Topic: Is Warp Drive Possible Yes or No

[Age]

 

Is Warp Drive Possible Yes or No?




 

 Yes


 No

    See Results
           

[E_Look]

Age,  how can you ask??

Albert already told us!

[jimmi7769]

Quote:
Age,  how can you ask??

Albert already told us!  

Yes but how many other set in stone facts have changed over the years.

[Age]

   I was not aware of that.Where is it was before I registered I won't mind reading it.

 Sig is by Pestalence  

[Johanobesus]

I think he means Albert Einstein.  What he is getting at is that, under our current understanding of physics, the answer is no.  It just might be possible to warp or bend or tunnel through space in such a way as to allow one to sort of skip over some of the space between two points, so that you could go from A to Z without passing through all the points in between, but there is no such thing as subspace, and it doesn't seem that it is possible to create some sort of bubble that would allow matter to travel through space faster than light, and so if FTL ever does exist, it won't likely resemble Star Trek much at all.  

And your poll seems to be messed up.  
 

[manitoba]

i beg to differ i do believe that it would be possible, but just not like trek agreed.  just chk out the ion drives now.  theretically.

[Stormbringer]

Hey, the poll does not work. I voted yes. 0 and 0 results.

[Windfox]

Hmm.. FTL loopholes...


Well, there is one possible way to go FTL that fits perfectly with modern physics from what I've read, if we knew how to do it.

When a photon of light travels, it virtually splits into a electron and positiron, or some other simaler particle pair, which then annihlate each other reforming the original photon.This is the reason light travels at the speed it does, because of the virtual particles slowign it down.  Now one effect that has been observed(it was covered in an Alternate View by Dr John G Cramer in Analog.. don't remember the issue offhand but it was late 80s or early 90s I belive) is termed teh casmir effect. The idea is to put two plates close enough together, it impedes the formation of the virtual particles, as their path would cause them to hit the plates.  Since the photon spends less time as virtual particles, any light travelling through there actually speeds up a minute amount!  Thus in this small area, the speed of light is raised by a minute amount.  If the plates were uniformally smooth(as in perhaps cosmic string or cosmic walls) and placed close enough together, you might could get significant increases in speed.  Now comes the sci-fi  part: create a field that surpresses virtual particle formation in the same manner.  Now place a ship within it, and set the field to move wiht the ship.  Voila!  FTL drive!  The ship can accellerate to large velocities within the bubble, and while to the universe outside the bubble it'd be FTL, the ship technically never breaks the lightspeed barrier!

Then of course, there's also the idea that a loop around a cosmic string totals less than 360 degrees... I'm sure there's somethign someone can do with that. (And didn't Vonda McIntyre write a series of books about that idea actually? o.O)  

[Age]

   I will have to get a Moderator to look into this.This my first time setting up a pole I am not a 100% sure of how to do it.Thanks Stormbringer.

 I saw this in Dom Wars and  Near Distant Future Forum .StarFleet Gaming Directory.I decided to do the same here and you should see what they are saying.

 Sig is by Pestalence  

[E_Look]

Manitoba, the ion engine could at best only be a type of "impulse engine" for moving at (way, way, below) sublight speeds.  It works on good old fashioned Newtownian action/reaction, basically; the only thing exotic is that it takes electric fields to impel big ions out its exhaust port, and the reaction of the engine whatever it's attached to is in the opposite direction.

By the way, ions are kind of small and unless you blow out a humongous amount all at once (e.g., a bomb) you don't get much force.  It works only in space, as it's virtually a vacuum and there isn't much around the system to absorb (drag) the reaction force to the tiny li'l ion expelled out.  Over time, say months, the system will accelerate to much larger speeds, but initially, boy, will it be slow!

Double by the way: nice to see your work in these forums!

[IKV Nemesis D7L]

Is Warp Drive Possible Yes or No?
Yes
No
Maybe
I don't know
Warp no FTL yes
What?

 

[Age]

   Thanks IKV K-D7L Nemesis for fixing up this poll for me.I am going to have to practice doing these.Thanks agian.  

  Sig is by Pestalence

[Strat]

Scientific research has found that FTL travel already exisits in some aspects of physics.  I don't remember the details, but it has to do with Quatum Phyiscs and a conmnection between particles of matter that cuase these particles to become sycronised with eachother, mimicing each other every move and physical property.

Now, (I'm not sure), but I think they found that this connection is almost instantanious over light years of distance, and that means the the force binding them is traveling faster then light.

It is this property that is also the fundamentals of Quantum Teleportation, which is making progress technilogically, but for the application of FTL travel, it's this connection bettwen particles that exists over such a distance, and allows them to copy one another with such speed; the force having the information of one must travel FTL to the other particle for it to copy the origional if they are light years apart.  

[E_Look]

Strat, you are speaking of the spin flip experiment; the  properties  change instantly, but FTL  travel    is not possible because we would always be interested in transporting things with  mass .  The problem is that mass increases as its speed nears c, the speed of light.  As it gets closer and closer, its mass gets incredibly large and quickly and increasingly so (on both counts).

Ah, but some of you guys are talking about bending or folding space to connect two spatial points.  We don't even know what "space" is in its ultimate or basic nature, or if it even has any "handles" we can grab do such things.  When some physicists say that highly massive objects can "warp" or "curve" space, it's another way of expressing that such objects have also a correspondingly humongous gravity, pulling things towards it along paths describable by known mathematical equations.  Whether space surrounding the large object is "warped" or the smaller object is attracted to it according to Newtonian (or other models) descriptions of gravity, the observed effects are the same- six of one, half dozen of the other; they are different ways of saying the same exact thing.

Consider this effect: two giant scissor blades are closing toward each other at the speed of light.  But for such motions, the rate at which the gap closes is always faster than that of each of the blades.  So then, the gap closes at a rate  faster   than the speed of light!   BUT: 1) this is merely an illusion and 2) even if it weren't it's an observation; i.e.,  information, or data!     There is no known way in science and technology we can even dream of making (large) material move even close to the speed of light.

(But this does not mean we can't enjoy Star Trek, Star Wars, the SFC series, etc.)  

[Stormbringer]

There is also quantum tunneling which allow photons to travel at FTL rates through a opaque barrier. light tarveled through a barrier space at 1.6 light speed. This principle is used in electronics. so it exists as far more than a theoretical construct. Also wormholes provides a means of FTL travel but is mostly theoretical at this point.
there are means to harness the ambient virtual flux to create macroscopic worm holes. The French particle accelerator is powerful enough to reach the lower theoretical power limit to produce synthetic black holes. The Cassimir effectcan then be used to enlarge one end. directing the other end to someplace useful is the biggest challenge to this method. Energy can be euivelant and mass can warp or compress space. Theoretically then warp could be achieved by several different approaches; higggs bosons, gravitons, weak nuclear forces in superheavy synthetic nuclei, etc.  

[Stormbringer]

yes we do. even if were not sure of it's ultimate nature. We do know how to put handles onspace  in a theoretical sense. The least prohibitve energy wise is using the casimir effect to grab worm holes and pull them apart.

[Stormbringer]

Also another method of grabing ahold of space has been demonstrated using a laser cage. It's called frame draging and is normally observed around massive stars and black holes. But with the laser technique frame dragging is measurable with far less power levels and mass present. So yes we can grab ahold of space.

[E_Look]

Storm, in any tunneling, it is through an  energy   barrier, not a physical wall or bunch of atoms or such.  Again, Einstein's formulations prohibit masses from moving from  spatial   locations near the speed of light; it did not at all deal with quantum effects as tunneling which does not really have to do with particle motion so much as surmounting energies.

When you start talking of frame dragging and the Cassimir effect, well, they sound more like brainstorming terms than documented and repeatable phenomena.  Bear in mind that much of what is said about cosmology/astrophysics often is just interpretation of one camp or the other's over data gleaned from telescopes, detectors, and the like- impressions of things incredibly far away filtered through the space between it and that between our ears, not forgetting that before that, it had to fight through our atmosphere, too.

Please don't think I'm trying to quash dreams!  I'd love to see FTL travel myself!  It's just that mainstream science so far has no provision for much of this!  

[Stormbringer]

Well actually energy plays into it. You see photons need a certain energy to get though a mirrored surface. The set it up so that the photons cannot get through the barrier but are close to it. Because of the uncertainty of thier positions and or energy level, and this applies to electrons as well, they can sometimes tunnel through the barrier and escape the confinement chamber. This tunneling is instant. so a physical barrier can act as an equivelant energy barrier. so neener neener.  

[Stormbringer]

Frame dragging has been observed in experimentsand around stars and was predicted by Uncle albert.