Oh sure, they'll have that in no time.
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 ...
How the heck can you know that?
That matter can not simply be “brushed” aside and ignored if you want to move other matter through space.
You are correct on this point, and I was agreeing with you. You should have stopped right there. The rest of what you have to say is nonsense:
Travel frames of reference as pertaining to time are debatable outside of the sublumial construct
Wrong. There are objects in our universe beyond our horizon which have apparent velocities greater than light because of the expansion of the universe. We can no longer see them because the light from them can never reach us. Lorentz invariance applies to these objects.
accepted mathematical principles laid down by Einstein
They were not laid down by Einstein, but by Poincare, Lorentz, Fitzgerald, Minkowski, and others. Einstein's contribution was that he understood the physical significance of the mathematics.
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
He did not believe anything. He proved that it was not possible.
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).
You are mistaken about what he proved. What he proved was that a particle with a finite rest mass -- even something as small as an electron -- would require an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light.
Traveling backwards in time is not feasible according to known laws of physics, quantum or otherwise.
This statement is probably true, but not proven. Neither in classical nor quantum physics has this been proven. There are a number of speculative theories that deny it, or argue in favor of it. There is no known observation that it is impossible, nor is it inconsistent with any existing theory. The laws of both classical and quantum mechanics can be run either forward or backward in time.
In any case, traveling faster than light does not necessitate moving backwards through time.
Yes, it does. This statement is 100% factually incorrect.
The mathematics at that point are very debatable.
No, they are not. The mathematics required to prove this requires nothing more than the two principles of Special Relativity and very basic (right triangle) arithmetic. I have taught this to junior/senior undergrads in Physics, and although I haven't used my PhD in Physics for almost 30 years, it has not changed, and I have not forgotten anything this basic.
Was it in the papers?
“Surfing down the wave front” is more like Dark Star than Star Trek.
Oh sure, they'll have that in no time.
cool
Well yeah if you're French:)
“Yet we STILL don’t have flying cars.”
I hear ya. I canceled my subscription to Popular Mechanics over stuff like this. Too many broken promises.
-bitter.
Excellent. Space-displacement is really the only thing that makes sense to me. It addresses several problems.
1) G-force.
2) Striking objects during transit.
Although I don’t understand the mechanics the theory implies the craft simply displace -x distance in front of it and +x distance in back of it. Doing so hundreds or even thousands of times a second makes for some good travel time. A 187-mile displacement done 1000 times a second would get them FTL.
Counterpoint: In 1969, the largest commercial aircraft ever built was flown for the first time.
45 years later, the Boeing 747 is still being built.
The SSTs and Concordes caused sonic booms, as I’m sure you know, which was a no-go politically over land. A family friend worked on the North American SST in the 60’s, so I’m a little familiar with the plane. What’s the answer?
The Concorde didn’t retire because it caused sonic booms over land. It retired because it used so much fuel that it wasn’t economically viable.
The answer is to carefully shape the aircraft so that most of the sonic boom is reflected upwards, and is being developed by NASA.
And perpetual motion machines and cold fusion generators, and the return of solid chocolate Easter bunnies...not to mention insurance that can be kept if you like it.
Okay, I'll give you that. I will concede to your better judgment, never having done either.
Also people traveled all over the world for many centuries without using one bit of fuel. Sailing ships explored and colonized the entire earth.
It is not at all unreasonable to think similar opportunities for propulsion may exist in space.
Which leads to it’s a really big galaxy and even with travel between stars in weeks that could still put us a very long way from space travelers. And they just might not notice us. Think about how regularly we kept finding tribes in Africa and South America even in the 20th century, long after we had the ability to get to them we still weren’t going there for a variety of reasons.
Actually we do have flying cars, numerous versions have been figured out. And the one thing every inventor of them figured out is that while they’re nifty they’re also completely useless. The wings are a big pain while trying to be a car, and the car is a massive weight while trying to be a plane. This makes storage and travel capacities rather limited, and transitioning between the two rather cumbersome.
You are quibbling over sources that say the same thing. At least the io9 article also included the link I copied over to White’s 33 page pdf...
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