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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.
But the ship itself is in a bubble of normal space-time that exists inside the distorted space-time. It's not the ship that's moving FTL. It's just along for the ride.
No.
This is too conventional and you need the mass fuel size of a Jupiter to send a FOOTBALL SIZED ship into FTL.... FOOTBALL SIZED SHIP. Well I guess that means we can send probes into deep space at reasonable rates - but where are we going to find a Jupiter sized mass of fuel? I don't know what Jupiter is composed of, but I do know it acts as a strategic shield for Earth by pulling in asteroids/meteors.
Also, it doesn't answer how can humans survive FTL. From what I read, gaining that much speed causes some sort of mass build up or an incredibly violent exit upon slowing down. To be honest, I'm a believer in Aliens and I think they've visited Earth. I don't think they use conventional fuel-force-propulsion, the evidence by the Belgium/Mexican/NASA footage screams something along the lines of some completely undiscovered method of movement.
You read the article wrong. VERY WRONG. Almost as if you just took a brief look at it, and then decided to post about it. It would require a Jupiter-mass of exotic matter if the FTL Ring was a flat disc. However, if the ring was a torus, like a doughnut, the mass of the exotic matter would only need to be that of a small space probe. And it was a Football-SHAPED, not SIZED, SHAPED starship. Not to mention that the ship itself doesn't actually move. Space-time itself is doing all the propelling. The ship stands still in a bubble of normal space-time that's carried along by the distorted space-time, just along for the ride.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hellgrinder
I didn't even read it hahaha man I got it so wrong ;) . I just listened to the youtube briefly.
But that is amazing...but I don't think that's the way to do it to be honest. Getting the fuel seems to be still a problem.
You mean the ring of dark matter? Yeah, definitely problematic.Quote:
Originally Posted by hyde
The information about jupiter in that video report is very vague. At best, it sounds like yet another pseudo science publicity scam. There's no way to construct a ring or platform or whatever they wanted to do without first testing it in the right conditions (jupiter's mass). In other words, not in our lifetime. :/
That's all in the article?Quote:
You read the article wrong. VERY WRONG. Almost as if you just took a brief look at it, and then decided to post about it. It would require a Jupiter-mass of exotic matter if the FTL Ring was a flat disc. However, if the ring was a torus, like a doughnut, the mass of the exotic matter would only need to be that of a small space probe. And it was a Football-SHAPED, not SIZED, SHAPED starship. Not to mention that the ship itself doesn't actually move. Space-time itself is doing all the propelling. The ship stands still in a bubble of normal space-time that's carried along by the distorted space-time, just along for the ride.
Just an update:
NASA has begun development on creating a FTL drive using the principles in this thread:
http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will...rst-warp-drive
Acording to this drive; it would take about 2 weeks now :)Quote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid