Posted on 11/29/2013 7:24:42 PM PST by EveningStar
A few months ago, physicist Harold White stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein's law of relativity. We contacted White at NASA and asked him to explain how this real life warp drive could actually work.
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
I admit I could be mistaken, but from what I've gathered from the principles, it's not a simple endeavor.
Ditto that.
Paging Mr. Spock, the Enterprise is waiting!
I understand, but Freepers can be overly cynical much of the time. I'm just so used to seeing people bat down any good, interesting, or exciting news around here.
Stories like these are like an intellectual oasis in the desert of Obamaworld. They let me dream again for a brief moment before heading back out into the vast wasteland of horror.
Not Kitty Hawk...Bridgeport and Gustave Whitehead in 1901
ping!!!
In either of those frames, it is a problem.
But you have a MUCH, MUCH, bigger problem than the hypothetical space debris. The problem is that in every frame of reference, you will have moved to your remote location (or it will have moved to you, I won't quibble) faster than light could have done so. This means that your journey will be outside of the light cone. [see, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone]
When you return to earth, you will discover that you have travelled backward in time.
We know that the Alcubierre Drive is, in fact, a time machine, because it is not possible to travel through space without also travelling through time. And it is not possible to travel faster than light without travelling backwards in time, because all observers regardless of their (uniform) velocities see light travelling at the same speed.
The objection you will raise that you have not travelled faster than light inside your little warp bubble is immaterial. To all outside observers, including yourself once you step out of the warp, you will have travelled faster than light from one end point to another (that's the whole point of the exercise, after all) and therefore backwards in time as well.
So ... we know that the Alcubierre Drive does not exist, for the simple reason that no astronaut has ever visited us from the future.
Your space debris problem is now happily solved, because the ship exists only in your imagination.
No, just America in the era of Obama.
Well yes, that is a problem if your mind is fixed on some sort of engine which consumes fuel, however... just suppose we could design some way to twist a wrinkle into the local space time and just surf down the wave front. As we slid down the wave we would drag the device as well as the wave along with us.
The use of fuel to sustain flight is just a convenience. People have been flying gliders since before the Write Brothers. People have flown for hours and covered considerable distances using nothing but shifting densities of the atmosphere brought on by temperature gradients (electric fields interacting with magnetic fields already permeating space?).
Solar sails? Why not?
We need designers who can think outside the box...
Regards,
GtG
:o) Ah, Gandalf, you really OUGHT to be Gandalf the White.
"some way to twist a wrinkle into the local space time"?? I LOVE scifi but I know that twisting wrinkles is what I do with the laundry that needs ironing, not with thinking about space travel.
"Surfing down the wave front"... right out of STAR TREK!! I do love that program and have loved it since 1966.
Fuel is the problem. There is no twisting some wrinkle, though it REALLY sounds like a neat phrase.
All the scientists say the same thing: we don't have the fuel to travel so far.
In the Star Trek universe, dilithium is a fictional chemical element, although dilithium is also the scientific name for a molecule composed of two lithium atoms.
We can't even hope for some new element. There are none. What we have on the periodic chart is ALL THERE IS in this universe of God's.
Piece of cake. He makes my warp bubble!
I bought an Alcubierre's ring last week--very tasty!
First and foremost, “hypothetical” space “debris” is contrary depending upon what you consider “debris”. “Space” has a “typical” amount of matter in a given volume. That matter can not simply be “brushed” aside and ignored if you want to move other matter through space.
Travel frames of reference as pertaining to time are debatable outside of the sublumial construct according to widely accepted mathematical principles laid down by Einstein simply due to the fact that he did not believe any appreciable quantities of mass (such as a ship carrying a pilot) could travel faster than a photon given the energy requirements to propel such mass at such a velocity would exceed the mass of the universe itself (at least I think it was Einstein, I could be mistaken).
Traveling backwards in time is not feasible according to known laws of physics, quantum or otherwise. At this time, mind you. Prove to me that negative mass exists or can reasonably be observed, and I could consider such a possibility. In any case, traveling faster than light does not necessitate moving backwards through time. The mathematics at that point are very debatable.
In any case, I may be wasting my breath as you may actually not be replying to me.
The ability to bend space, “warp” does not actually have the ship travel any faster than it was already going. It might not be any more feasible than FTL of course because of the energy requirements, should we even conceive of how to do it.
...
In my stupid little theory of time travel, we would actually be going to the “past” in a different time line, or another part of the multi-verse. Because who ever said parallel universes are all on the same date?
IOW, you could go back and kill your all your ancestors and you wouldn’t go anywhere but the you in that universe’s future would never exist.
But don’t you need the spice to do something like that?
Why did they blur out the face of the guy standing behind Obama in that Photo, was it Larry Sinclair?
I’m of the opinion that “parallel Universes” are not likely, but that’s my personal belief.
I know but I like science fiction
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