Posted on 01/24/2018 8:44:59 PM PST by Ciaphas Cain
Oh cool the air is on fire!
Since it requires a medium to propagate, would this not be self defeating?
Yes, but only in the 8th dimension.
“tear a hole in the fabric of space”, ‘course to be physically correct, that should be “tear a hole in the fabric of space-TIME”.
The philosophical idea being that space-time is a participant in physical interactions, and not simply a background, or “canvas” ... as established by Einstein.
There may be fatal objections to the idea, as I am by no means an authority, but I don’t think it can be rejected on the face of it.
They say they’ll be ready by 2023. They plan to have a moonbase by then too.
I hope they don’t mount them on sharks
Is the laser powerful enough to rip itself apart? Does it rip space at its point of origin? Or somewhere along the path? Creation ex-nihilo not so unbelievable after all?
You’re right! Let alone our planet crashing. Gravity and spin would change let alone orbit. Major calamity. If anyone thought global warming was an issue, us losing instant equilibrium would be disastrous and terminal for everyone and everything on the planet... now aint that a nail biter!
But then again, the simple act of alerting others in the cosmos of our existence could spoil our sanctuary of silence! No body here but us mice! lol
Imagine if we caused damage to Thanos new space ship and he decided to come looking for us?
We are not even remotely close to getting that kind of power out of a laser.
Einstein certainly invented the idea of space-time, but the idea that it is possible to 'tear a hole' in it was not foreseen by him; he actually rejected the idea that black holes could exist, even though Karl Schwarzschild had demonstrated that they were possible under the equations describing general relativity. It appears that Einstein was wrong about this.
Even within a black hole, the idea that the "fabric of space time" has had a "hole" torn in it is (as far as I know) a conjecture; no one knows, no one has demonstrated what actually happens inside a black hole, either by theory or (obviously) by observation.
Other than under the unique conditions of the interior of the event horizon of a black hole, I know of no theory, no concept of "tearing a hole in the fabric of space time" under any conditions.
Here are some Wikipedia pages that might be related in some way to the sort of thing that happen under conditions extent in extremely high intensity laser beams. Nowhere in them is discussed any sort of disruption of the "fabric of space-time."
Schwinger Limit
Sokolov–Ternov effect
Vacuum polarization
Here is a discussion of the possibility you are describing by a person who asks and then answers his own question, not very convincingly in my opinion: Can space be disrupted by means of extremely intense laser beams?
If we are in a false vacuum this has the potential to end very badly...
Bingo!!!! Rip a hole in nothing? Pure unadulterated crap.
Barbara Bain was prettiest thing about the lunar landscape in that show.
I would say it means that the mass-energy density has a significant, or in principle detectable, gravitational effect.
I will grant you that we're not talking black holes here ... unless we are! ... is that what is being claimed? It would ultimately seem to be a simple question of the mass-energy density being produced at the target.
Well, I see articles on the idea of “breaking the vacuum”, which means that the beam itself, without being absorbed by a target, is intense enough to interact with the vacuum, manifested in the form of virtual particle production. Just a question of intensity, apparently.
So nothing to do with mass-energy per se, as I was thinking.
Of all the crazy things in physics that have come true, I don’t see why this should raise particular ire.
Even if the "mass-energy equivalence" of photons is capable of generating a gravitational field (which I doubt), in order to have enough mass-energy to generate a gravitational field strong enough to create the sort of effects we think exist near a black hole, you would need an equivalent mass measured in tons, if not billions of tons.
To pack this sort of energy into a laser beam, you would need to annihilate an equivalent amount of mass and pack all that energy into a laser beam.
As scientifically advanced as the Chinese may be, I very much doubt they have the capability to turn multiple tons of mass into pure photons and then collimate those photons into a laser beam.
The amount of mass that was converted into energy by the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was about 0.7 gram. All the rest of the U-235 in the bomb's core was vaporized without being converted into mass-energy; some of it was transmuted into other elements as well (fission products), but it still existed as matter after the explosion.
If the 140 pounds of U-235 that was present in the Hiroshima bomb had all been converted to energy, the resulting explosion would have been more than 90,000 times larger than the actual yield of the bomb, or about 1400 megatons. If that had happened, planes that dropped the bomb would have been vaporized; the fireball would have been something like 40 miles in diameter.
magine if other races discovered us- they would all be voting democrat in a generation
“Let’s try this, I mean, there’s never been a problem with untested science before, has there?”
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