Posted on 11/24/2012 1:33:34 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The first steps towards interstellar travel have been taken, but the stars are very far away. Voyager 1 is about 17 light-hours distant from Earth and is traveling with a velocity of 0.006 percent of light speed, meaning it will take about 17,000 years to travel one light-year. Fortunately, the elusive "warp drive" now appears to be evolving past difficulties with new theoretical advances and a NASA test rig under development to measure artificially generated warping of space-time.
The warp drive broke away from being a wholly fictional concept in 1994, when physicist Miguel Alcubierre suggested that faster-than-light (FTL) travel was possible if you remained still on a flat piece of spacetime inside a warp bubble that was made to move at superluminal velocity. Rather like a magic carpet. The main idea here is that, although no material objects can travel faster than light, there is no known upper speed to the ability of spacetime itself to expand and contract. The only real hint we have is that the minimum velocity of spacetime expansion during the period of cosmological inflation was about 30 million billion times the speed of light...
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmag.com ...
even if pacetime were barely bent a tiny amount, we could see a prove shoot past Voyager 1 like it was sitting still.
Even a little could see us roam the solar system at will, even if other stars would still be too far away.
And here I thought the speed of light was the universal speed limit. Travel 30 million billion times faster???!?
...
Interstellar Highway Patrol Officer: Do you know why I stopped you?
...
Acceleration and deceleration stresses would have to be handled somehow- as would unexpected collisions with stray bits of mass in space, unless the bubble has some interesting properties of its own.
..missed it by that much! :-D
Actually officer, I'd like to know how you stopped me.
heh!
Let me be the first to say (in my best Scottish brogue): “We need more power!”
Even if we could build a vessel that could travel at 0.1% of the speed of light, we can colonize this entire solar system at will.
I had a physics conversation with my nephew the other day. It ended with him saying his physics prof would hate me. He teaches basic classical physics that don’t like to be jiggled around.
I simply pointed out that a point in space has no physical speed limit.
It’s the universal speed limit for material objects; spacetime isn’t a material object.
“WHy, I simply increased local gravity to infinity and it shut down your drives ability to create forward momentum. Look, you’re still at fulll throttle. Here’s your ticket. Time dialation fine increments may be incurred.”
There would be no G-forces inside of the bubble, nothing is actually moving inside the bubble
Hundred bucks for every ten over.
That takes care of the debt problem, right there.
“Even if we could build a vessel that could travel at 0.1% of the speed of light, we can colonize this entire solar system at will.”
How so? The place still has to be livable...
Does it require work by community organizers and/or the Muslim brotherhood then no thanks. I’ll wait for alcubierre to develop it himself.
Ouch.
“That’ll be twenty petillion dollars, sign here.”
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