Star Treks warp drive might be possible

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

So true.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Nah. All the 'good humans' will get to leave first... or we'll push the telephone sanitizers and the like out and keep the planet for ourselves. Until we die from infections from dirty telephones...

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The articles are incomplete, in that, yes, if you believe the eggheads... they have reduced the power requirement to *run the field* from Jupiter to a Voyager 1 mass, which is about a Volkswagen or two.

But what they don't seem to say is how long that will keep the field up. Just that will make the field happen.

You would likely still need about a Moon's worth of fuel to get you to Pluto, I'm guessing. Still, an improvement.

Perhaps it's like the inertia problem with cars and such. Lots of power to get the field started, but once started, you get great MPG...

Especially if you're hypermiling. Which you will be, come to think of it...

So... maybe a Voyager to get the field established, then another Voyager to keep it running until you get to Proxima Centarui: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri

In which case... well, heck, gimme one. See ya!

Mike

http://blastr.com/2012/09/deep-space-here-we-come-n.php



The timeframe is stunning.

What that says is that you can use 500kg of stuff (whatever it is) to get a 10 meter bubble to move at 10x the speed of light. Not how long. Not how far. Just it's moving.

Of course, if you then can coast and not use *any* fuel... except maybe some at the other end of the journey... well... that's cool. SAY THAT, you eggheads.

Still... that's 1.05 years to get to Proxima Centarui. Doable. That's a 2+ year trip there and back to say "Interstellar travels? Yes, we CAN haz!"

But it's a 10 meter bubble... that's... well, Jodie Foster in Contact, yeah? 30 foot wide bubble.

So... Contact... **CONTACT WAS TEH REALZ!!**

No, really, that's exactly what they're sayin'. The little bubble was about 30 feet. And since there was no inertia (in the movie version, not the book, mind) (unless you were attached to the interior wall, that is), then this whole theory was exposed in the movie Contact.

Sweet. Hollywood beat science to the punch. Nifty.

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Still doesn't cover how far with how much fuel. If the bubble is *started moving* at 10c... then the field collapses... that... is going to be... well, I'm not sure what's gonna happen to poor Jodie-in-the-bubble.... hm...

I expect a very rapid 'bug splat' of the body to the 'front' of the bubble a mere yoctosecond (or fraction thereof) before the bubble's 'rear is slammed into the 'front' of the bubble as the leading edge is slowed down by the pure physics of the leading warp edge 'expanding' back, causing a 30 foot wide, .00000000000000000000000000000000000001 nanometer thick disc to wink into existence, followed in a very short order of a very very few percentage points of a yoctosectond a near-to-the-speed-of-light black hole that is now moving at almost, but not quite, the speed of light, in the direction of Proxima Centarui. This will wind up getting close enough to PC that the star will start moving towards the Hole, and disrupt any planetary orbits and such as well. The Hole winds up eating a portion of Proxima Centarui... or if we're really lucky, will punch right the heck into the core of the star, causing it to be part of the black hole outright.

We are star killers. Yay us. Of coure, we'd have to wait about 8 years or so to see that awesome display from here. Can't wait.

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But thinkin' about things, it could be that instead of the above bug-splat-into-a-near-infinite-thinness-30-foot-disc-turns-into-black-hole scenario, that the deceleration and consequences of that doesn't just wind up causing a thermonuclear type explosion of the occupant and sphere anyway, as all that matter will be slamming into each other at *serious* speeds. There will be chain reactions. Oh yes. It will be glorious.

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Another thought? Perhaps this toying with nature, and subsequent space-time-continuum-inertial violent stoppage of said 30 foot vessel with occupant is just *that weird* it causes a multiverse-scale black hole, sucking everything within our current universe into this Hole, and the subsequent shockwave bouncing off at higher-than-relativistic speeds causes the reboot of the universe... aka, another Big Bang.

I actually like this one. Which was expounded upon by the movie Supernova. Bad plot. Fun robot. And... well...*waggles eyebrows*. You know.

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Then again, there is this 'vacuum' from the trailing edge warp expansion, so the bubble may just violently stop moving at 10c (because, you know, nothing can move past 1c in normal space-time) and move at something like .999999c and coast. There'd be enough energy in the action. Not terribly sure the occupant won't bug-splat... if not punch a hole right through the shell, causing a thermonuclear explosion of win... or a black hole... or just slow down violently, but with relativity to the bubble, therefore experiencing only disappointment the trip is now going to be 3.5 years to get there.

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But then again, the expansion of the leading edge and the contraction of the trailing edge would... well, be semi-disappointing because there would not be a Big Kaboom or Thinning of Amazingness or Deadly High Velocity Black Hole of Doom or such... the sphere would just... stop. Right there... or maybe a few feet from 'there'. Because the two forces, expansion/contraction, of the field would just mean... you stop moving.

Boy... that would suck a LOT for Jodie-in-the-bubble...

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Yep. I'm excited about this whole thing. Lots of fun potentials I can see. Can't Wait!



Mike

...yet.

And who says Star Trek stuff isn't real? We have personal computers, flip phones, flash drives, tablet computers, transparent aluminum, bluetooth headsets, GPS, wall-mounted big-screen flat-panel displays, voice-controlled computers, biometrics, language translators (currently limited to text translations, AFAIK), 3D printers akin to (crude) replicators, etc.

Of course, this is ignoring stuff that's currently being researched/developed like portable scanning equipment (tricorder-like), anti-grav tech (like Star Trek's cargo movers), teleportation, and the aforementioned warp travel.

I mean, clearly this stuff isn't exactly like Star Trek, but it translates very well. Personally, I'd be pursuing transporter and replicator technology. Unlocking the necessary ability to convert matter into energy (and vice-versa) would also provide a huge source of usable energy. Shoot, transporters could power themselves by stealing an atom or two from the matter being transported.

As I understood the plot and setup, it appeared that the device in Contact created something akin to a wormhole. It was much more like an artifically-generated wormhole than a controllably-propelled craft, at least.

From my reading of the articles, I was under the impression that the thing being "moved" wouldn't technically be moving. Since it is essentially shrinking space "in front" of the thing and expanding it "behind" the thing, space is the thing that is moving. It's just that from an outside perspective it would have traveled enough distance in such time as to be "clocked" at ~10c. There shouldn't be any kinetic repercussions on the thing being moved from such a method of transportation.

I think it's technically, "nothing can accelerate past 1c in normal space-time."

I'm thinking this is the likely outcome. Fire up the space-warping engine. Maybe experience some vibrations (in all likelihood, not), power down the engine and *pop* you're where you want to be. Or close to it.


My main concern would be how much of a spatial shock wave would be generated by all this compression. What effect would spatial compression have on interstellar matter? On planets? On stars? What would the range of the effect be? Could a vessel "warp" into a solar system without causing damage? Could a vessel "warp" to/from within a close orbit or would the spatial shock waves devastate the planet?

In short, would we arrive at Mars/Alpha Centauri/Wherever only to find it obliterated by our engine's wake?

Accelerate to 99.999999c, then just skip over 1c to 1.0000001c and continue accelerating.


Also, I call dibs on any asari that are found...giggity...

How exactly does a gravitational wave "collapse?"

The problem with this form of propulsion is not that it requires energy to keep moving: my understanding is you only need enough energy to set the wave in motion. The problem is I don't know if anyone has determined a method for exiting the bubble once it starts moving from the inside.

Relativity forbids objects with mass moving at the speed of light in a vacuum (the laws of physics also forbit all massless objects from moving at anything other than the speed of light in a vacuum).

The mass-energy equations of special relativity suggest that any attempt to try to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light would require unbounded (infinite) energy.

The equations of physics generate ill-defined results for mass objects moving at *higher* than the speed of light which is often a sign that those equations are incomplete.

Well, the Star Trek answer is that you'd reverse the pola... uh, rotation of the ring.

That might also be the actual answer.

I've initiated a Kickstarter to collect exotic matter.

I imagine there'll be a nice archive on Mars just waiting to be found. Pluto is wobbly because it's finally interacting with the mass relay...

You mean accelerate to 0.99999999c, then just skip over 1c to 1.0000001c and continue accelerating.

You figured out the main reason for space exploration. To explore hot alien babes. Was going to go for the whole Star Trek quote, but that would probably be too crude for the forums.

Eh, I was going for %age and my fingers got away from me.

But yes, hot alien babeage would be a driving motivator for a good number of people. There's always the possibility that said alien babeage would consider pudgy nerds to be the epitome of smexy!

Technically, the ship's velocity would be zero, thus collisions of this nature would not be an issue.

What surprises me is that no one has mentioned this.

The proposal introduced here isn't exactly the same as the Alcubierre Warp Drive.

The proposal introduced here is the Alcubierre warp drive with a modification that means significantly less energy is required to achieve FTL travel.