

I think sometimes it's better just to suspend disbelief and watch the show.

Current physics simply doesn't know how to go faster than light, except in very very edge case scenarios that we can't explain properly yet (like wormholes, Alcubierre warp drives, and so on -- and even Alcubierre warp drives require 'infrastructure' set up on your space highway at normal speeds in advance).

 

[Tigger]

If i may... I have another theory on how the BSG jump may work... AND explain why it is "instant".

What if the ships jumping are not physically moving at all? What if the ships are forcing the UNIVERSE to move around them? What if what they are doing, is pinching space? How is this possible?

They have a Guild Navigator stashed somewhere in the hold next to a large supply of Spice?

 

[ahkyahnan]

Sounds goofy maybe, but awhile back I pondered whether the transporter could've originally been explained as a 'jump' device of some sort, rather than a site-to-site emitter. To get around the whole de/re-materialization issue, and that little fact of "dieing" each time that's been discussed here previously. Not that short range 'jumping' wouldn't have it's own can of worms to contend with, but it occurred to me that the horizontal shimmering effect when Galactica jumps isn't all that unlike the verticle effect of the transporter.

Mark