Author Topic: New hope for Warp Drive concept?  (Read 98963 times)

Offline TrueBlueWitt

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New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« on: 09/18/2012 12:49 am »
http://news.yahoo.com/warp-drive-may-more-feasible-thought-scientists-161301109.html

Looks like there might be some reputable scientists behind this.

Thoughts?  Someone eager to shoot this full of holes?

Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #1 on: 09/18/2012 01:01 am »
I've read about this before. Started as a curious mathematical/physics study but this new development is extremely interesting because they believe they can test part of the concept on a lab.

Even if it does not produce an engine, it will certainly push science and technology forward (if they can show something on a bench).

Strange how awkward sci-fi concepts have been seriously investigated lately.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #2 on: 09/18/2012 01:13 am »
Someone eager to shoot this full of holes?

Thought May Be More Feasible Than Warp Drive, I Say.

Grammatically speaking and all...
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Chandonn

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #3 on: 09/18/2012 02:10 am »
If the space-time distortion works, we may be able to see artificial gravity and antigravity as spin-offs -- that is: according to Gravitational Well Theory.  Even if we don't get a workign Warp Drive, the spin off technologies shoule be "fascinating"...

Offline scienceguy

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #4 on: 09/18/2012 02:34 am »
What they need to do is find a way to make exotic matter.
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #5 on: 09/18/2012 04:34 am »
Make it so!

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #6 on: 09/18/2012 08:06 am »
But actually, if recalculating with a rounded donut ring gives superior results over a flat ring, when what about if you recalculate with a spheromak type of shape?

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #7 on: 09/18/2012 11:41 am »
Well there are all those niggly causality paradoxes.. but if they have a desktop experiment, go for it :)

Dont get depressed when this doesn't pan out though. Look at all these worlds that we can reach without any magical propulsion.
The real trick is taking ice, hydrocarbons and ore and growing potatoes. Do that sustainably and we can become a species of a hundred worlds before leaving the solar system.
« Last Edit: 09/18/2012 12:05 pm by KelvinZero »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #8 on: 09/18/2012 01:29 pm »
The real trick is taking ice, hydrocarbons and ore and growing potatoes quorn.

Fixed that for ya.  Whoops, gotta go...
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Offline Atlan

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #9 on: 09/18/2012 02:14 pm »
Are there any publications or at least more scientific press releases then yahoo to this topic? would be interesting to see what they are doing in the lab. if they hope to achieve the warping, then the exotic matter was found i assume?
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Offline simonbp

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #10 on: 09/18/2012 02:35 pm »
This would appear to be the most recent: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20110015936

Also, a description of the interferometer here: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20110023492

Both on NTRS, neither peer-reviewed, so YMMV.

Offline Retired Downrange

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #11 on: 09/18/2012 02:38 pm »
See page 8 of this .PDF from Roundup

 
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/roundup/online/2012/0712.pdf

Offline scienceguy

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #12 on: 09/18/2012 08:58 pm »
See page 8 of this .PDF from Roundup

 
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/roundup/online/2012/0712.pdf


Page 8 on that PDF is interesting. The way I understand it is, particularly for Alcubierre's drive, the reason you need a Jupiter-sized mass of exotic matter is that the exotic matter would have negative mass. According to F = Gm1m2/r^2, if one of the m's is negative, the force will be repulsive. Thus, if you have a Jupiter mass of negative mass behind the ship (not too far away, remember r) then it's actually the gravitational force that is pushing the ship. A Jupiter mass is needed because the gravitational constant is so small (6.67 x 10^-11).
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline aceshigh

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #13 on: 09/18/2012 10:59 pm »
Looks like there might be some reputable scientists behind this.


yes, one of them even posts here at NSF Advanced Concepts Forum... at the Propellantless Field Propulsion and Application thread (which has basically (and luckily) become a Mach Effect thread after the first 20 pages)

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #14 on: 09/19/2012 12:49 am »
Bah, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, not name-dropping.

I want to understand how this group of experimentalists intend to create the effect. If exotic matter is required for it (eg. dark matter), then how do they plan to get some, in order to achieve the effect?

Is this effect comparable to "gravity waves"? In which case, there are already large detectors which have been built for this (eg. LIGO). How would these warp researchers and their laser interferometer be capable of detecting things any more precisely?

Offline Go4TLI

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #15 on: 09/19/2012 01:04 am »
You know, Sonny White is about one of the smartest people I know.  We sat down about a year ago and he took me through some of the concepts and what they mean and how they would work. 

Clearly there was some work to do and a lot of ground to still cover in understanding the physics behind it, etc not to mention the engineering and technology to make those physics possible. 

But, all that said, I'm a believer.  I'm no dummy and he ran circles around me with the explanations.  I am more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and am very glad work like this is happening. 

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #16 on: 09/19/2012 02:12 am »
Yeah, but dude, the problem is when the effect isn't reproducible and doesn't get observed universally, and can only be seen on the experimental apparatus of the originator/proponent. Nobody seems to be explaining how these people will observe the tiny perturbations in spacetime, and how they will be created without the exotic matter.

Maybe they'll first have to sign a contract with LHC to first produce a few milligrams of the stuff. Otherwise, how can they measure what they can't create?

Offline QuantumG

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #17 on: 09/19/2012 03:32 am »
Laser interferometers are not so sensitive that they can measure the deflection due to gravity of ordinary matter, why would they be for exotic matter?

I hear these "new" techniques are about some theory of space-time warping that doesn't involve exotic matter at all, nor the enormous amounts of energy that E=mc2 would suggest. Not that I understand them at all.
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Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #18 on: 09/19/2012 07:29 am »
Well, I wanted to post a separate thread on the latest "attosecond-pulse lasers" which push the bounds of brevity so far that they are now being used to study quantum phenomena in much greater detail than before. So I was thinking maybe that as this kind of stuff approaches the Planck length, it will somehow enable us to manipulate spacetime (or rather the virtual particle sea underlying it)

That guy White did mention the idea of oscillating/modulating the warp effect to get more for less.

But further surfing around the net shows White saying that they plan to create some tiny version of the effect in the lab, so I really, really want to know how they intend to achieve it. I take it this isn't the same as the "mini black holes" promised by particle collider experiments?

Offline Lampyridae

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #19 on: 09/19/2012 08:25 am »
Laser interferometers are not so sensitive that they can measure the deflection due to gravity of ordinary matter, why would they be for exotic matter?

I hear these "new" techniques are about some theory of space-time warping that doesn't involve exotic matter at all, nor the enormous amounts of energy that E=mc2 would suggest. Not that I understand them at all.


As I understand it, they're not looking for gravity waves. They're looking for plain space/time distortion. If a cockroach scuttled near one of these things, it would pick it up its gravity well.

I've seen papers on positive mass warp drives, but they require conformal gravity to be a true extension of general relativity.

ISTR Sonny White's approach uses some application of the Casimir effect, a quantum mechanical version of Woodward's Mach Effect. So it's quite wobbly. If that doesn't work, then you might have to "find" some exotic matter to stick in the ring. But 500"kg" is not the Kardashev Type II requirement of a Jupiter mass of exotic matter. Here he is holding one of the gizmos.



Mmmm, donuts. Wonder if he's thought of using two warp nacelles? (Ducks and runs)
« Last Edit: 09/19/2012 08:53 am by Lampyridae »

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #20 on: 09/19/2012 11:16 am »
How is the Casimir effect relevant or applicable here? You mean just for experimental measurement purposes?

Since Casimir geometries are associated with regions of elevated or reduced quantum vacuum "pressure", then would such an altered region of space tend to bring out these warp effects more, thus making them more observable/detectable?

Offline QuantumG

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #21 on: 09/19/2012 11:37 am »
They're looking for plain space/time distortion. If a cockroach scuttled near one of these things, it would pick it up its gravity well.

Yes, but no laser interferometer is that sensitive.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline Celebrimbor

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #22 on: 09/19/2012 12:02 pm »
But actually, if recalculating with a rounded donut ring gives superior results over a flat ring, when what about if you recalculate with a spheromak type of shape?

Or get a really big computer to genetically evolve to an ideal shape...

Offline Celebrimbor

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #23 on: 09/19/2012 12:36 pm »
Just skimmed through this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Seems that creating the bubble is one thing - requiring only matter with negative mass, expertly crafted by Sonny White and co.

But then, while this is 'allowed' to travel superluminally, it won't unless you can find and use superluminal tachyons.  Or alternatively explain away a naked singularity in front of the ship.

Some others have suggested that a bubble could not be piloted from the inside - so is more feasible as a railroad type infrastructure.  So not quite "Where no man has gone before"

Offline billh

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #24 on: 09/19/2012 12:57 pm »
Of course, if this doesn't work out there's always the infinite improbability drive. ;)

Offline scienceguy

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #25 on: 09/19/2012 06:45 pm »
How is the Casimir effect relevant or applicable here? You mean just for experimental measurement purposes?

Since Casimir geometries are associated with regions of elevated or reduced quantum vacuum "pressure", then would such an altered region of space tend to bring out these warp effects more, thus making them more observable/detectable?

The Casimir effect is very applicable here. According to quantum mechanics, wavelets of light are constantly appearing and disappearing everywhere, even in a vacuum. If you have 2 flat metal plates close together in a vacuum, then some of those wavelets can't appear between them because the distance between the plates is smaller than than the wavelet's wavelength. Hence there is less energy than the vacuum between the plates. Hence there is a region of negative energy (also negative mass, because mass is energy) between the plates.
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline LegendCJS

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #26 on: 09/19/2012 08:01 pm »
How is the Casimir effect relevant or applicable here? You mean just for experimental measurement purposes?

Since Casimir geometries are associated with regions of elevated or reduced quantum vacuum "pressure", then would such an altered region of space tend to bring out these warp effects more, thus making them more observable/detectable?

The Casimir effect is very applicable here. According to quantum mechanics, wavelets of light are constantly appearing and disappearing everywhere, even in a vacuum. If you have 2 flat metal plates close together in a vacuum, then some of those wavelets can't appear between them because the distance between the plates is smaller than than the wavelet's wavelength. Hence there is less energy than the vacuum between the plates. Hence there is a region of negative energy (also negative mass, because mass is energy) between the plates.

The slides included in the Warp Field Mechanics 101 pdf (google it) clearly say that the laser interferometer tests will be using a region of positive energy density for the experiments.  A ring of high frequency/ high voltage driven capacitors was mentioned.  No Casimir weirdness.

Remember: if we want this whole space thing to work out we have to optimize for cost!

Offline aquanaut99

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #27 on: 09/19/2012 08:35 pm »
The problem I see with an Alcubierre-type warp drive (even assuming works without requiring the dissassembly and transformation into energy of the entire planet Jupiter and ignoring the whole negative energy, exotic matter and tachyon thing) is that the starship, once it has created its warp bubble, cannot control where it is going, since it cannot see nor interact in any way with normal space. The vessel is literally flying blind.

Also, speed is still somewhat limited. The article talks about 10c (which is Warp what, 2?). So it will still require years to journey even to the nearest star system, especially if the vessel has to drop out of warp every once in a while to get its bearings back...

Offline FinalFrontier

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #28 on: 09/19/2012 08:41 pm »
http://news.yahoo.com/warp-drive-may-more-feasible-thought-scientists-161301109.html

Looks like there might be some reputable scientists behind this.

Thoughts?  Someone eager to shoot this full of holes?


It's a long shot but there has always been a good case, from a theoretical standpoint for a "loophole drive". The thinking, at least by some, has been essentially "well if we can't go the speed of light, or it wouldn't matter if we could (as many star systems worth looking into are too far away to make a difference even IF we were at light-speed), why don't we go around the problem through dimensional space or by adjusting the space time continuum?" And its not a bad thought, you essential bring your target to you rather than bringing yourself to it. Another way to describe would be going through the map instead of straight over it.

The theory is good, and IMO at some point it will be apparent this is the only way to really get out there into the galaxy and deep space. The near solar system and even other systems very close by can be handled by either existing systems for the former and possibly a light speed or near light speed drive for the latter, but to really get out into the galaxy, or go to some of the systems Kepler has found to be so interesting, you need to move faster then light or simply change the plane on which your moving so that brute speed is irrelevant.


If they can eventually make this work it would be a huge advance in our civilization and, Imo, the key to getting off this rock.  But its going to be awhile before we see anything like a prototype, there are still many basic theoretical problems to be solved.

Also, it wouldn't hurt if we figured out positive output fusion reactors from one of the 11 or so concepts people are working on before trying to leave the solar system in a manned capacity. Were going to need an awful lot of energy and fusion is probably going to be your only reasonable source. And we seem to be alot further down the path to economical fusion then we are to warp drive  8)


Will be interesting to see what these guys come up with.



« Last Edit: 09/19/2012 08:42 pm by FinalFrontier »
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Offline Chandonn

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #29 on: 09/19/2012 10:21 pm »
Also, speed is still somewhat limited. The article talks about 10c (which is Warp what, 2?). So it will still require years to journey even to the nearest star system, especially if the vessel has to drop out of warp every once in a while to get its bearings back...

Uh?  The nearest star is 4.3 lightyears away.  So at 10x the speed of light, wouldn't you be able to travel 43 ligthyears in 1 year?  Therefore, wouldn't you be able to get to the Alpha Centauri system in less than a month and a half?

Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #30 on: 09/19/2012 11:08 pm »
Also, speed is still somewhat limited. The article talks about 10c (which is Warp what, 2?). So it will still require years to journey even to the nearest star system, especially if the vessel has to drop out of warp every once in a while to get its bearings back...

Uh?  The nearest star is 4.3 lightyears away.  So at 10x the speed of light, wouldn't you be able to travel 43 ligthyears in 1 year?  Therefore, wouldn't you be able to get to the Alpha Centauri system in less than a month and a half?
Check your math. At 10c it takes 4.3/10 = 0.43 years = 5 months and a week.

Offline FinalFrontier

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #31 on: 09/19/2012 11:42 pm »
Also, speed is still somewhat limited. The article talks about 10c (which is Warp what, 2?). So it will still require years to journey even to the nearest star system, especially if the vessel has to drop out of warp every once in a while to get its bearings back...

Uh?  The nearest star is 4.3 lightyears away.  So at 10x the speed of light, wouldn't you be able to travel 43 ligthyears in 1 year?  Therefore, wouldn't you be able to get to the Alpha Centauri system in less than a month and a half?
Check your math. At 10c it takes 4.3/10 = 0.43 years = 5 months and a week.


That would still be tremendous. And remember, this would be for the initial entry level device. There is little doubt that these things would be improved upon once they were better understood, after all we have jet airplanes now we started with propeller planes.
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Offline TrueBlueWitt

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #32 on: 09/19/2012 11:53 pm »
Would you need to be outside the atmosphere before engaging this, or could you start from earth?

What about on the other end? Would you still need a lander?

BTW I appreciate all the great responses to my initial post!
« Last Edit: 09/19/2012 11:54 pm by TrueBlueWitt »

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #33 on: 09/20/2012 12:34 am »
Okay, but I just want to be clear on what a "space warp" is, conceptually.

We can already visualize what a gravitational field/distortion is, with geodesics.

So what is a "warp"? A dip and peak, like an electron-hole pair? So the peak is behind you (expanding space) and the dip is in front of you (contracting space)? So it's like a "kink" in space?

With gravity, of course you don't have a dip-and-peak, like an electron-hole pair. Gravity is all dip (unless you're talking about the special exotic matter with "negative mass", which gives you all peak.)

And unlike the tiny fluctuations constantly occurring naturally in the dynamic quantum vacuum, it sounds like we are talking about a much larger macroscopic dip-and-peak, where your spaceship will somehow fit in between it. So how do you keep space "flat" in the middle, where your spaceship is?
« Last Edit: 09/20/2012 12:40 am by sanman »

Offline Star-Drive

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #34 on: 09/20/2012 04:37 am »
Okay, but I just want to be clear on what a "space warp" is, conceptually.

We can already visualize what a gravitational field/distortion is, with geodesics.

So what is a "warp"? A dip and peak, like an electron-hole pair? So the peak is behind you (expanding space) and the dip is in front of you (contracting space)? So it's like a "kink" in space?

With gravity, of course you don't have a dip-and-peak, like an electron-hole pair. Gravity is all dip (unless you're talking about the special exotic matter with "negative mass", which gives you all peak.)

And unlike the tiny fluctuations constantly occurring naturally in the dynamic quantum vacuum, it sounds like we are talking about a much larger macroscopic dip-and-peak, where your spaceship will somehow fit in between it. So how do you keep space "flat" in the middle, where your spaceship is?

By creating a toroidal potential energy gradient around your spacecraft.
Star-Drive

Offline aquanaut99

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #35 on: 09/20/2012 10:29 am »
Would you need to be outside the atmosphere before engaging this, or could you start from earth?

What about on the other end? Would you still need a lander?

BTW I appreciate all the great responses to my initial post!

I am pretty sure you would have to be far, far away from any massive body before engaging warp drive. I especially can't imagine doing so anywhere near Earth. The tremendous space-time-curvature (read: tidal forces) generated at the bubble interface would tear everything to shreds (actually, all the way down to nuclear particles, and maybe even quarks). No way is this going to be healthy to Earth and her inhabitants.

On that note: a vessel inside the bubble would have to stay well away from the edges or also risk being shredded by the tidal forces. To make matters worse, it appears that the Hawking radiation generated at the interface could heat up the inside of the bubble to several million K. Pretty unhealthy way to travel, IMO.
« Last Edit: 09/20/2012 10:33 am by aquanaut99 »

Offline Lampyridae

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #36 on: 09/20/2012 11:34 am »
They're looking for plain space/time distortion. If a cockroach scuttled near one of these things, it would pick it up its gravity well.

Yes, but no laser interferometer is that sensitive.


I'm surprised. The highest definition non-interferometric gravity sensors I know of work to within a hundredth of a nm/s^2 (which would probably pick up a rat in the same room).
« Last Edit: 09/20/2012 11:39 am by Lampyridae »

Offline Lampyridae

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #37 on: 09/20/2012 12:03 pm »
Would you need to be outside the atmosphere before engaging this, or could you start from earth?

What about on the other end? Would you still need a lander?

BTW I appreciate all the great responses to my initial post!

I am pretty sure you would have to be far, far away from any massive body before engaging warp drive. I especially can't imagine doing so anywhere near Earth. The tremendous space-time-curvature (read: tidal forces) generated at the bubble interface would tear everything to shreds (actually, all the way down to nuclear particles, and maybe even quarks). No way is this going to be healthy to Earth and her inhabitants.

On that note: a vessel inside the bubble would have to stay well away from the edges or also risk being shredded by the tidal forces. To make matters worse, it appears that the Hawking radiation generated at the interface could heat up the inside of the bubble to several million K. Pretty unhealthy way to travel, IMO.

The inside of the bubble would be fine until it decelerated to sublight. Then the radiation bath reaches the bubble interior. Also, it unleashes a hellish torrent *ahead* of the bubble. Flying an expendable drone ahead of the ship would soak up must of the oncoming radiation. The manned section would decelerate first, followed by the drone, which would take the energy with it in a sacrificial explosion.

This pretty much limits you to edge-of-solar-system arrival, but you could otherwise launch from within the system (rear radiation is not a problem because you outrun it)*.

*I lie, the warp bubble would scoop up light rays ahead of it. Edge of solar system exits too, only.
« Last Edit: 09/20/2012 12:07 pm by Lampyridae »

Offline aquanaut99

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #38 on: 09/20/2012 12:44 pm »

The inside of the bubble would be fine until it decelerated to sublight. Then the radiation bath reaches the bubble interior. Also, it unleashes a hellish torrent *ahead* of the bubble. Flying an expendable drone ahead of the ship would soak up must of the oncoming radiation. The manned section would decelerate first, followed by the drone, which would take the energy with it in a sacrificial explosion.

That's not what I heard. AIUI, the problem is not only the radiation torrent caused in real space by the passage of the warp bubble (which would then catch up with the vessel when it drops out of warp), but also the Hawking radiation generated at the edge of the bubble itself. A part of this radiation would be trapped inside the bubble. Once inside, it can't escape into real space, so the temperature inside the bubble would progressively increase. Now, I have no idea how fast the temperature would build up, but it would, at the least, limit the range of warp travel before the vessel would have to drop out of the bubble to cool down. Of course, as you rightly state, the moment the vessel drops out of warp, the torrent of radiation generated by the warp bubble's passage would then catch up with the vessel and probably also fry everyone inside...

Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #39 on: 09/20/2012 01:24 pm »
The solution for all that already exists: ionized gas contained by a magnetic field, as used in fusion reactors. You create a magnetic field around the ship's limits, pump ionized gas to the outside of the ship (the magnetic field prevents dissipation) and it can withstand extremely high temperatures.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #40 on: 09/20/2012 03:03 pm »
The solution for all that already exists: ionized gas contained by a magnetic field, as used in fusion reactors.

I'm not entirely up to date here.  Which fusion reactors are you referring to?
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Offline ChileVerde

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #41 on: 09/20/2012 03:28 pm »
I'm surprised. The highest definition non-interferometric gravity sensors I know of work to within a hundredth of a nm/s^2 (which would probably pick up a rat in the same room).

Slightly OT, but could you provide a reference to those sensors, please? Ultra-sensitive gravimeters are an interest I have (albeit a mild one).
"I can’t tell you which asteroid, but there will be one in 2025," Bolden asserted.

Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #42 on: 09/20/2012 03:31 pm »
The solution for all that already exists: ionized gas contained by a magnetic field, as used in fusion reactors.

I'm not entirely up to date here.  Which fusion reactors are you referring to?
Tokamak reactors.

Offline Patchouli

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #43 on: 09/20/2012 03:35 pm »


That would still be tremendous. And remember, this would be for the initial entry level device. There is little doubt that these things would be improved upon once they were better understood, after all we have jet airplanes now we started with propeller planes.

Even just 10x c would open up a lot of nearby star systems to exploration.
Gliese 581 becomes just a 2.2 year trip.
« Last Edit: 09/20/2012 04:10 pm by Patchouli »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #44 on: 09/20/2012 03:48 pm »
Tokamak reactors.

Thanks.  Checked out the Wiki page.  Seems like a fair amount of work has been done since I last checked out fusion reactors!  From the I was There department:

http://www.westland.net/ny64fair/map-docs/technology.htm

Quote
A spiral downramp lead visitors to a large well at the center of the pavilion where they watched "the creation of a miniature sun." A big Lexan dome surrounded the apparatus. Inside were two three-foot-long quartz tubes filled with deuterium plasma, Inside them, after a three minute countdown, a million amperes of current created a magnetic field 200,000 times stronger than the earth's. And inside this invisible bottle, millions of deuterium nuclei fused at a temperature of 100 million degrees for six millionths of a second. Those watching saw a tremendous flash accompanied by a loud bang that signified the birth of a new age. The experiment implied that in less than two decades man would have an almost cheap limitless source of electrical energy, enough to last for billions of years.

Your ears rang for a few minutes after the demo.

From:

http://nywf64.com/genele08.shtml

Quote
This apparatus is called a theta-pinch fusion device, so-called because the current in the plasma flows in the azimuthal, or theta direction, with respect to the compressing magnetic field. Other experimental devices of this type are also being studied in this country at Los Alamos and at the Naval Research Laboratory and in laboratories in several other countries.

Ie., not a Tokomak?
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline mikes

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #45 on: 09/20/2012 03:56 pm »
JET is a working tokamak fusion reactor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus

Not energy-positive, obviously.

Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #46 on: 09/20/2012 08:44 pm »
IMO, the BEST fusion reactor so far is the MAST project from the UK.
I'm going a bit out of topic here, but fusion reactors kick in for two reasons: you can make a fusion driver from it and you can use plasma confinement as a billion degree insulator.

http://www.ccfe.ac.uk/MAST.aspx

Online 93143

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #47 on: 09/20/2012 09:14 pm »
the Hawking radiation generated at the edge of the bubble itself

It strikes me that this could be less of a problem for the newer field designs, since the gradients aren't as high...?

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #48 on: 09/21/2012 04:55 am »
I would just like to see somebody generate a space warp to begin with.

From surfing around, it seems like Harold White has said that he intends to generate a warp in the lab using his interferometer, and not just measure it with his interferometer.

I don't understand how an interferometer can alter spacetime. I can understand how it could perhaps measure such a warp effect using path difference, a la Michelson-Morley. But I don't understand how it would generate the warp effect, even in a tiny way (he said "1 part in 10 million")

When they talk about big atom-smashers like LHC producing "tiny black holes", at least I can see that smashing heavy atoms together at high speeds could cause extrema conditions where predicted black holes might be expected to occur, howsoever tiny. But I don't see what extrema conditions would be generated by a mere laser interferometer, that would lead to a "space warp" happening.

It seems to me that Alcubierre's warp drive is based on Unobtainium - exotic matter. How White plans to achieve any warp effect without the exotic matter is unclear to me. Anybody have any answers to this?
« Last Edit: 09/21/2012 04:59 am by sanman »

Offline krytek

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #49 on: 09/21/2012 05:01 am »
Good question. How the hell do you go about creating a "warp" bubble?

Offline aero

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #50 on: 09/21/2012 05:28 am »
Good question. How the hell do you go about creating a "warp" bubble?
I thoght I read that he might use a capacitor. Here -

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936_2011016932.pdf

See page 8 of the pdf.
Quote
(something as simple as a very high voltage capacitor ring)
Retired, working interesting problems

Offline GeeGee

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #51 on: 09/21/2012 05:41 am »


It seems to me that Alcubierre's warp drive is based on Unobtainium - exotic matter. How White plans to achieve any warp effect without the exotic matter is unclear to me. Anybody have any answers to this?


I believe this has to do with White's modification of Alcubierre's metric. The canonical form suggests boost is the driving phenomenon behind the Alcubierre drive, and not the contraction/expansion of space. White proposes using negative pressure as an alternative to negative mass-energy for producing high boost. More details here:

http://www.earthtech.org/publications/davis_STAIF_conference_2.pdf
« Last Edit: 09/21/2012 05:43 am by GeeGee »

Offline alexw

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #52 on: 09/21/2012 05:45 am »
Good question. How the hell do you go about creating a "warp" bubble?
     Well, warp coils of course.
                             -Alex

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #53 on: 09/21/2012 05:59 am »
Thanks for the replies, guys - although they leave me with even more questions.

So is it being posited that any kind of field - even from a voltage gradient - can warp space in some small but measurable way?

And when you say "boost", do you mean just some arbitrary differential or imbalance of forces? Casimir pressure, whether negative or positive, only takes place across quantum-scale spans in confined spaces. I guess that's okay for use in the lab to measure stuff, but surely nobody's going to make a 20-lightyear-long confined tube as a conduit for us to squirt ourselves along to travel between star systems.

So we all understand that matter alters space - it does so by exerting gravity, and it can also block vacuum fluctuations - but I don't see how this effect can be scaled up or amplified to the extent that we'll be able to usefully exploit it for exceptional purposes.

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #54 on: 09/21/2012 06:17 am »
Good question. How the hell do you go about creating a "warp" bubble?
     Well, warp coils of course.
                             -Alex

Heh, when I think of a "warp coil", I imagine in my head some kind of BEC atom laser or superfluid traveling in a helical path, allowing superposition of small gravitational waves to create a unidirectional field flux - just like what any coil does - like an electromagnetic coil, etc.

Has anybody thought of going that route?


Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #55 on: 09/21/2012 02:15 pm »
Speaking of Tokamaks, just noticed that Elon Musk's twitter background is a tokamak! Hummmmm... HUMMMM!!!!! Am I getting hot, Mr. Musk?? Any fusion rocket on your Mars reusable plan?? heheh

http://twitter.com/elonmusk

Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #56 on: 09/21/2012 02:16 pm »
Speaking of Tokamaks, just noticed that Elon Musk's twitter background is a tokamak! Hummmmm... HUMMMM!!!!! Am I getting hot, Mr. Musk?? Any fusion rocket on your Mars reusable vehicle plan?? heheh

http://twitter.com/elonmusk

Offline Moe Grills

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #57 on: 09/21/2012 08:17 pm »
OK! The optimistic science-news report makes warp drive appear
possible.
Then one must ask, can NASA put together an unmanned test probe
using this technology to (say) Barnard's Star within the next 100 years?

IMHO it seems unlikely that NASA will develop this type of technology
soon.
Look how long it took NASA to use ion propulsion (50 years?). Light sails (that small test article that was in LEO a short time ago) (30 years?).
Ordinary plasma propulsion (I'm waiting)? VASIMR (I'm waiting?
Warp drive? Maybe if NASA is around 200 years from now thay may have
a working model.

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #58 on: 09/22/2012 08:16 am »
Well, as long as the Warp Drive requires the Unobtainium, then we may be stuck without it at all. Because if a certain kind of exotic matter doesn't exist, then all our fantasizing won't make it come true.

Why can't we also look at matter waves for creating gravity waves? Gravitation is a property of matter, just like charge and spin are a property of electrons. Maybe we should try to use atom lasers and wave mechanics to somehow manipulate gravity waves.

Given the wave-like nature of BECs, it seems to me that this behavior is likely imparted by the vacuum (ie. when you remove the kinetic energy from matter, all it has left is its interaction with the vacuum, which therefore causes the the matter to become fuzzy and fluctuating like the vacuum itself)





I've always wondered if changing matter in this direction of vacuum-fuzziness (aka. "quantum fuzziness") could somehow allow it to bypass the conventional relativistic constraints of the vacuum. Well, we know that even atoms can show quantum teleportation, so in that sense we already know they can transmit their characteristics faster than light, but teleportation inherently means it's happening in a vacuum-independent manner.



Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #59 on: 09/22/2012 01:20 pm »
Good question. How the hell do you go about creating a "warp" bubble?
I thoght I read that he might use a capacitor. Here -

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936_2011016932.pdf

See page 8 of the pdf.
Quote
(something as simple as a very high voltage capacitor ring)

Which, of course, can only be called a flux capacitor...
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline douglas100

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #60 on: 09/22/2012 05:04 pm »

Look how long it took NASA to use ion propulsion (50 years?).

NASA had a flight tested ion engine in 1964.

 http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/history/sert.html

But then, it was based on well understood physical principles. What is being discussed here is based on, shall we say, more speculative principles. Your 200 year estimate could be optimistic.
Douglas Clark

Online 93143

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #61 on: 09/22/2012 09:25 pm »
Woodward's mass fluctuation equation has a term that's always negative.  If this term can be driven so that it becomes large, there's your exotic matter.  And you can modulate how much of it you have.

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #62 on: 09/23/2012 02:41 am »
Woodward's mass fluctuation equation has a term that's always negative.  If this term can be driven so that it becomes large, there's your exotic matter.  And you can modulate how much of it you have.

So you're saying we first need to perfect the (Mach-Woodward) Impulse propulsion in order to have our FTL Warp drive? I'm not sure that's canon, according to the show:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive
« Last Edit: 09/23/2012 02:49 am by sanman »

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #63 on: 09/25/2012 10:00 pm »
Somehow, I'd always imagined that "warp coils" might be coils with some kind of superfluid flowing through them, where the movement of the superfluid matter then produces gravity waves, and these waves could then be concentrated by the helical coil shape, in the same way that an electrical coil can then concentrate electric and magnetic fields through its shape.

In principle, would it theoretically be possible to concentrate gravity waves through a helical coil shape, just as we do with an electromagnetic coil?

If so, then why can't we run a superfluid like ultra-cold helium through such coils, to achieve this? Wouldn't this perhaps result in a space "warp"?

Offline douglas100

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #64 on: 09/26/2012 08:27 am »
You need to move huge masses to produce gravity waves because gravity is so astonishingly weak. Running some liquid through a coil won't do it. Rotating two neutron stars (or black holes) around each other will produce a respectable amount of gravitational radiation. But that's not exactly a starship, is it?

Once produced, I don't think there's any known way of focusing gravitational waves. They are a different kind of beast to electromagnetic waves. Matter is transparent to them. I don't know how they could be harnessed to produce any form of propulsion. Maybe someone out there with a much better understanding of physics than me might care to comment.

I also believe that FTL is impossible for causality violation reasons as mentioned earlier in the thread.

Unfortunately we don't live in the Star Trek universe. The real universe is not required to conform to our desires.

Edit: inserted "than me."
« Last Edit: 09/27/2012 01:53 pm by douglas100 »
Douglas Clark

Offline Lampyridae

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #65 on: 09/26/2012 08:46 am »
I'm surprised. The highest definition non-interferometric gravity sensors I know of work to within a hundredth of a nm/s^2 (which would probably pick up a rat in the same room).

Slightly OT, but could you provide a reference to those sensors, please? Ultra-sensitive gravimeters are an interest I have (albeit a mild one).

Errr... lost the link. I will dig it up... some Swedish or Danish-built device, using a superconducting coil IIRC. I will post it if I can find it... it had sub nanogal sensitivity, about 0.01 nanogals.
« Last Edit: 09/26/2012 08:55 am by Lampyridae »

Offline Lampyridae

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #66 on: 09/26/2012 08:49 am »

Look how long it took NASA to use ion propulsion (50 years?).

NASA had a flight tested ion engine in 1964.

 http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/history/sert.html

But then, it was based on well understood physical principles. What is being discussed here is based on, shall we say, more speculative principles. Your 200 year estimate could be optimistic.

It took 50 years to get from mysterious glowing rocks being measured with an "electometer" to bombs being dropped that killed tens of thousands. Technological leaps may be revolutionary or evolutionary.

Offline Chandonn

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #67 on: 09/26/2012 09:23 am »
You need to move huge masses to produce gravity waves because gravity is so astonishingly weak. Running some liquid through a coil won't do it. Rotating two neutron stars (or black holes) around each other will produce a respectable amount of gravitational radiation. But that's not exactly a starship, is it?

Once produced, I don't think there's any known way of focusing gravitational waves. They are a different kind of beast to electromagnetic waves. Matter is transparent to them. I don't know how they could be harnessed to produce any form of propulsion. Maybe someone out there with a much better understanding of physics might care to comment.

I also believe that FTL is impossible for causality violation reasons as mentioned earlier in the thread.

Unfortunately we don't live in the Star Trek universe. The real universe is not required to conform to our desires.


You're right.  Let's tell the real Physicists they have no idea what they're talking about and us armchair rocket scientists know everything!

Snarkiness aside: many things deemed impossible by normal means have been done using unconventional ideas including such things we take for granted as flight and supersonic travel (not to mention space travel).  Just because we don't know how to produce gravity waves or space-time distortions without the use of high mass objects does not mean it's impossible.  It simply means we don't have that unconventional idea yet.

Offline Star-Drive

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #68 on: 09/26/2012 12:40 pm »
Folks:

You need to do a little bit of light reading before attempting to discuss this topic. :)

http://www.earthtech.org/publications/davis_STAIF_conference_1.pdf

http://www.earthtech.org/publications/davis_STAIF_conference_2.pdf

Best,
Star-Drive

Offline Patchouli

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #69 on: 09/26/2012 03:15 pm »
You need to move huge masses to produce gravity waves because gravity is so astonishingly weak. Running some liquid through a coil won't do it. Rotating two neutron stars (or black holes) around each other will produce a respectable amount of gravitational radiation. But that's not exactly a starship, is it?

Once produced, I don't think there's any known way of focusing gravitational waves. They are a different kind of beast to electromagnetic waves. Matter is transparent to them. I don't know how they could be harnessed to produce any form of propulsion. Maybe someone out there with a much better understanding of physics might care to comment.

I also believe that FTL is impossible for causality violation reasons as mentioned earlier in the thread.

Unfortunately we don't live in the Star Trek universe. The real universe is not required to conform to our desires.

The Alcubierre drive does not cause a casualty violation as it does not travel back in time.
If the ship take 2 months to go to Alpha Centauri and then it comes back to earth it arrives back at Earth 4 months in the future ie no causality violation has taken place.
No matter how fast it goes it can't interact with it's past self.
It merely gets somewhere before light traveling in free space can by taking a short cut of sorts.
It's not traveling through space it's self at FTL in fact the ship can be motionless.
 BTW high energy particles already go faster then their light can through water that's what Cherenkov  radiation is.
The ship and it's warp bubble are the new causality carrier.

Now worm holes in theory can cause a causality violation but in involves making one end move and the other stay put and some how running back to the entrance before you entered the other end.

Also latest evidence states c is not exactly a constant either.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6092-speed-of-light-may-have-changed-recently.html

I think Cherenkov radiation from warp drives might be a good way to spot alien civilizations.
There should be some anomalous radiation just out out side their home star system from ships entering and coming out of warp.
« Last Edit: 09/26/2012 03:24 pm by Patchouli »

Offline douglas100

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #70 on: 09/26/2012 03:47 pm »

 Just because we don't know how to produce gravity waves or space-time distortions without the use of high mass objects does not mean it's impossible.

It doesn't mean it's possible either. Current knowledge suggests that it is not possible. There is no guarantee that new knowledge will overturn this. That's why I was careful to use the word "believe" in this context.
Douglas Clark

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #71 on: 09/27/2012 04:16 am »
I also believe that FTL is impossible for causality violation reasons as mentioned earlier in the thread.

Unfortunately we don't live in the Star Trek universe. The real universe is not required to conform to our desires.

The Alcubierre drive does not cause a casualty violation as it does not travel back in time.

Im pretty sure anything travelling faster than light is travelling back in time from a certain frame of reference.

I know how to demonstrate a shoot-your-grandfather type paradox with an 'instantaneous communicator', and the example makes it obvious that it also works with values below 'instantaneous'. However you can google for better examples than I could come up with.

Offline alexw

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #72 on: 09/27/2012 05:43 am »
You need to move huge masses to produce gravity waves because gravity is so astonishingly weak. Running some liquid through a coil won't do it. Rotating two neutron stars (or black holes) around each other will produce a respectable amount of gravitational radiation. But that's not exactly a starship, is it?
Once produced, I don't think there's any known way of focusing gravitational waves. They are a different kind of beast to electromagnetic waves. Matter is transparent to them. I don't know how they could be harnessed to produce any form of propulsion. Maybe someone out there with a much better understanding of physics might care to comment.
You're right.  Let's tell the real Physicists they have no idea what they're talking about and us armchair rocket scientists know everything!
     Douglas is essentially right about the physics mentioned.

     Running a fluid through a coil could do it -- look up gravitomagnetism -- but it would need to be an ultradense fluid (e.g., liquid neutronium). The basic problem is that gravity (waves or otherwise) couples only to mass, (ie, mass is the "charge" for gravity, similarly to the relationship between electric charge and electromagnetism). And gravity is an extremely weak force. Thus, an enormous mass (or highly dense mass-energy state) is required to have any noticable effect.
      Perhaps you could focus gravity waves, but to take a wild guess you'd want something like a cosmic string or two to do it. At which point you're already Kardashev II+.
      -Alex

Offline douglas100

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #73 on: 09/27/2012 01:41 pm »

Im pretty sure anything travelling faster than light is travelling back in time from a certain frame of reference.

I know how to demonstrate a shoot-your-grandfather type paradox with an 'instantaneous communicator', and the example makes it obvious that it also works with values below 'instantaneous'. However you can google for better examples than I could come up with.

Yes, that's the sort of thing I had in mind when I mentioned causality violation.
Douglas Clark

Offline douglas100

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #74 on: 09/27/2012 01:51 pm »

You're right.  Let's tell the real Physicists they have no idea what they're talking about and us armchair rocket scientists know everything!

Sorry, that wasn't meant to be sarcastic. What I meant to say was: "Maybe someone out there with a much better understanding of physics than me might care to comment."

I've changed the original post.
Douglas Clark

Offline mboeller

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #75 on: 09/27/2012 07:28 pm »
The people here think they can generate gravity waves without using large masses:

http://www.gravwave.com/

http://www.drrobertbaker.com/

Offline douglas100

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #76 on: 09/27/2012 10:31 pm »
That appears to be a controversial claim.

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/gravwaves.pdf
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Offline QuantumG

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #77 on: 09/27/2012 10:54 pm »
Nice find.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #78 on: 09/27/2012 11:49 pm »
Im pretty sure anything travelling faster than light is travelling back in time from a certain frame of reference.

The ship is not moving, space around it is stretching and compressing. People inside the ship don't even notice acceleration, so it is not moving, so no time paradoxes.

A person looking through a telescope pointed at the ship would see a clock ticking at the same pace as its reference.
« Last Edit: 09/28/2012 01:43 pm by IRobot »

Offline douglas100

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #79 on: 09/28/2012 10:05 am »
As I understand it, the prohibition on transmitting information faster than the speed ensures that all observers always see cause preceding effect.

Imagine two light wavefronts emitted from two events, a cause (C) and an effect (E). The wavefront C will always travel ahead of wavefront E.
For any observer moving slower than the speed of light, C will always arrive before E.

But an observer in an FTL starship can outrun these wavefronts and approach them from behind. The starship would then encounter E before C and the FTL observer would see time running backwards. This is what I was thinking of when I made the post about violating causality.


Notice that this argument says nothing about the nature of the FTL propulsion system. It only assumes that the starship is effectively transmitting information between two points faster than the speed of light.
« Last Edit: 09/28/2012 12:22 pm by douglas100 »
Douglas Clark

Offline douglas100

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #80 on: 09/28/2012 10:07 am »
Douglas Clark

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #81 on: 09/28/2012 12:53 pm »
Quote from: that Mitre paper linked above
JASON was asked by staff at the National MASINT Committee of ODNI to evaluate the scientific, technological, and national security significance of high frequency gravitational waves (HFGW). Our main conclusions are that the proposed applications of the science of HFGW are fundamentally wrong; that there can be no security threat; and that independent scientific and technical vetting of such hypothetical threats is generally necessary. We conclude that previous analysis of the Li-Baker detector concept is incorrect by many orders of magnitude; and that the following are infeasible in the foreseeable future: detection of the natural "relic" HFGW, which are reliably predicted to exist; or detection of artificial sources of HFGW. No foreign threat in HFGW is credible, including: Communication by means of HFGW; Object detection or imaging (by HFGW radar or tomography); Vehicle propulsion by HFGW; or any other practical use of HFGW. For the relatively weak fields in the lab, on the Earth, or indeed in the solar system (far from the cutting-edge science of black holes of the Big Bang), the general theory of relativity and its existing experimental basis are complete, accurate and reliable.

This seems to confirm my observation that thought is (not "may be") more feasible than warp drive.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #82 on: 09/29/2012 07:35 am »
Harold White has put out a presentation on his proposed Warp Field Interferometer experiment:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/09/harold-white-presentation-on-making.html

Focusing on slides 6-8 and slides 11-14, what is this thing he calls Boost?
And further on slide 14, he mentions a usable Casimir force for thrust, generated by a magnetic field. Can anyone elaborate on that?

Offline aceshigh

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #83 on: 10/08/2012 01:36 am »
Harold White has put out a presentation on his proposed Warp Field Interferometer experiment:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/09/harold-white-presentation-on-making.html

Focusing on slides 6-8 and slides 11-14, what is this thing he calls Boost?
And further on slide 14, he mentions a usable Casimir force for thrust, generated by a magnetic field. Can anyone elaborate on that?


StarDrive (who posted earlier on this thread) works as a contractor for Dr Sonny White. He may answer your questions better than anyone here.

Offline ChileVerde

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #84 on: 10/08/2012 01:56 am »
As I understand it, the prohibition on transmitting information faster than the speed ensures that all observers always see cause preceding effect.

<snip>

Notice that this argument says nothing about the nature of the FTL propulsion system. It only assumes that the starship is effectively transmitting information between two points faster than the speed of light.

Yes, that's it.

The space-time geometry implied by the special theory of relativity says that any sort of FTL whatsoever wipes out the distinction between future and past and provides a means of backwards time travel, with attendant causality problems. 

Doesn't matter if it's warp drive, hyperspace, wormholes, teleportation, pixie dust or Transcendental Meditation. It's the effect (FTL), not the means, that matters.

Edit: Spelling
« Last Edit: 10/08/2012 01:59 am by ChileVerde »
"I can’t tell you which asteroid, but there will be one in 2025," Bolden asserted.

Offline QuantumG

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #85 on: 10/08/2012 02:02 am »
The space-time geometry implied by the special theory of relativity says that any sort of FTL whatsoever wipes out the distinction between future and past and provides a means of backwards time travel, with attendant causality problems. 

Explain to me, like I'm five, how FTL can result in backwards time travel.

Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #86 on: 10/08/2012 02:18 am »
...

Doesn't matter if it's ... or Transcendental Meditation. It's the effect (FTL), not the means, that matters.

Bit of a quibble on TM, for mental reasons, but hey.  Carry on.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline ChileVerde

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #87 on: 10/08/2012 02:20 am »
The space-time geometry implied by the special theory of relativity says that any sort of FTL whatsoever wipes out the distinction between future and past and provides a means of backwards time travel, with attendant causality problems. 

Explain to me, like I'm five, how FTL can result in backwards time travel.


Oh, that's easy: You can get there before you left.

Try this: http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html

The essence of the situation from the above URL is

"The constancy of the speed of light in all frames means that different observers must slice spacetime into space and time in different ways."
"I can’t tell you which asteroid, but there will be one in 2025," Bolden asserted.

Offline QuantumG

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #88 on: 10/08/2012 03:34 am »
Quote
Explain to me, like I'm five, how FTL can result in backwards time travel.

Oh, that's easy: You can get there before you left.

Try this: http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html

The essence of the situation from the above URL is

"The constancy of the speed of light in all frames means that different observers must slice spacetime into space and time in different ways."

"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother." - Richard Feynman misquoting Einstein.

That url still fails to explain how FTL = time travel. Can you maybe explain it better for us?
« Last Edit: 10/08/2012 03:35 am by QuantumG »
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline simonbp

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #89 on: 10/08/2012 06:21 am »
You could put in some effort yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone

The "warp drive" theories work by actually warping space faster than c, so that the vehicle does not violate local causality, but does violate global causality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Offline QuantumG

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #90 on: 10/08/2012 06:54 am »
You could put in some effort yourself:

I have.

I've yet to read anyone explain how FTL = time travel, in layman terms.

Those two links are great. Thanks for them, but there is no hope that my grandmother (or even my brother) would understand them.


Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #91 on: 10/08/2012 01:36 pm »
I don't agree with the idea that the Alcubierre Warp Drive implies time travel.

Information naturally propagates at lightspeed, so that if the Sun explodes, it will be witnessed on Earth about 8 minutes later.

Suppose you could travel FTL - so then you could travel from the Sun to the Earth in less than 8 minutes. So that would only be "time travel" in the vague sense that you can more quickly carry information ahead of its natural time of arrival. But you wouldn't be able to go back to the moment before the Sun actually exploded. You would only be able to travel out to where the image of a still intact Sun continues to exist. It's only in that sense that you've traveled backwards in time.

"Greetings Earthlings! I am from the Future! I bring you news that the Sun will explode in a few minutes from now! Ordinarily, you wouldn't have found out about it until the actual light from the Sun reached you! But thanks to my FTL abilities, I have let you know ahead of time that the Sun no longer exists! Be awestruck at my TimeTravel(TM) capabilities! That being said, however, I cannot actually travel back to the moment before the Sun actually exploded, in order to prevent the act."

« Last Edit: 10/08/2012 01:44 pm by sanman »

Offline Chandonn

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #92 on: 10/08/2012 01:41 pm »
I don't agree with the idea that the Alcubierre Warp Drive implies time travel.

Information naturally propagates at lightspeed, so that if the Sun explodes, it will be witnessed on Earth about 8 minutes later.

Suppose you could travel FTL - so then you could travel from the Sun to the Earth in less than 8 minutes. So that would only be "time travel" in the vague sense that you can more quickly carry information ahead of its natural time of arrival. But you wouldn't be able to go back to the moment before the Sun actually exploded. You would only be able to travel out to where the image of a still intact Sun continues to exist. It's only in that sense that you've traveled backwards in time.




I think by "time travel" the OP is saying the effect will preceed perceived cause.  That's not the same thing as time travel.

Offline ChileVerde

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #93 on: 10/08/2012 01:58 pm »
You could put in some effort yourself:

I have.

I've yet to read anyone explain how FTL = time travel, in layman terms.

Those two links are great. Thanks for them, but there is no hope that my grandmother (or even my brother) would understand them.

This doesn't get all the way to the FTL question, but is it the level of exposition you're looking for?

http://www.onestick.com/relativity/

Edit:

If it is, I think the two-way example in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone would lend itself to such a presentation. Knowing high-school algebra would help, but the point might be put across without it.
« Last Edit: 10/08/2012 07:16 pm by ChileVerde »
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Offline scienceguy

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #94 on: 10/08/2012 04:27 pm »
Here is an explanation of how a wormhole could allow time travel. I'm not sure how the same thing would work with a warp drive.
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline scienceguy

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #95 on: 10/08/2012 04:51 pm »
Ooo I just realized how this would work with a warp drive, also. It's comparable. Note that for this to work, you need to travel at fast sub light speeds as well as faster than light. Please refer to diagram. These diagrams also explain why, if you make a time machine, you can't travel back in time past the point where the time machine was invented.
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #96 on: 10/08/2012 07:50 pm »
Nah, I find that explanation misleading, only because it uses the natural lightspeed propagation of information as the index for time. Look, time is always moving in a forward direction, and surpassing the natural speed of information propagation doesn't amount to going back in time, it merely amounts to catching up with information from the past, and not returning to the actual events which caused that information to propagate. I think even Hawking himself has said something similar (ie. we could see the past, but not change it)


Offline jded

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #97 on: 10/08/2012 08:33 pm »
This time travel FTL stuff is counter-intuitive, but it all boils down to the fact that under special relativity, whether events A and B happen at the same time, A precedes B or B precedes A depends on the observer reference frame. *) Not only "are observed" preceding or concurring. Actually happen. Unless you manage to find a universally preferred reference frame, each situation is just as real.

Basically, if event A means sending information and B receiving it, light speed is the maximum speed at which you can send information in your own reference frame, so that in no other reference frame B precedes A. If you do it faster, there will be a reference frame in which you are sending information back in time.

If that happens, by cleverly passing the information between observers in different reference frames, you can end up with sending it back in time in your own reference frame. A bit like throwing a ball forward, but onto a backward-moving conveyor belt, and picking it up behind you (well actually you need at least two belts but this is where it gets tricky. Still, it does work like that).

*) Which means instantaneous communication is a fishy concept by itself (instantaneous to whom?).

Offline ChileVerde

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #98 on: 10/08/2012 08:53 pm »
This time travel FTL stuff is counter-intuitive, but it all boils down to the fact that under special relativity, whether events A and B happen at the same time, A precedes B or B precedes A depends on the observer reference frame. *) Not only "are observed" preceding or concurring. Actually happen. Unless you manage to find a universally preferred reference frame, each situation is just as real.

Basically, if event A means sending information and B receiving it, light speed is the maximum speed at which you can send information in your own reference frame, so that in no other reference frame B precedes A. If you do it faster, there will be a reference frame in which you are sending information back in time.

If that happens, by cleverly passing the information between observers in different reference frames, you can end up with sending it back in time in your own reference frame. A bit like throwing a ball forward, but onto a backward-moving conveyor belt, and picking it up behind you (well actually you need at least two belts but this is where it gets tricky. Still, it does work like that).

*) Which means instantaneous communication is a fishy concept by itself (instantaneous to whom?).

Yes.  Although analogies for this SR stuff are hard to come up with and tend to break down rapidly on examination, one I like is to divide the plane into STL-land and FTL-land, between which runs a line containing those events A and B.  In STL-land and FTL land are various observers (w,x,y,z) observing A and B. The angular separation between A and B will, in general, differ for different observers, corresponding to relativistic time dilation -- but observers looking toward the line in STL land will always agree that A is (say) to the left of B, while FTLers will see B to the left of A. Substitute past and future for left and right, and there you are.

As said, this analogy breaks down quickly, but I think it kind of gives the idea.

========================================================


FTL-land



                                                          y


                                        z
---------------------------------A------------------------B--------------------------------------------


            w


                                                               x


STL-land


"I can’t tell you which asteroid, but there will be one in 2025," Bolden asserted.

Offline QuantumG

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #99 on: 10/08/2012 11:49 pm »
Ooo I just realized how this would work with a warp drive, also. It's comparable. Note that for this to work, you need to travel at fast sub light speeds as well as faster than light. Please refer to diagram. These diagrams also explain why, if you make a time machine, you can't travel back in time past the point where the time machine was invented.

I like your diagram and the explanation would be fine for my grandmother.. The problem is, step 3 is wrong.

Traveling away from Earth at significant fractions of light speed doesn't get you to a different time in the future compared to Earthly observers..

To an Earthly observer you still take about 8 years to get to Alpha Centauri, traveling at half the speed of light. To you the journey has taken less time (about 7 years) but even if you were to zoom back instantaneously you wouldn't get to keep that extra year.

If it did, you wouldn't even need FTL to produce a paradox. Radio transmissions from the crew would arrive before they were sent.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #100 on: 10/09/2012 12:47 am »
This appears to be the same situation as two people a long distance apart shouting to each other but also using the telephone.

B can hear A and reply using the telephone before the shout arrives.
« Last Edit: 10/09/2012 12:48 am by A_M_Swallow »

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #101 on: 10/09/2012 03:51 am »
Ooo I just realized how this would work with a warp drive, also. It's comparable. Note that for this to work, you need to travel at fast sub light speeds as well as faster than light. Please refer to diagram. These diagrams also explain why, if you make a time machine, you can't travel back in time past the point where the time machine was invented.

I like your diagram and the explanation would be fine for my grandmother.. The problem is, step 3 is wrong.

Traveling away from Earth at significant fractions of light speed doesn't get you to a different time in the future compared to Earthly observers..

To an Earthly observer you still take about 8 years to get to Alpha Centauri, traveling at half the speed of light. To you the journey has taken less time (about 7 years) but even if you were to zoom back instantaneously you wouldn't get to keep that extra year.

If it did, you wouldn't even need FTL to produce a paradox. Radio transmissions from the crew would arrive before they were sent.


How to explain it clearly is an interesting problem.
I have been tempted to submit an explanation for an extreme case how an instantaneous communicator creates a time paradox, but I realise that when it is half way done that it isnt more clear than anybody elses. You need really clear diagrams, and even better, animations to show what is going on in a really clear way.

Here is a rough outline of what the documentary script would have to somehow get across :)

(1) Start with the claim that an instantaneous communicator exists. First of all.. how are we going to decide that it actually is instantaneous. What is instantaneous? How about this for a definition:
(1.0) A trivial case.. simultaneous is very easy to observe at a single point. No confusion there.
(1.1) Go to a point half way between A and B. Emit a flash of light from this point. We will claim that this flash takes the same time to reach A as it does B, therefore it arrives at both simultaneously. If you want to be even more pedantic and ask how you know it really is a midpoint, you could define the midpoint by saying a pulse out and bounced back from A and B would arrive back at a midpoint at the same time. Call this midpoint M.

(Here you insert an animation with the pulse radiating out in all directions like a ripple from a stone dropped into a pool, and arriving at A and B at the same time)

(1.2) So now that we have a definition of simultaneous, we will claim that if we had an instantaneous communicator at A, and we sent an instantaneous message to B exactly upon receiving the lightwave mentioned in (1.1), then B would receive the instantaneous message at the exact same time it received the lightwave also, because thats what we have defined the exact same time as.

(2) Now we need to stop in our documentary and get across a few tricky factoids about special relativity. The most basic is "All observers measure the speed of light as the same, regardless of their relative velocity". We also have to get across that when we are talking about things appearing to happen at a certain time, we are not talking about an optical illusion caused by how long the information takes to reach us, but what we actually deduce has happened after we take such factors into account. usually this is described as having a set of time keepers, all stationary wrt youself but at different locations. They have to get together after the experiment and compare their stopwatches to really understand what is going on.

(3) Now we have to convince our audience that what we defined as simultaneous in part (1) would not be simultaneous from the point of view of an observer with a different velocity, especially if that velocity was a significant fraction of the speed of light.

(Here you insert an animation of the stone dropped into a pool, now from the point of view of the traveller. The important point to get across it that UNLIKE what you would expect, from their point of view they are stationary wrt to the water of this pool, and the center of the ripple is stationary from their point point of view, because all edges of the ripple are moving at the same velocity out in all directions. From their point of view it is A and B that are moving across this pool, lets say A towards the ripple, and B away from it. So from the traveller's point of view, A will encounter the wave before B does.

(4) Ok.. so simultaneous is dependent on what velocity you are moving.. weird, but does that actually cause a problem? Yes. It is way too confusing to speculate on how a simultaneous communicator behaves between two observers of different velocities but we don't have to. We are at least confident of the order of events at a single location. A person cannot have put on their underpants before their trousers in one point of view and done it in reverse in another. It is not like one observer sees you the rest of your day with your underpants outside your trousers. So lets suppose that at the exact same time someone sends or receives a message from A or B, we have arranged for an observer moving at a different velocity to be in the exact same location, for just a split second.

So.. the traveller can set up an observer to be passing A at exactly the moment that the light wave arrives at A, and another observer to arrive at B simultaneously from the traveller's point of view and before the light wave arrives at B, also from the travellers point of view.

(5) Here is the paradox: Suppose B sends an instantaneous message to A as the lightwave arrives: "Put your hand out now". A must get the message at the same time the lightwave arrives because that is how we defined simultaneous between two observers with the same velocity. However, a traveller is zipping past A at exactly this moment. A puts out their hand and wacks them in the face as they pass. All these events (the message from B, the light pulse, the whack) all happen at the same instant in the same position in space so there is no confusion there.
The traveller however has a mate moving at the same velocity who, from his perspective and from our definition of simultaneous, is passing B at the exact same time.. but.. from their point of view the lightwave has not yet reached B.
The traveller, now informed of the juvenile nature of the experiment, instantly sends a message to their mate, who grabs B's communicator as he whips past, before the light pulse arrives, before B sends the message telling A to hit the traveller.
« Last Edit: 10/09/2012 03:58 am by KelvinZero »

Offline jded

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #102 on: 10/09/2012 06:27 am »
Ooo I just realized how this would work with a warp drive, also. It's comparable. Note that for this to work, you need to travel at fast sub light speeds as well as faster than light. Please refer to diagram. These diagrams also explain why, if you make a time machine, you can't travel back in time past the point where the time machine was invented.

I like your diagram and the explanation would be fine for my grandmother.. The problem is, step 3 is wrong.

Traveling away from Earth at significant fractions of light speed doesn't get you to a different time in the future compared to Earthly observers..

To an Earthly observer you still take about 8 years to get to Alpha Centauri, traveling at half the speed of light. To you the journey has taken less time (about 7 years) but even if you were to zoom back instantaneously you wouldn't get to keep that extra year.

Actually, it depends on for whom it is supposed to be instantaneously.

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #103 on: 10/09/2012 07:51 pm »
(5) Here is the paradox: Suppose B sends an instantaneous message to A as the lightwave arrives: "Put your hand out now". A must get the message at the same time the lightwave arrives because that is how we defined simultaneous between two observers with the same velocity. However, a traveller is zipping past A at exactly this moment. A puts out their hand and wacks them in the face as they pass. All these events (the message from B, the light pulse, the whack) all happen at the same instant in the same position in space so there is no confusion there.
The traveller however has a mate moving at the same velocity who, from his perspective and from our definition of simultaneous, is passing B at the exact same time.. but.. from their point of view the lightwave has not yet reached B.
The traveller, now informed of the juvenile nature of the experiment, instantly sends a message to their mate, who grabs B's communicator as he whips past, before the light pulse arrives, before B sends the message telling A to hit the traveller.

Okay, now rephrase that with the Warp Drive, because I don't think all the assumptions will work. If they're not in the same space (ie. some kind of separate subspace) then I don't think the assumptions on reference frame apply.

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #104 on: 10/09/2012 08:29 pm »
(5) Here is the paradox: Suppose B sends an instantaneous message to A as the lightwave arrives: "Put your hand out now". A must get the message at the same time the lightwave arrives because that is how we defined simultaneous between two observers with the same velocity. However, a traveller is zipping past A at exactly this moment. A puts out their hand and wacks them in the face as they pass. All these events (the message from B, the light pulse, the whack) all happen at the same instant in the same position in space so there is no confusion there.
The traveller however has a mate moving at the same velocity who, from his perspective and from our definition of simultaneous, is passing B at the exact same time.. but.. from their point of view the lightwave has not yet reached B.
The traveller, now informed of the juvenile nature of the experiment, instantly sends a message to their mate, who grabs B's communicator as he whips past, before the light pulse arrives, before B sends the message telling A to hit the traveller.

Okay, now rephrase that with the Warp Drive, because I don't think all the assumptions will work. If they're not in the same space (ie. some kind of separate subspace) then I don't think the assumptions on reference frame apply.

If I understand you right, you are saying warp drive gets around this paradox?

No it doesn't, because it makes absolutely no difference how the data arrives. We do not care about the perspective of the person travelling at warp speed, all my observers are sub-light. It comes down to "What do you even mean by simultaneous". Its not really a clue to a way to build a time machine, it is pointing out that it doesn't really make sense.

..or it makes exactly as much sense as building a time machine in a non-relativistic universe simply by going faster than infinite speed and therefore taking negative time to arrive at your destination.

To attack this paradox, you just have to look at my definition of simultaneous. Can you come up with one that all the observers (and you only need to consider sub-light observers) agree on?

If you google ftl paradox you will see it is a genuine problem, but people are playing around with ways of avoiding paradox with additional constraints. You really have to take that perspective rather than assume the paradox is just some internet forum myth.

Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #105 on: 10/09/2012 09:07 pm »
To add some confusion, there is a theory that predicts that "c" is not constant, it can be bigger than the assumed value. The theory is the Variable Light Speed, from João Magueijo.

Relativity equations work with a variable "c". In this scenario, there is no "return to the past" scenario for transluminal speeds.

Offline FinalFrontier

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #106 on: 10/10/2012 07:01 am »
Would you need to be outside the atmosphere before engaging this, or could you start from earth?

What about on the other end? Would you still need a lander?

BTW I appreciate all the great responses to my initial post!


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Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #107 on: 10/11/2012 04:54 am »

If I understand you right, you are saying warp drive gets around this paradox?

No it doesn't, because it makes absolutely no difference how the data arrives. We do not care about the perspective of the person travelling at warp speed, all my observers are sub-light. It comes down to "What do you even mean by simultaneous". Its not really a clue to a way to build a time machine, it is pointing out that it doesn't really make sense.

..or it makes exactly as much sense as building a time machine in a non-relativistic universe simply by going faster than infinite speed and therefore taking negative time to arrive at your destination.

To attack this paradox, you just have to look at my definition of simultaneous. Can you come up with one that all the observers (and you only need to consider sub-light observers) agree on?

If you google ftl paradox you will see it is a genuine problem, but people are playing around with ways of avoiding paradox with additional constraints. You really have to take that perspective rather than assume the paradox is just some internet forum myth.


What I see is that those who claim that FTL means allowing backwards travel in time are assuming that lightspeed is instantaneous.

In a universe where lightspeed is instantaneous, then FTL means backwards travel in time. But when we know that lightspeed is not instantaneous, then FTL simply means faster than 3x10^8m/s. You can't go back to before the actual occurrence of an event, you can only catch up with the information signal being propagated by that event.

Where I think this face-whacking example fails, is that a Warp Drive Traveler is compartmentalized in their own separate space, and cannot communicate with anyone while they are traveling FTL using the Warp Drive. Therefore, the game played in the face-whacking example cannot be done, and the paradox cannot be achieved. Warp Drive travel is not relativistic motion, and so the same game cannot be played to achieve the paradox in the face-whacking example.
« Last Edit: 10/11/2012 04:55 am by sanman »

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #108 on: 10/11/2012 09:07 am »
What I see is that those who claim that FTL means allowing backwards travel in time are assuming that lightspeed is instantaneous.
Use google to search for references online. The conventional wisdom is that FTL does create paradoxes. Of course conventional wisdom can be wrong but it is not going to be some trivial confusion like that.

It just is not sensible to dismiss conventional wisdom until you have bashed your head against the problem so hard that you have yourself become a respected, published, physicist well versed in general relativity.

For the rest of us, it is much more sensible to assume that if something does not make sense to us, the problem is in our own understanding, and that more work on our own part is required to get to grips with the problem.

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #109 on: 10/11/2012 12:07 pm »
Google "Alcubierre" and "causal disconnect", and you'll see that there's a conventional wisdom out there that the Alcubierre drive does not create paradoxes.This is because the Alcubierre drive creates a "causally disconnected" space when doing FTL.


Offline Celebrimbor

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #110 on: 10/11/2012 12:14 pm »
Google "Alcubierre" and "causal disconnect", and you'll see that there's a conventional wisdom out there that the Alcubierre drive does not create paradoxes.This is because the Alcubierre drive creates a "causally disconnected" space when doing FTL.



If it's causally disconnected then how does one board and alight?  You might be able to one or the other, but if you can do both, its not causally disconnected, right?

Offline Celebrimbor

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #111 on: 10/11/2012 12:32 pm »
Events in spacetime are separated by distance.  Assuming flat space with a (1,-1,-1,-1) signature, this distance is (traveling in the X space direction):

(delta S)^2 = (c * delta T)^2 - (delta X)^2

Something moving at light speed actually travels no distance in spacetime.

Sub light speeds travel positive distance (starting and ending are 'timelike' separated), FTL travels negative distance (starting and ending are 'spacelike' separated).

I can imagine moving 0 distance, but I have trouble with the idea of travelling negative distance.  No doubt you can on Discworld...


Offline xanmarus

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #112 on: 10/11/2012 07:44 pm »
What about faster than light expansion of universe? Same effect, no time travel.

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #113 on: 10/11/2012 11:59 pm »
Google "Alcubierre" and "causal disconnect", and you'll see that there's a conventional wisdom out there that the Alcubierre drive does not create paradoxes.This is because the Alcubierre drive creates a "causally disconnected" space when doing FTL.

If it's causally disconnected then how does one board and alight?  You might be able to one or the other, but if you can do both, its not causally disconnected, right?

The Alcubierre drive is itself so far from "conventional wisdom" that you would need an Alcubierre drive to reach it from conventional wisdom. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
"Though the amount of energy required is no longer thought to be unobtainably large, there is no method to create a warp bubble in a region that does not already contain one, and no method has been found to exit the warp-bubble after reaching a destination."

haha. That certainly is causally disconnected and would solve any paradox :)

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #114 on: 10/12/2012 12:11 am »
What about faster than light expansion of universe? Same effect, no time travel.

I don't know anything about it in general (except that it is generally accepted) but it would not suffer from the paradox I described because that requires information traveling faster than light in both directions. For the expansion of the universe, you are only being carried in one direction, away from everybody else.

btw, as I have said a few times, people who admit this paradox exists are prepared to play around with additional contraints that deal with it. You don't need to surrender your FTL dream quite yet, at least not on the basis of the evidence presented on this forum.

However be prepared to accept that if FTL ever does appear, it is going to have some sort of weird conditions on its use. Exploring these can be fun.
« Last Edit: 10/12/2012 12:25 am by KelvinZero »

Offline Celebrimbor

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #115 on: 10/12/2012 06:52 am »
Nothing stops space from expanding superluminally. Which reminds me of a way to travel ftl: send a probe on a path that gets arbitrarily close to the event horizon of a spinning black hole. There is a region where free fall is ftl, as measured from far away.

I guess an observer at infinity would see the probe leave before it arrives?

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #116 on: 10/12/2012 09:05 am »

If it's causally disconnected then how does one board and alight?  You might be able to one or the other, but if you can do both, its not causally disconnected, right?

Gee, if my car can travel 120mph, then how will I get inside or leave?  :P
If an airplane can travel 300pmh, then how does one board or alight?   ::)

Heck, when people are able to board 300mph planes everyday, then it must be quite a sight to see!



Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #117 on: 10/12/2012 10:41 am »
Nothing stops space from expanding superluminally. Which reminds me of a way to travel ftl: send a probe on a path that gets arbitrarily close to the event horizon of a spinning black hole. There is a region where free fall is ftl, as measured from far away.

I guess an observer at infinity would see the probe leave before it arrives?
Only variable "c" theories, like the one from Joao Mageuijo, allow superluminal expansion speed. In fact, the whole theory was thought to resolve the horizon problem.

Offline Celebrimbor

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #118 on: 10/12/2012 10:50 am »

If it's causally disconnected then how does one board and alight?  You might be able to one or the other, but if you can do both, its not causally disconnected, right?

Gee, if my car can travel 120mph, then how will I get inside or leave?  :P
If an airplane can travel 300pmh, then how does one board or alight?   ::)

Heck, when people are able to board 300mph planes everyday, then it must be quite a sight to see!




I don't see what you are getting at...

Offline Celebrimbor

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #119 on: 10/12/2012 10:55 am »
Nothing stops space from expanding superluminally. Which reminds me of a way to travel ftl: send a probe on a path that gets arbitrarily close to the event horizon of a spinning black hole. There is a region where free fall is ftl, as measured from far away.

I guess an observer at infinity would see the probe leave before it arrives?
Only variable "c" theories, like the one from Joao Mageuijo, allow superluminal expansion speed. In fact, the whole theory was thought to resolve the horizon problem.

No, I think variable "c" theories are an alternative to superluminal inflation.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #120 on: 10/12/2012 01:09 pm »
The Alcubierre drive is itself so far from "conventional wisdom" that you would need an Alcubierre drive to reach it from conventional wisdom.

Dang.

I wisht I had said that.

Nothing stops space from expanding superluminally.

Actually, I sent out a memo on that some years ago.  You must not have gotten it...

Look at me!  I'm leaving before I got here!
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Tony Ostinato

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #121 on: 10/18/2012 09:44 am »
sorry if this is off topic but something i saw in the 80s continues to nag at me and i kinda wondered if this warp drive idea might be related somehow.

basically i saw what i thought was a satellite make a 90 degree instant angle.

is this something the warp drive concept would allow? is the ship within the warp experiencing inertia?

my unsatisfying explanation is that 2 satellites crossed paths and caught the light in such a way as to create the illusion, but i sure couldnt see any 2nd satellite.

thanks for your tolerance

Online 93143

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #122 on: 10/18/2012 06:12 pm »

If it's causally disconnected then how does one board and alight?  You might be able to one or the other, but if you can do both, its not causally disconnected, right?

Gee, if my car can travel 120mph, then how will I get inside or leave?  :P
If an airplane can travel 300pmh, then how does one board or alight?   ::)

Heck, when people are able to board 300mph planes everyday, then it must be quite a sight to see!

I don't see what you are getting at...

If at some point in the future we choose to build a warp-driven starship, it stands to reason that we will have devised a method of generating a warp field where none existed previously, as well as a method of collapsing it when we want to stop.

Boarding happens before the warp field is generated.  Alighting happens after it is collapsed.  The passengers don't have to pass through the event horizon of a warp field at any point.

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #123 on: 01/06/2013 10:23 am »
Recent nifty little Podcast I came across talking about that Alcubierre Warp Drive stuff:

http://archive.thespaceshow.com/shows/1923-BWB-2013-01-04.mp3

So is Paul March around? I'd read about some recent new comments about being able to increase the boost factor to extremely high levels by manipulating certain parameters.

I also wanted to ask what tool he's using for his calculations. Is this a spreadsheet which anybody can download?

Offline mboeller

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #124 on: 01/06/2013 02:23 pm »
look here:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/01/general-parameters-of-alcubierre-warp.html

Please follow also the link to the polywell-forum

Offline netdragon

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #125 on: 01/07/2013 04:00 am »
Hi everyone,

I'm still trying to digest this whole thing and will need some help understanding how the capacitor produces the cassimer effect and how that replaces the need for negative mass. So, two things:
1. What is going on with the capacitor ring to produce the cassimer effect? For a layman. I'm a computer scientist that's only taken a couple EE courses and a quantum computing course and physics courses, and I play around with electrical circuits as a hobby, so I am not your average person out there but I am also not Harold White or not even a physicist or electrical engineer. I will get lost if you give me a bottom-up description. I would really like a top-down description of how the capacitor ring works and then will ask questions to understand the details once I get the big picture.
2. Also, is the idea that the cassimer effect produces "negative mass" between the plates relative to some reference frame air-tight, or is that what is trying to be figured out with the experiment?

Now, I wanted to discuss something that has really bugged me while reading the thread. It seems that there is a serious misunderstanding of causality by some people commenting. First of all, absolute causality is not important in science as far as I understand it. It is always relative to a reference frame. Additionally, I am almost positive that FTL information travel is only limited when locality restrictions apply. As far as I understand, the effect being discussed already violates locality, does it not? Finally, I think with the Bell Inequality solution of the EPR Paradox, haven't we abandoned absolute causality as a requirement? I thought causality already died a slow death after Einstein was no longer around to defend it. :-)

I would also assume that when two sides of the universe are inflating apart from each other at speeds faster than light, then all light in those two sides of the universe are moving relative to each other at FTL speeds as well. Normally, they would only be moving only at c relative to each other (like in the normal situation of shining a light from two trains moving apart). However, when SPACE itself actually expands, weird things happen. Again, this doesn't break any rules since the light isn't going faster than c, only the space between it is.

So from my perspective, if a craft is sheltered from space-time that the light signal is travelling through by a bubble of different space-time, then re-enters the same space-time somewhere else, causality has not been violated. You just outran some signal and if you managed to intercept it, you just prevented your homework grade from reaching your home in the alpha centauri system before your parents could see it. Stinks for them, but no laws of physics broken.

But I'm just a layman, so set me straight if I'm wrong.


So is Paul March around? I'd read about some recent new comments about being able to increase the boost factor to extremely high levels by manipulating certain parameters.

Isn't Paul March studying ME/Woodward Effect for sublight reactionless propulsion, not warp experiment? I don't think it directly applies to the
Cassimer effect used in this experiment (though it will be useful for getting a spacecraft someday up to 0.1c, which may be even more challenging than the boost turns out to be).

I was thinking over the last couple days it may be worthwhile anyway to see if he has gotten some info on the warp experiment through osmosis. He's also enough of an EE genius to explain how the capacitor ring is supposed to work in this experiment, even if he's working on something else right now. I've been waiting for my registration on the polywell forum to complete for over 24 hrs now :-)



One thing I'm concerned about is because this is controversial stuff, and because of how peer-review works and what-not, that the experimental progress and results may not be shared until it's been verified and verified and verified. Think about Pons & Fleischman, who weren't careful about that, helping set back our understanding of a real effect (LENR) for almost two decades (though they can't take all the blame). I think that's the ultimate case study of why scientists are extra careful now with controversial things. However, if that ends up being the case, it'd be a real shame because we won't be able to follow along.

It's nice that Paul March is being so open about his ME progress. I wish the warp stuff can get the same kind of love.

I'm hoping they post progress of the experiment with pictures on, etc, on the JPL site. I'm sure they can do it without posting any extraordinary claims that haven't been verified by other parties repeating the experiment setup. Radio silence on something this important just drives me crazy. Yes, I'm impatient :-)
« Last Edit: 01/07/2013 05:29 am by netdragon »

Offline netdragon

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #126 on: 01/07/2013 04:29 am »
sorry if this is off topic but something i saw in the 80s continues to nag at me and i kinda wondered if this warp drive idea might be related somehow.

basically i saw what i thought was a satellite make a 90 degree instant angle.

<offtopic>I saw that kind of thing before in 2004 or 2005 and so did my wife. I like your explanation since it's something I hadn't thought of, however I just don't see how the light would catch it differently if it's virtually in the same place. I mean think about how careful you'd have to be on angling of the plates to pull something like that off, tumbling both satellites at the same rate so that one completely stops reflecting the light at the same exact time as the other starts as they both cross in the sky at exactly the same place.

I guess you could possibly pull out info on satellite positions for that date and throw it into a software program like a 3d satellite tracker or Google Earth to see if your explanation works out. I think there are programs that show known satellite tracks, but it'd have to be good enough to let you view from the perspective of where you were on the surface or at least extrapolate that. Once you find two satellites crossing, you're 75% there. Then you'd have to explore their pitch/yaw. I just feel like you'd be wasting your time and the likelihood of this is very small.

If you figure out how to test your idea and verify what you saw was two satellites crossing paths, you can see if something applies the same way looking West-Northwest from rte 7 just north of Rutland, VT in the winter of 2004-2005.

The thing that really bugs me about what I saw is I have seen satellites move through the sky before, and this was either too low and close to the lakes or it was too far off in the West-Northwest sky (such as over the North pacific) to be travelling as fast as it seemed to be travelling. so if it were a satellite, it'd have to be over the lakes and then it'd be too low. It was moving as fast as a meteor and crossed about 1/4 of the sky in a couple seconds, but I've never seen a meteor change directions 90 degrees like that.

However, your satellite hypothesis just gave me an idea. What if it was two meteors in very auspicious positions, with one fizzing out as the other appeared. I had thought of meteors before, but until you mentioned the two satellite thing, I hadn't thought of a two-meteor hypothesis. Again, not very likely and sadly in this case almost impossible to verify (the best we could do was determine if a meteor shower was visible West-Northwest from that location)

How fast was yours going? Would the two meteor hypothesis work? Anything to not consider the possibility it was military or not of this world, eh?  ???</offtopic>

Now, for your question...


is this something the warp drive concept would allow? is the ship within the warp experiencing inertia?

I'm a layman, but I'll try to venture a guess. From my perspective: No, and no, as far as I understand. I believe that to switch directions, the warp field would need to be shut off (which those inside the craft cannot do), then the ship would have to change direction with conventional propulsion, then they'd have to turn the warp field back on. So it would not be instantaneous or fluid but appear very hurky-jerky. Furthermore, the radiation coming from it and spatial distortions would probably have ruined a lot of peoples' days.

No, the ship within the field would not be experiencing inertia while the warp bubble was engaged. When it was shut off to change directions with conventional propulsion, then yes, the passengers would experience inertia while it changed direction. However, due to the boost coefficient, the ship could probably be going really slowly when it changed direction then zoom off as soon as the field was turned back on but unfortunately, you'd see it almost stop in that case.

It seems much more likely to me that if it were a craft of some kind, it'd be using conventional propulsion with some form of anti-gravity to fight inertia. Strapped into a chair on a controllable spinning arm may be good enough. Well, technically it's centrifugal force, but it would mimic anti-gravity as long as you were seated or standing.
« Last Edit: 01/07/2013 05:15 am by netdragon »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #127 on: 01/07/2013 01:55 pm »
sorry if this is off topic but something i saw in the 80s continues to nag at me and i kinda wondered if this warp drive idea might be related somehow.

basically i saw what i thought was a satellite make a 90 degree instant angle.

Hah! 

I saw something in the night sky in the nineties, which may be similar.  I noticed an "airplane" moving across the fixed background of stars.   Suddenly the airplane flashed noticeably brighter and stopped its motion across the night sky.  For about thirty seconds the bright light stayed stationary in the sky, while fading.

I took it to be a hot shot jet fighter suddenly going straight up, I guess with a different afterburner fuel making the exhaust quite visible to the naked eye?

A little part of me wanted to believe that it was more than this.  I told that little part of me not to believe in aliens until after they have opened their embassy in DC.

But we do have skunk labs, and all engineering advancements are not known to the public.  Ya gotta wonder if we have some really hot airplanes parked here and there around the country.
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Offline netdragon

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #128 on: 01/07/2013 02:32 pm »
Everyone, as a follow-up to David's question regarding whether seeing something change direction 90 degrees mid-flight could be this phenomena (which I tried to answer above as a big negativo since it'd have to stop) I just thought of a question about seeing inside the warp bubble to begin with.

Can you even see inside the warp bubble? Since the space of the bubble wall itself would not be the same as inside and outside the bubble, light wouldn't pass through it in a straight line, that I'm pretty sure of.

So what would the inside of the bubble look like from the outside? Would light just pass around the bubble completely and therefore you see absolutely nothing there?

For that matter, what would the outside look like from the inside?
« Last Edit: 01/07/2013 02:35 pm by netdragon »

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #129 on: 01/07/2013 09:36 pm »
I think somebody said you as a passenger would see a blue-shifted haze towards the front and a red-shifted haze towards the back.

Offline llanitedave

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #130 on: 01/14/2013 08:51 pm »
If a warp-drive vehicle is ever launched, I hope they christen it by breaking a Klein bottle across its bow.
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Offline IRobot

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #131 on: 01/14/2013 10:03 pm »
I think somebody said you as a passenger would see a blue-shifted haze towards the front and a red-shifted haze towards the back.
Eventually you see nothing in front and everything red shifted in the back. The cool thing is that you can estimate your speed based on the redshift.

Offline netdragon

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #132 on: 01/17/2013 02:08 am »
All very interesting regarding the way space should look while going "warp". There's also an interesting new article: http://www.space.com/19268-star-wars-hyperspace-physics-reality.html though I don't know if it is referring to the Harold White type bubble.

Still, what would the bubble look like from the outside?

Offline sanman

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #133 on: 01/19/2013 02:35 pm »
This line was interesting:

Quote
And other light, such as the pervasive glow of the universe called the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is left over from the Big Bang, would be shifted out of the microwave range and into the visible spectrum, the students found.

So then I guess there'd be no blackness in the background, but possibly redness upto even blueness, depending on how fast you were going?

Btw, has anybody heard of this "Tajmar Effect" which was apparently measured by Martin Tajmar some years ago?

http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.3266

It seems to be related to "frame-dragging"
« Last Edit: 01/19/2013 03:11 pm by sanman »

Offline Cinder

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #134 on: 01/19/2013 10:19 pm »
Did not Tajmar come to definitely rule it out as instrument noise?
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Offline quixote

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #135 on: 01/20/2013 06:57 am »
Did not Tajmar come to definitely rule it out as instrument noise?

Yes, in this paper.

Offline xanmarus

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #136 on: 08/26/2013 06:55 pm »
Update from Starship congress 2013
Sonny White presentation start from 13:00


Looks like it doesn't work.

« Last Edit: 08/29/2013 04:06 am by xanmarus »

Offline aceshigh

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #137 on: 08/28/2013 06:39 pm »
even if it did not work, it still doesnt rule out Dr White´s ideas on how to reduce the negative mass required to generate the warp bubble.

what it refutes is Dr White´s ideas on HOW to generate the negative energy/mass to create the warp bubble.

Dr. White is a proponent of ZPF and he intended to create some tiny negative energy with a laser. Again, ZPF did not work.


However, by using Dr Woodward ideas for a Mach Thruster, it would still be possible to generate negative mass, and use the geometrics of Sonny White to reduce the needed negative mass.

forumer GIThruster gave a good explanation about it at Talk Polywell forum

Quote
Sonny's QVF model would predict that a DC field can perturb spacetime. He's trying to sell the notion that a DC field will under certain conditions promote what is necessary and sufficient for a warp field.

...

What we know from Jim Woodward's work is that we aren't after producing large negative energies, such as in all the Incorrect ZPF stuff, but rather, we need to be looking at producing large negative masses, as in M-E theory.

So Sonny's work only impinges upon Woodward's work. Woodward is making huge claims about how to produce very large negative masses, albeit for very short periods of time.

Long story short, Sonny's QVF model and Jim's M-E theory are not in accord. They make very different predictions and it is completely wrong to say that they are "opposite sides of the issue" as many ZPF adherents have said over the years.

Simple but weird: ZPF physics and M-E physics CANNOT both be correct. INERTIA comes from EITHER Mach's Principle: from gravity, OR the ZPF continuum.

All data to date says inertia is the consequence of gravity and thus that M-E theory is correct. ZPF theory and Sonny's QVF model are both incorrect.

Hope that helps.

Offline cordwainer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #138 on: 08/31/2013 09:12 pm »
Unless of course you believe gravity is a by-product of ZPF in which case both theories would be correct from an observer-verse point of view.

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #139 on: 10/14/2013 11:24 pm »
Though there is argument over the exact correspondence between certain Casimir related phenomenon and actual negative energy and mass Casimir forces can emulate some of the effects of negative energy and mass. Squeezed light also can briefly produce negative energy states. There are probably several other ways to generate negative energy like states. but the question is is emulation enough to get the desired negative (or is it really positive) deformation of the space time fabric that is desired and can we then generate enough of it to get the deformation needed to make a warp work for big massive star ship?

in addition to Casimir forces (an a similar quantum effect i have since read about but cannot remember the details of) and squeezed light there are other possibilities.

1.  Good old gravity if as some lab results (not to mention General Relativity says it can) are indicating it can be synthesized via electronic means should be able to emulate it via careful placement of it's "center of mass" relative to the ship. this is true even if there is no such thing as an anti-gravity force at all and only regular gravity exists.

2.  Mirror matter, also mirror magnetic fields and other forms of mirror energy. it is possible that mirror stuff might either be or be able to stand in for negative energy or mass. if so it is really really annoying that it is possibly everywhere on the planet and we can't touch it yet. but we could find a way. for example making a magnetic apparatus and then applying the proper techniques to transform it into it's mirror counterpart. if we can do that it would be pathetically simple to produce enough negative energy for a warp drive because the power we can put out with regular electromagnetism is prodigious.

3. actual dark matter might be negative energy in nature since it is accused of causing the expansion of space time anyway. we don't know where to find any at the moment and the "zeta reticulans" won't give us any. (the bastiges.) but we might find some somewhere nearby if we thoroughly explore the solar system. 

What they need to do is find a way to make exotic matter.
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #140 on: 10/14/2013 11:47 pm »


Looks like it doesn't work.

Dr White said there were some preliminary indications it might be happening. He said that they were making improvements to their systems to increase sensitivity.

for now the results though possibly postive were not deviating far enough to give them acceptable sigma deviation to declare definitively. as someone said extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and all...

however i say even if he did show a space warp with his interferometry it would not be extraordinary because all mass and all energy deforms space. if your detector is sensitive enough you should be able to detect the regular deformation of space caused by even a proton or a laser beam or frame dragging. i think frame dragging has been detected by laser ring experiments for example. detecting a warp is not especially exciting unless i am missing something.

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Offline JasonAW3

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #141 on: 10/15/2013 05:52 pm »
If I understand the concept correctly, doesn't this sort of drive require a sort of 'frame dragging' similar to what is produced by a planet's rotation, but in a sort of infalling, almost black hole fashion in front of a craft and a sort of white hole expansion at the rear of the craft?

     It seems to me that Mass seems to cause a distortion of Space by stretching it by its' very prescence.

     So, If you could funnel a large enough mass inwards towards a point at the front of a craft at near light velocities, and expand the mass outward at near light velocities from a point at the rear of teh craft, one should be able to create a distortion quite similar to the Albercrombie Wrap Drive, but without needing to use negative matter. Hyper intense magnetic fields might do the trick using some form of charged high energy plasma.

You'd still lose some of the mass from the plasma as you go, but it'd likely be replenished from material collected in the "black hole" in front, and could be agumented by additional mass from the craft's own stores.

I'm likely oversimplifying this, but it seems to follow the Theory of Relativity and Basic Gravity Theory, so I thought I'd put it out there for discussion.

Just a thought...

Jason
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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #142 on: 10/15/2013 06:27 pm »
...Albercrombie Wrap Drive...

Fab typo!

cheers, Martin

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #143 on: 10/15/2013 09:00 pm »
well hopefully we can create gravity with out having the troublesome bother of moving massive objects around to do it though. :)

and "let he who is without typo cast the first keyboard!"  ;)
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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #144 on: 10/15/2013 09:27 pm »
and "let he who is without typo cast the first keyboard!"  ;)

Nice!

cheers, Martin

Offline JasonAW3

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #145 on: 10/15/2013 09:28 pm »
well hopefully we can create gravity with out having the troublesome bother of moving massive objects around to do it though. :)

and "let he who is without typo cast the first keyboard!"  ;)

Whoops!
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Offline JasonAW3

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #146 on: 10/15/2013 09:34 pm »
well hopefully we can create gravity with out having the troublesome bother of moving massive objects around to do it though. :)

and "let he who is without typo cast the first keyboard!"  ;)

Actually, I wasn't thinking so much as INITIALLY huge masses, but as basic relativistic theory states, as an object, (in this case a plasma) is accelerated to a significant fraction of the velocity of light, its' effective mass increases exponentially, so, if one were to be able to create a looped magnetic field, intense enough with a pulsed wavefront traveling at near the velocity of light, it should cause significant frame draging in the manner that I have stated.  (Mind you the magnetic field would be spherical with the north and south poles being on opposite sides of the sphere, acting as inlet and exhaust of the plasma flow).

Jason
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #147 on: 10/16/2013 12:30 am »
well hopefully we can create gravity with out having the troublesome bother of moving massive objects around to do it though. :)

and "let he who is without typo cast the first keyboard!"  ;)

Actually, I wasn't thinking so much as INITIALLY huge masses, but as basic relativistic theory states, as an object, (in this case a plasma) is accelerated to a significant fraction of the velocity of light, its' effective mass increases exponentially, so, if one were to be able to create a looped magnetic field, intense enough with a pulsed wavefront traveling at near the velocity of light, it should cause significant frame draging in the manner that I have stated.  (Mind you the magnetic field would be spherical with the north and south poles being on opposite sides of the sphere, acting as inlet and exhaust of the plasma flow).

Jason

So a combination of an M2P2 like thing and a bussard Ramjet? but would the ship and the flow region be in separate frames of reference? so would the area of relativistically created mass/gravity appear that way to an observer on the ship? or would it to someone observing from several thousand kilometers away? relativity can be kind of confusing. Thats why people think it completely rules out FTL when it does not do so globally but only locally as far as i remember...
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Offline cordwainer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #148 on: 10/16/2013 01:25 am »
Cool idea to just accelerate enough particles to relativistic speeds until you get enough mass for your "warp bubble". Probably would require a large amount of energy and a large amount of relativistic mass to make it practical.  Of course anything in front of that accelerated mass would get vaporized and release cosmic rays in all directions.

I would tend to think a warp bubble would be invisible and unable to react with the "normal universe", light and matter would just go through it like a ghost. Except at the "event horizon" of the "naked singularity" in front of the bubble. Of course you could make that event horizon extremely small. I would think that causal disconnection would not effect boarding as that would occur before the effect occurs, problem is how do you turn the bubble off once you reach your destination. You have to make your bubble a tunnel and turn it off somehow at the destination. In other words the ship doesn't turn off the bubble your "stargate" stationed in another star system turns it on and off. Your warp bubble might have a very contracted tunnel connecting to the stargate that can be widened to swallow a ship then generated around the ship like a tapered cone, allowing for a very small connection to "normal space". If such a connection is quantum sized then I imagine any effects from normal space would be minimal like being in a "stasis field", time would appear to move very slowly. Since you could only use the tunnel in one direction you wouldn't run into the causal violation of arriving before you left, you would just arrive faster than light. You couldn't bend the tunnel to send something into the past because that would mean building your event horizon at the same or nearly the same location as the object you are transporting, either destroying the object or making it very difficult to get your field to taper to the correct proportions (the edges of the field would ten to intersect if your tunnel bends too much) thus destroying the tunnel. Problem would be the walls of the  bubble might eventually push up against your ship as they contract, Big Boom! Your ship would have to probably create it's own warp-bubble or some kind of reactive shielding(ionizing gas gets vaporized by warp bubble and pushes against reaction plates on the hull thus pushing the vehicle closer to the central safe zone of the bubble) to keep it from being crushed. Also opening the tunnel to allow your ship into the tunnel would be fraught with the same problem as turning the tunnel off, big wash of radiation. Might be useful for FTL communication though, your transmitter would only have to survive long enough to transmit a message to a receiver located near your star gate. Build the receiver to be exactly centered in the "eye of the storm" of your tunnel. For another SG1 reference you could build a really tough armored "iris-like" shield to protect your receiver from radiation wash. Probably want locate your receiver some distance away and have some type of reactive armor and maybe electromagnetic deflection as well. Again doesn't technically violate causality in Einsteinian terms because either endpoint of the tunnel must be in different locals and would therefor have slightly different frames of reference. Technically any FTL technology does violate causality on quantum level when you start talking about "global causality" or a constant frame of reference. Thing is that there are a number of quantum phenomena that are observable that do violate such musings. Also, it is possible in theory to design FTL devices that don't violate causality from a Einsteinian special relativity point of view, otherwise as noted before super-inflation would be a violation of causality.

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #149 on: 10/16/2013 01:35 am »
The Way Dr White ( I think it was him but it could have been another presenter) described the interaction of particles coming from the front from normal space into the bubble fringe they would enter with whatever velocity they had normally. (He used zero for that figure) they would be effected while traveling in the area of the warp field but the area inside the bubble itself is in another batch of normal space so when they exit the warp bubble boundary to the interior of the bubble thier speed would again be what it was before entering the area of compressed space that makes up the skin of the bubble itself. it was either Dr White or another of the presenters at that icarus international star ship conference.

EDIT:  Whoever it was used very convincing arguments and mathematics to debunk both the warp speed impact problem and the lethal blue shift gamma ray crispy critters problem. I do not think that they directly attacked the particle and photon accumulation or dis-communication problem but by extension of the arguments presented neither of those things could occur either.

Also the illustrations Dr White used to explain how the ring produces a warp region didn't strike me as a completely closed off bubble so much as a tunnel anyway. its certainly permeable to stuff coming into the bubble from outside for example. so it's not like the nearly closed off inviolate bubble that Alcubierre seemed to describe.
« Last Edit: 10/16/2013 01:46 am by Stormbringer »
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #150 on: 10/16/2013 08:14 am »



Actually, I wasn't thinking so much as INITIALLY huge masses, but as basic relativistic theory states, as an object, (in this case a plasma) is accelerated to a significant fraction of the velocity of light, its' effective mass increases exponentially, so, if one were to be able to create a looped magnetic field, intense enough with a pulsed wavefront traveling at near the velocity of light, it should cause significant frame draging in the manner that I have stated.  (Mind you the magnetic field would be spherical with the north and south poles being on opposite sides of the sphere, acting as inlet and exhaust of the plasma flow).

Jason

something like a bias drive?

Quote
Pitch and bias

One proposed method of achieving a diametric drive, or possibly a disjunction drive, which was studied in the BPP was called the pitch drive. This has been described as involving a hypothetical disjoint field which would eliminate the need for the field to be generated on the spacecraft itself.

One specific proposal for such a pitch drive was called the bias drive. According to this proposal, if it were possible to locally alter the value of the gravitational constant G in front of and behind the craft, one could create a bias drive. While the gravitational constant is a fundamental physical constant in general relativity, the Brans–Dicke theory of gravitation does in a sense allow for a locally varying gravitational constant, so the notion of a locally varying gravitational constant has been seriously discussed in mainstream physics[citation needed]. It has been claimed[by whom?] that one problem with the concept of a bias drive was that it might create a singularity in the field's gradient located inside the vehicle.

The bias drive and pitch drive is expressed qualitatively in mathematics [4] as :

V = ( xBe ^{..r^2} + 1) [ - G(m/r)]

and

V = [( - Gm)/r] + ( - xAe ^{..r^2})

respectively.

where :

    e^{..r^2} is the Gaussian distribution over r\! dimensionless

    A\! is the magnitude of hypothetical pitch drive effect

    B\! is the magnitude of hypothetical bias drive effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Propulsion_Physics_Program
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Offline cordwainer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #151 on: 10/17/2013 11:51 pm »
Good point a "donut" shaped field would probably not create the radiation issues that a closed or single opening field would create. Both a donut field and Krasniak tube like the one I described would not necessarily have as much of an issue with incoming matter impinging on the walls of the field, and thermal heating of the inside of the bubble might occur very slowly due to the fact that radiation would be entering through a direct route from normal space along with possible temporal effects of the inside of the bubble being mostly disconnected from normal space. We can't really know what the effects of or conditions that a warp bubble might create any better than we could have guessed at the effects of breaking the sound barrier. That being said an open tube or  rotating donut field would still end up with some incoming matter reacting with the field in some way, which could lead to creation of dangerous radiation or even "kinetic" effects. It is highly unlikely to have a zero effect as White would claim, "hot spots" along the bubbles walls would develop over time.

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #152 on: 10/18/2013 02:02 am »
i will find the presentation on those effects. it was quite convincing. it will take a while to find it. when i do i will link it and give a starting time hack for the relevant portion of the video.
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #153 on: 10/18/2013 07:34 am »
well i went through Dr White's presentation completely and it was not him that made the presentation with the refutation of the relativistic impact problem and the fatal blue shift, communication disjunction and forward lobe photon sequestration problem.  and so far my skimming method of looking for it has yielded nothing because several of the clips are hours (one is at least 11 hours continuous coverage) long and thus the slider bar precision is less than optimal. but i will keep trying.
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Offline JasonAW3

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #154 on: 10/18/2013 05:27 pm »
Cool idea to just accelerate enough particles to relativistic speeds until you get enough mass for your "warp bubble". Probably would require a large amount of energy and a large amount of relativistic mass to make it practical.  Of course anything in front of that accelerated mass would get vaporized and release cosmic rays in all directions.

I would tend to think a warp bubble would be invisible and unable to react with the "normal universe", light and matter would just go through it like a ghost. Except at the "event horizon" of the "naked singularity" in front of the bubble. Of course you could make that event horizon extremely small. I would think that causal disconnection would not effect boarding as that would occur before the effect occurs, problem is how do you turn the bubble off once you reach your destination. You have to make your bubble a tunnel and turn it off somehow at the destination. In other words the ship doesn't turn off the bubble your "stargate" stationed in another star system turns it on and off. Your warp bubble might have a very contracted tunnel connecting to the stargate that can be widened to swallow a ship then generated around the ship like a tapered cone, allowing for a very small connection to "normal space". If such a connection is quantum sized then I imagine any effects from normal space would be minimal like being in a "stasis field", time would appear to move very slowly. Since you could only use the tunnel in one direction you wouldn't run into the causal violation of arriving before you left, you would just arrive faster than light. You couldn't bend the tunnel to send something into the past because that would mean building your event horizon at the same or nearly the same location as the object you are transporting, either destroying the object or making it very difficult to get your field to taper to the correct proportions (the edges of the field would ten to intersect if your tunnel bends too much) thus destroying the tunnel. Problem would be the walls of the  bubble might eventually push up against your ship as they contract, Big Boom! Your ship would have to probably create it's own warp-bubble or some kind of reactive shielding(ionizing gas gets vaporized by warp bubble and pushes against reaction plates on the hull thus pushing the vehicle closer to the central safe zone of the bubble) to keep it from being crushed. Also opening the tunnel to allow your ship into the tunnel would be fraught with the same problem as turning the tunnel off, big wash of radiation. Might be useful for FTL communication though, your transmitter would only have to survive long enough to transmit a message to a receiver located near your star gate. Build the receiver to be exactly centered in the "eye of the storm" of your tunnel. For another SG1 reference you could build a really tough armored "iris-like" shield to protect your receiver from radiation wash. Probably want locate your receiver some distance away and have some type of reactive armor and maybe electromagnetic deflection as well. Again doesn't technically violate causality in Einsteinian terms because either endpoint of the tunnel must be in different locals and would therefor have slightly different frames of reference. Technically any FTL technology does violate causality on quantum level when you start talking about "global causality" or a constant frame of reference. Thing is that there are a number of quantum phenomena that are observable that do violate such musings. Also, it is possible in theory to design FTL devices that don't violate causality from a Einsteinian special relativity point of view, otherwise as noted before super-inflation would be a violation of causality.

Cord?  Paragraphs, please?  Kind of hard to follow what you're saying in a big block.

Jason
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Offline JasonAW3

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #155 on: 10/18/2013 05:46 pm »
Good point a "donut" shaped field would probably not create the radiation issues that a closed or single opening field would create. Both a donut field and Krasniak tube like the one I described would not necessarily have as much of an issue with incoming matter impinging on the walls of the field, and thermal heating of the inside of the bubble might occur very slowly due to the fact that radiation would be entering through a direct route from normal space along with possible temporal effects of the inside of the bubble being mostly disconnected from normal space. We can't really know what the effects of or conditions that a warp bubble might create any better than we could have guessed at the effects of breaking the sound barrier. That being said an open tube or  rotating donut field would still end up with some incoming matter reacting with the field in some way, which could lead to creation of dangerous radiation or even "kinetic" effects. It is highly unlikely to have a zero effect as White would claim, "hot spots" along the bubbles walls would develop over time.

Actually, the bubble would, effectively, by 'invisible' to an outside observer, as you've effectively wrapped the craft itself in a pocket of Einstienian Space.

However, Reference time and Frame time (Time outside the bubble and time on the craft itself) should remain the same as the Bubble itself is what is actually doing the movement, thus time for the bubble itself is effected by the Time Dilation effect, (due to the relativistic mass surrounding the craft and creating the bubble) while keeping Frame and Reference times fairly close together.

    Some distortion as in lengthening or compressing the amount of Frame time relative to Reference time may occure due to intense enough gravtity effects on the bubble, but the craft itself would NOT be able to go backwards in time due to this drive.  (Although going against the spin of a singularity at high velocity withiin the field effect, MIGHT allow this to happen, but Mass conservation rules suggest that you'd wind up on a different timeline).  Don't ask about that last bit, the math behind it hurts my brain... ALOT!

     In addition, the relativist mass being used would also act as a natural shield against radiation, as the vast majority of any radiation encountered would be trapped within the magnetic field and plasma.  Stopping sucha crfat should be relatively simple, (no pun intended) as ramping down the magnetic field and allowing the plasma to dissipate behind the craft. The Plasma would still give a bit of thrust to the craft as the field collapses, and it is assumed during the field collapse that fuel would be shut off to the magnetic containment system.

     As the magnetic field is slowly collapsed, radiation issues should be minimal as the field will still act as a form of Van Allen belts, until the bubble is completely dissipated.

For what it's worth...

Jason
My God!  It's full of universes!

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #156 on: 10/18/2013 10:03 pm »
b mode polarization of the CMBE emerges.

http://www.livescience.com/40549-cosmic-microwave-background-light-inflation.html

this sets the stage for separating out the primordial polarization signatures of early cosmic inflation. if found this will confirm with the strongest evidence yet for inflation. Of Course if they cannot find a signature then that is evidence against cosmic inflation.

This is of course applicable to warp drives because warp theories require inflation as well as contraction of space to work fully. E.g; Alcubierre requires an expanding space metric behind the ship as well as a contracting region in front of the ship. so if no inflation signature is evident then that is a problem for alcubierre and similar schemes.

hopefully we will know soon whether the inflation actually happened.
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #157 on: 10/21/2013 10:34 am »
just going to go ahead and drop this here:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=27462.0

yup; it's already been discussed here but not specifically in the context of this thread i think.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/426281/giant-casimir-effect-predicted-inside-metamaterials/

so a giant casimir effect... but is it live or is it memorex?

« Last Edit: 10/21/2013 10:41 am by Stormbringer »
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Offline mlorrey

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #158 on: 10/26/2013 07:47 pm »
What is important to keep aware of is that Sonny White isn't inventing any new space drive here. He's coopting Jim Woodwards Mach-Lorentz Thruster, trying to rename it with his own, and slapping his own quantum theory on how it works, hoping it sticks with the help of his NASA credibility, over the less well known Dr Woodward. All that White has actually invented is an interferometer for measuring warpage in spacetime generated by the MLT.
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #159 on: 10/27/2013 03:32 am »
there was an article in new scientist today that may be topical. it talks about the nature of time in the universe and how it might be an illusion. it uses a metamaterial two photon model. it is not a fundamental result from an in situ experiment but it still may be instructive:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24473-entangled-toy-universe-shows-time-may-be-an-illusion.html#.UmyKixDjtaw

in it it says that the appearance of the flow of time may not be applicable outside the normal universe to an outside observer compared to an inside observer. as you know space warps and wormholes can result in closed space like loops which are de facto time travel under many circumstances. this is cause for physicists to dismiss space warps as real phenomenon rather than mathematical artifacts. my personal opinion is that things like the causality ordering postulate are more philosophical sensibility than a fact of physics but even so this experiment can offer a way out of the conundrum for those of a differing opinion on the matter.
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Offline su27k

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #160 on: 08/10/2014 03:16 pm »
Dr White did a presentation on the Mars Society conference a few days ago, the first part is about the warp drive interferometer work: http://new.livestream.com/accounts/4950775/events/3217776/videos/58616741

Seems there's non-negative result, although he's not sure if it's a false positive or not.

Offline JasonAW3

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #161 on: 12/15/2014 03:58 pm »
I just had a new thought on the debris and radiation build up ahead of the field effect for this Warp Drive.

From what I have seen, the radiation and debris build up on the "leading edge" of the Warp Field Effect seem to be based upon the craft essentially being stationary in the pocket of space that's being moved.

The solution, as I see it, should be fairly simple.  Move the ship forward in the pocket of space while the pocket is itself is also moving.  This SHOULD allow any buildup of any debris and radiation to saftely dissipate along the sides of the field effect as both the space pocket an craft move in Space.

This might still require the use of a magnetic field around the habitable sections to minimize micrometeor and radiation issues for what actually doesn't dissipate out the sides, but overall, it should eliminate the "nuclear and matter wavefront" that would destroy both the spaccraft and the starsystem you'd be arriving at.  you'd still likely leave a trail of ionized gas and dust, but no "Earth Shattering Kaboom".
« Last Edit: 12/30/2014 04:46 pm by JasonAW3 »
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Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #162 on: 12/21/2014 07:55 am »
The solution, as I see it, should be fairly simple.  Move the ship forward in the pocket of space while the pocket is itself is also moving.  This SHOULD allow any buildup of any debris and radiation to saftely dissipate along the sides of the field effect as both the space pocket an craft move in Space.

Whether the ship is moving within the pocket or not, or even if there is a ship in the pocket or not, is irrelevant.  The buildup of debris and radiation is due to the pocket, not the ship inside it.

Offline Raj2014

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #163 on: 12/21/2014 10:38 am »
With the increase of radiation, have a device, which collects the radiation and put it to use. As for debris, invent deflector shields. That is how it is done in Star Trek. If the was a way to make the warp field have a point at the front to move the debris, similar to a snow plow. How about project a field on the outside edge of the warp bubble to move the debris.   
« Last Edit: 12/28/2014 07:19 pm by Raj2014 »

Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #164 on: 12/21/2014 11:35 am »
I'm a confused site visitor. This is a discussion under "Advanced concepts", so should be serious, yet it is discussing once proposed physics that as far as we know is impossible. So I'll just leave this here for the record:

An Alcubierre field solution does not include the means to put matter traveling faster than the universal speed limit within itself. The solution has the constraint that you somehow create a spacetime region already traveling above the limit.

And if it did include an acceleration means, it would run up against the same exclusion as all other time travel solutions of physics. (See Scott Aaaronsson's publications why those are forbidden, a physics realisation of the old quip "so where are all the time travelers then", with successful tests and all.)

Disregarding the unspecified and impossible bootstrap procedure to break the relativity it builds on, its realizations are constrained to include exotic physics. That by itself is an extraordinary claim, and would need extraordinary evidence. This isn't rocket science. ::)

Offline Ilinca Sergiu

Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #165 on: 12/21/2014 04:12 pm »
I'm a confused site visitor. This is a discussion under "Advanced concepts", so should be serious, yet it is discussing once proposed physics that as far as we know is impossible. So I'll just leave this here for the record:

An Alcubierre field solution does not include the means to put matter traveling faster than the universal speed limit within itself. The solution has the constraint that you somehow create a spacetime region already traveling above the limit.

And if it did include an acceleration means, it would run up against the same exclusion as all other time travel solutions of physics. (See Scott Aaaronsson's publications why those are forbidden, a physics realisation of the old quip "so where are all the time travelers then", with successful tests and all.)

Disregarding the unspecified and impossible bootstrap procedure to break the relativity it builds on, its realizations are constrained to include exotic physics. That by itself is an extraordinary claim, and would need extraordinary evidence. This isn't rocket science. ::)

Sorry Torbjorn Larsson : but to bend space time, it is more efficient than move in this space and time. The authority of the doctor White leaves us no other choice - it is better to move the asphalt under the truck than the truck.

Offline Ilinca Sergiu

Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #166 on: 12/21/2014 04:24 pm »
Question to the moderator.
Why is my like  for the only reasonable person (Torbjorn Larsson)?

Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #167 on: 12/21/2014 09:28 pm »
I'm a confused site visitor. This is a discussion under "Advanced concepts", so should be serious, yet it is discussing once proposed physics that as far as we know is impossible.

You're right, it is impossible according to our current understanding of physics, and you give a good summary of the most obvious reasons why.  I think all these points have been made before in this thread.

"Advanced concepts" means anything in the range from unlikely to impossible.  If you don't want to read about things that are impossible as far as we know, you should avoid reading "Advanced concepts".  Having this section keeps these topics out of the rest of the forum.

I wouldn't mind a split of "Advanced concepts" into two sections: "Advanced concepts consistent with known physics" and "Advanced concepts requiring new physics".

Sorry Torbjorn Larsson : but to bend space time, it is more efficient than move in this space and time. The authority of the doctor White leaves us no other choice - it is better to move the asphalt under the truck than the truck.

Less efficient but possible always beats more efficient but impossible.

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #168 on: 12/21/2014 11:11 pm »
..."Advanced concepts" means anything in the range from unlikely to impossible.  If you don't want to read about things that are impossible as far as we know, you should avoid reading "Advanced concepts"...

So, if you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not top it off with a quick read-through of the "Advanced concepts" section...?

:D
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Offline kch

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #169 on: 12/21/2014 11:19 pm »
..."Advanced concepts" means anything in the range from unlikely to impossible.  If you don't want to read about things that are impossible as far as we know, you should avoid reading "Advanced concepts"...

So, if you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not top it off with a quick read-through of the "Advanced concepts" section...?

:D

Somewhere, Douglas Adams is smiling ...  ;D

Offline Raj2014

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #170 on: 12/28/2014 07:24 pm »
Found a of Dr Harold Sonny White discusses a couple of advanced propulsion concepts that may one day help us reach the stars.

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #171 on: 12/28/2014 08:32 pm »
An article on tachyons and how to find them. Unfortunately these tachyons are not of any use for FTL travel. It might be possibly useful for comms though. and if tachyons turn out to be real it adds to the body of knowledge pertenant to FTL in the future even if it is not directly applicable now.

http://phys.org/news/2014-12-faster-than-light-particles.html
« Last Edit: 12/28/2014 08:33 pm by Stormbringer »
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Offline Vultur

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #172 on: 12/29/2014 02:30 am »
(See Scott Aaaronsson's publications why those are forbidden, a physics realisation of the old quip "so where are all the time travelers then", with successful tests and all.)

Can you link to something about that? I had thought the possibility of closed timelike curves & other causality violations within relativity was still unresolved, with a "chronology protection conjecture" that would prohibit them proposed but not proved?

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #173 on: 12/30/2014 05:17 am »
Get the defibrolater paddles out. Call the medics. Put away the breakables. I'm about to cause several myocardio-infarctions and aneurisms...

http://www.omaha.com/living/working-toward-a-warp-drive-in-his-garage-lab-omahan/article_b6489acf-5622-5419-ac18-0c44474da9c9.html

I guess Dr White had better hurry up some. He's got competition : ;)

« Last Edit: 12/30/2014 05:19 am by Stormbringer »
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Offline ThinkerX

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #174 on: 12/30/2014 07:01 am »
Quote
Get the defibrolater paddles out. Call the medics. Put away the breakables. I'm about to cause several myocardio-infarctions and aneurisms...

http://www.omaha.com/living/working-toward-a-warp-drive-in-his-garage-lab-omahan/article_b6489acf-5622-5419-ac18-0c44474da9c9.html

I guess Dr White had better hurry up some. He's got competition : ;)

I wonder if Rodal or Mulletron could be summoned to this thread?  Assuming, of course, that an actual paper with reasonably sane equations can be found somewhere.

I do find it interesting he began by investigating known aeronautical anomalies/incidents.





Offline Notsosureofit

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #175 on: 12/30/2014 04:01 pm »
Quote
Get the defibrolater paddles out. Call the medics. Put away the breakables. I'm about to cause several myocardio-infarctions and aneurisms...

http://www.omaha.com/living/working-toward-a-warp-drive-in-his-garage-lab-omahan/article_b6489acf-5622-5419-ac18-0c44474da9c9.html

I guess Dr White had better hurry up some. He's got competition : ;)

I wonder if Rodal or Mulletron could be summoned to this thread?  Assuming, of course, that an actual paper with reasonably sane equations can be found somewhere.

I do find it interesting he began by investigating known aeronautical anomalies/incidents.

Not much to go by, it seems to be a 2 meter (146 MHz) asymmetric resonant antenna, so it could meet the requirement for a "Sachs-Schwebel" gravitational current generator instead of a warp drive.  It could also be seeing electromagnetic forces between the antenna and the faraday cage walls which are in the near field.  The interferometer tests are interesting, but again, not much data.

There is a paper of sorts: http://swdllc.paresspacewarpresearch.org/PressRelease/Press.htm
« Last Edit: 12/30/2014 04:16 pm by Notsosureofit »

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #176 on: 12/30/2014 04:17 pm »
anything to do with gravity is by default a warp generator. conversely many warp drive schemes are also gravity manipulators once you look at them.
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Offline JasonAW3

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #177 on: 12/30/2014 04:53 pm »
The solution, as I see it, should be fairly simple.  Move the ship forward in the pocket of space while the pocket is itself is also moving.  This SHOULD allow any buildup of any debris and radiation to saftely dissipate along the sides of the field effect as both the space pocket an craft move in Space.

Whether the ship is moving within the pocket or not, or even if there is a ship in the pocket or not, is irrelevant.  The buildup of debris and radiation is due to the pocket, not the ship inside it.

The point is, the build up would be rolled out of the way, much like the bow wave on a seagoing vessel, or the plasma shock of a reentering spacecraft.  Effectively, while moving forward in the pocket of space, you'r effectively "refreshing" the portion of space that you occupy, thus causing a roll off of buildup to the sides.  It's an imperfect solution, as you'll still likely have a higher build up of radiation and debris then you'll be able to bleed off via spacial movement in the field, but it should help.  I think that there is a better solution that could work, but I'll haver to give it more thought.
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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #178 on: 12/30/2014 06:22 pm »
This article says there is no such thing as inflation. Inflation is important to warp drive. What do we make of this study?


http://phys.org/news/2014-12-alternative-explanation-dark-energy.html
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Offline RonM

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Re: New hope for Warp Drive concept?
« Reply #179 on: 12/30/2014 06:33 pm »
This article says there is no such thing as inflation. Inflation is important to warp drive. What do we make of this study?


http://phys.org/news/2014-12-alternative-explanation-dark-energy.html

No, it doesn't say anything about inflation. Inflation and dark energy are not the same thing.

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