Is Warp Speed Possible?

[Player 2]

One of the more interesting theories I heard was the idea that if you can't go faster than the speed of light, you just change the speed of light in the space around yourself. How the hell they planned to do that escapes me at the moment, but it was an interesting article.

The "speed of light" is more accurately called "the speed of light in a vacuum". The speed of light changes according to the medium it's in; if we could create a meta-material with properties that allow light to travel faster than in a vacuum.... or something like that. Supervacuum?

I still fine that concept mad - how can they make light move faster?! Is madness I say, MADNESS!

No. THIS. IS. SPACE SPARTA!

 

[Irridium]

Sounds like they are trying to make the planet express ship...

Thats what I was thinking
Futurama FTW!!

 

[massau]

Don't forget that when mass becomes infinite it will produce a huge gravity field which in turn becomes a black hole.

If this is for space travel, the speed of light is still a incredibly slow speed, since the nearest star to us is 4.5 light years away. And the planets there are useless, mostly gas giants from what I heard. The best possible solution for space travel is the wormhole(folding space), which is only a theory. I'm not going to think about cause it will probably be hundreds of years before the technology is available.

Also, call me a capitalist pig, but there is no economic reasoning to going into space, yet.

its 4.5 light years away k but if you go at a high speed the time in the rocket will go slower so you will be on the planet if you are 2 years older

That is true, but two years is still a long time to wait for nothing. It also depends how fast exactly you are going as well it could actually be shorter than two years.

If you're travelling extremely close to c then you may only need to bring a packed lunch.

only one problem you cant go really fast if the ship is to large and our body cant stand the high force of that speed. maybe we need to find a way to get high gravety that we can survive and high speed so the time go even slower.



one question if i would manipulate space so it go like 80% of the speed of light and than i travel with mine ship at 80% of the speed of light in the opposite way what will happen than. will we go faster than light would be collide with a light barrier of a time barrier

like this -» «-

So if the earth was moving 80% c and you drove at 80% c on the earth so your total speed would be 160% c? Is that what you mean? Because we know the answer to that. If you travel at 99% c (c is shorthand for the speed of light in a vacum BTW) and shine a flashlight infront of you how fast will the light seem to go to you? will it move really slowly? No it will move at it's normal speed as Relitivity shows that time will move differently for you. It is complicated, but it means that you cannot reach light peed because if you do time will stop.

k but i mean move space so we had really many energy to push space it self at 80%c and than mine ship go at 80%. but i know one thing we cant time travel because there to many paradoxes like you can make more energy and kill your own mother so you will never know what happens than. but i really like reading about E=mc² but only one problem is most books have too much history

 

[Gigawolf1]

Sounds like they are trying to make the planet express ship...

Real life imitates Matt Groening

 

[Altorin]

Sounds like they are trying to make the planet express ship...

I was thinking the exact same thing.

 

[Zer_]

I honestly think Fusion power will be the big breakthrough that greatly reduces if not eradicate the energy crisis altogether. Some scientists have estimated that we could have commercially viable fusion energy by 2050. With every generation of fusion plant, the efficiency gets better and better.

The following is a response to some of the fear mongers that doubt the safety of fusion power.

"Proponents believe that much of the ITER criticism is misleading and inaccurate, in particular the allegations of the experiment's "inherent danger." The stated goals for a commercial fusion power station design are that the amount of radioactive waste produced be hundreds of times less than that of a fission reactor, that it produce no long-lived radioactive waste, and that it is impossible for any fusion reactor to undergo a large-scale runaway chain reaction. This is because direct contact with the walls of the reactor would contaminate the plasma, cooling it down immediately and stopping the fusion process. Besides which, the amount of fuel planned to be contained in a fusion reactor chamber (one half gram of deuterium/tritium fuel[26]) is only enough to sustain the reaction for an hour at maximum,[27] whereas a fission reactor usually contains several years' worth of fuel.[28] In case of accident (or intentional act of terrorism) a fusion reactor releases far less radioactive pollution than an ordinary fission nuclear plant. Besides, tritium, being lighter than air, would rise up into the stratosphere and dilute to concentrations whereby the radiation released would be far below the natural background radioactivity of air. Proponents note that large-scale fusion power ? if it works ? will be able to produce reliable electricity on demand and with virtually zero pollution (no gaseous CO2 / SO2 / NOx by-products are produced)."

Some skeptics have noted that the radioactive waste produced by fusion is more radioactive. While this is initially true, there is much less of it, and the waste is only radioactive for 50-100 years.

"The half-life of the radioisotopes produced by fusion tend to be less than those from fission, so that the inventory decreases more rapidly. Unlike fission reactors, whose waste remains radioactive for thousands of years, most of the radioactive material in a fusion reactor would be the reactor core itself, which would be dangerous for about 50 years, and low-level waste another 100. Although this waste will be considerably more radioactive during those 50 years than fission waste, the very short half-life makes the process very attractive, as the waste management is fairly straightforward. By 300 years the material would have the same radioactivity as coal ash."

Once we reach the point of commercially viable fusion power, it'll only be a matter of time before we downsize these reactors so they may fit in spacecraft.

 

[The_Healer]

Warp Speed? Depends what you define that as...

Anyway you don't really need to go faster than the speed of light.

As you approach the speed of light, sure mass gets bigger... but length contracts in the axis in which you are traveling. Hence the distance between you and where you want to go gets smaller. If you reach say... 99.999999999% of the speed of light, the distance you have to travel will only be a tiny fraction of what it originally was. Sure accelerating to that speed would either kill us or take longer than its worth and you'd run into something along the way. But it's theoretically possible.

 

[Triforceformer]

Warping space isn't such an unrealistic idea. The primary roadblocks are energy and containment. Space is warped all the time. By hydrogen atoms swooping around at near c velocities and by planetary masses like Jupiter. Stars, neutron stars, black holes - all of these things warp space to some extent.

The idea of us compressing space ahead of a ship and expanding space behind it to induce propulsion isn't such a crazy idea either. The same basic principle is what allows planes to fly. Air below a wing is denser than that above (by the shape of the wing pushing through it), and it provides lift. The energy to manipulate that situation comes from the plane's engine.

The problem, of course, is technological. How do we manipulate space around a ship, and how do we do it without harming the ship. Probably via the use of very strong, artificially produced magnetic fields. Of course, we don't know how to produce energy on that scale - especially within something as small as a space ship. That would involve cracking matter/antimatter interactions, or drawing zero point energy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy] in large quantities. Which itself involves a greater understanding of quantum science.

And a greater understanding of quantum mechanics could lead to other theoretical methods of transportation which could bypass normal space altogether.

Should we research these technologies and head out to other stars? Absolutely. The technological breakthroughs that would happen in the process of figuring out FTL technology would have dramatic impacts on life on Earth. Tapping into Zero Point energy could mean free, clean energy for the whole world. Matter/Antimatter would be good too, but a bit too similar in danger-factor to nuclear energy - only with a much bigger boom.

Long term trips would require advances in waste disposal/recycling technologies, probably new types of engineered food - made to grow fast in poor conditions, and be highly nutritious. Landing (and staying) on a surface would require new materials, light, strong - probably advances in bucky tube [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucky_tube] technology. All of which would have real benefits on the home front.

Even long-term research into terraforming other planets (Mars?), would probably give us insights into how atmospheres are structured, allowing us a better opportunity to reverse the damage we've done to ours.

As for running into aliens. Well, I'm on the fence about that one. Statistically, there have to be other sentient aliens out there. And mathematically, we should have been aware of them by now, at some point in our history. In fact, it's strange that we haven't if you consider the Fermi Paradox [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_Paradox] legitimate. It's possible that at this point in the timeline of the Universe, we're the only technologically capable civilization in this galactic arm, or galaxy as a whole. But certainly there have been some before us, and will be after us.

But we should definitely get out there and looking around ASAP. Earth is delicate, and not just the ecosystem. It's a small planet in a big Universe, and we should clear the fog around us as much as possible. Heck, 100 years ago, maybe a star went nova in a nearby star system. Maybe that caused the orbits of that stars planets to go all whacky, and some of them lost their moons. Perhaps, one of those moons swung into to the newly collapsed neutron star, and narrowly missed it - accelerating the rogue moon to a near-c velocity, that just happens to collide with our Earth orbit in the next 10 years or so. By staying on Earth, we'd never see it coming. At that speed, and inbound trajectory, there would be little to no warning, and no opportunity to prepare. It would crack our planet in two in the blink of an eye.

We should definitely push forward and outward. The dinosaur extinction was not a one-time event.

Ow, my brain.

 

[Silva]

Combine this news with the news that we're getting very close to knowing how to stop humans from aging*, and you know what you get?

Proof that humans are actually going to become the Time Lords of Doctor Who**. Well, minus regeneration abilities, but genetically created labratory produced limbs are a future possibility. Who knows how far it'll go?

* See here for the aging gene thing:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327154.700-teen-baby-narrows-search-for-master-ageing-gene.html

** Tongue in cheek, but it's kind of funny how close the future seems to that.

 

[Cuniculus]

Marc Millis? Psh. The first person I heard talking about moving space around the ship was Hubert Farnsworth.

 

[deleted_by_strongbad]

Hey where on google sky can I find Arrakis?

An article on the theory of bending space instead of moving the ship, 3 pages of comments on a website dedicated to geek escapism, and not a one Dune reference? For Shame, for shaaaaame!

I don't think these theories are too far fetched, and investigating them could provide a tremendous wealth of knowledge. We've had our most significant advances in the face of other issues that "should" have been fixed, but instead we used Science! Eventually those problems began to fold under our new found tricks and techs.