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So apparently it may be possible to go FTL after all?
Anyone care to translate this into something more understandable?
http://news.discovery.com/space/warp...ss-120917.html
And here's the video I found it on:
Warp 5. Engage!
http://ssglim.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/picard.gif
UPDATE:
NASA has begun development:
http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will...rst-warp-drive
Transporting humans in starships isn't practical without reliable cryostasis technology. Even traveling at 10 times the speed of light it would still take 4 years to reach the nearest star.
Ok. What about 100 times the speed of light? Or 1000?
Practical yet?
Even at 10 times the speed of light; a 4 year vacation on a space cruise would be quite enjoyable. I for one would love a 4 year vacation :D
Assuming constant acceleration so that you hit 10 times the speed of light at the midway point of the journey, and that you would immediately begin decelerating, that's an average speed of five light years per year.Quote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid
The nearest star is Alpha Centauri C, 4.24 lightyearss away. You could make the journey in ten months.
Looks like an FTL engine would have semi-reasonable power requirements and wouldn't take the mass of all of Jupiter converted into pure energy to drive it. Which is good. But they're still far off from making an FTL drive. They also ran an experiment which perturbed space-time by one part in 10 million.Quote:
Originally Posted by Carsickness
Sending probes to other star systems first is more important than sending humans.Quote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid
That's part of what I'm saying. From what I read, most people assume that the inner football ship would be carrying living people. It would not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gradius
One of the saddest realizations I ever had was knowing that humanity would never grasp the stars in my lifetime. I was extremely happy when I read the above articles to find that we're at least making steps in that direction. :)
Um, no. Alpha Centauri is 4 light-years away, not 40. It would take about 5 months to reach it at 10c.Quote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid
Sorry, I'm used to thinking in terms of 1c. Damn math.
The simple idea behind this is that you can bend space around the ship. This bend will create a movement in dimension 4 and will manifest as a jump in the third dimension [acceleration in time and jump in space]. This creates a relative speed that seems faster than light, but the object traveled at the speed of light with an acceleration in time.
We also have to remember that at C, distance is equal to 0. So the ship only needs to generate a distortion that will give it enough speed for the trip.
With Warp drive you actually get some strange time travel hypothesis. The basic idea is:
under -lim-->1c you would experience an Earth reference distance of 10 light years and an earth reference time of +lim-->10 years.
therefore, under relative +lim-->1c you would experience an Earth reference distance of 10 light years and an earth reference time of -lim-->10 years
This means that at relative 2c you would experience an earth reference distance of 10 light years and an earth reference time of 5 years.
In some odd way you traveled back 5 years into the 10 year future.
but, under relative -lim-->infinity*c you would experience an Earth reference distance of 10 light years in an earth reference time of +lim-->0 [singularity wormhole]
In any case the crew would feel 0 s of time travel.