Ravenstar Posted September 22, 2012 Share Posted September 22, 2012 http://sciencefocus.com/news/nasa-working-warp-drive This is just awesome. Now can they solve the energy problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravenstar Posted September 22, 2012 Author Share Posted September 22, 2012 Sorry... hit post too fast. Will we be able to prove that stars really ARE far far away with faster than light technology? Will this affect religious belief? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted September 22, 2012 Share Posted September 22, 2012 Serious "belief" as in "uses her brain about the teachings of her faith", may well be (however rare that type of belief may be). Morontheism as in "if reality contradicts scripcha, too bad for reality!", no. They're denying so much already, one more thing wouldn't matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeasabird Posted September 22, 2012 Share Posted September 22, 2012 Sorry... hit post too fast. Will we be able to prove that stars really ARE far far away with faster than light technology? Will this affect religious belief? It's already been proven with triangulation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted September 22, 2012 Share Posted September 22, 2012 Sorry... hit post too fast. Will we be able to prove that stars really ARE far far away with faster than light technology? Will this affect religious belief? Hi Ravenstar! That article is (as a certain Vulcan might say) ...fascinating! Thanks for posting it. Freeasabird is right, btw. Astronomers use a kind of triangulation (Stellar Parallax) to find out the distance to the stars. http://en.wikipedia....tellar_parallax And Thuriasz is right on the money. If the evidence of a believer's eyes contradict scripture, then they disbelieve the evidence of their eyes - in favor of scripture. They call that kind of wilful self-delusion ...faith. We call it denial. Sad, isn't it? BAA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravenstar Posted September 22, 2012 Author Share Posted September 22, 2012 It IS fascinating! I'm sure a phyicist could explain it but I thought the whole "we could never travel to other systems" thing was based on the fact that mass increases with velocity (did I get that right?). I suspect, without any science background, that the whole warp thing solves this issue... however I've also read that the amount of energy to achieve light speed would end up being vast , or infinite.. if warp negates the mass issue would the energy issue also be solved? another thing this suggests is that it isn't highly improbable or impossible for another intelligent extra-terrestrial species to travel here (theoretically). Yes it is sad... I'm no mathematician (FAR from it) but even I understand triangulation. Isn't that like grade 10 math? or even earlier? I've been doing a lot of reading on this site... and I've noticed some patterns. First of all the people here are highly articulate and logical—youz guyz are smart and also that the people who come here to debate/debunk, *sigh*, not so much... but even the ones who are fairly bright, although their arguments may begin intelligently, at some point, show the cognitive dissonance of magickal thinking and dysfunctional defense mechanisms. The logic and reason breaks down... psychologically it's fascinating... but on a human level it's very depressing.. and yes, sad. I've also noticed that their reasoning ability seems to be in direct correlation with how literally they believe their particular system of religion... liberal christians seems to be more reasonable than mainstream seem to be more reasonable than fundamentalists. It's not scientific but even looking at grammar and spelling is a pretty effective way to tell where and how quick the arguments will digress to absurdity. I won't even touch the moral expression of some... I find it sad because the universe as explained by science is friggin' awesome—i find it sad because we are all in this together, yet religious beliefs and their effect on rationality seem to be extremely divisive. Seriously? What's cooler than warp drive? Or M-theory?, or even, i would suggest, the fact that we as a species have come this far and are making discoveries that could (will?) eradicate disease, eliminate poverty, extend and improve quality of life, enhance human rights, increase tolerance and understanding and send us to the stars? Gene Roddenberry (an atheist) had a vision of a future that is more human, more moral, and much more hopeful, than any religion I know of... "Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life here" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skepticalme Posted September 23, 2012 Share Posted September 23, 2012 It IS fascinating! I'm sure a phyicist could explain it but I thought the whole "we could never travel to other systems" thing was based on the fact that mass increases with velocity (did I get that right?). I suspect, without any science background, that the whole warp thing solves this issue... however I've also read that the amount of energy to achieve light speed would end up being vast , or infinite.. if warp negates the mass issue would the energy issue also be solved? Yes, as an object accelerates to the speed of light its mass becomes infinite and the energy required to accelerate it becomes infinite. Warp drive would get around this by moving space around the ship instead of the ship itself. From its frame of reference the ship isn't moving, it is just along for the ride inside this bubble of moving space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted September 23, 2012 Share Posted September 23, 2012 Yes, as an object accelerates to the speed of light its mass becomes infinite and the energy required to accelerate it becomes infinite. Warp drive would get around this by moving space around the ship instead of the ship itself. From its frame of reference the ship isn't moving, it is just along for the ride inside this bubble of moving space. Right. It's a similar idea to how supercavitating torpedos work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravenstar Posted September 24, 2012 Author Share Posted September 24, 2012 okay.. I get it, I think lol Have to look up the torpedo reference... thanks. Can't wait for further info as i could only find these very sparse headline snippets about it... all sorts of questions though, how does one 'move' space? Is it only effective in a vacuum?, and—would a nebula affect it? Or strong gravity wells? (a solar system or even neutron star in proximity?) Would making this possible require quantum computing? If faster than light speed is possible is there an upper limit? or do distance/velocity become irrelevant beyond light speed? since space and time are two sides of the same coin, could time be suspended/accelerated within this action? (wild speculation here) Man.. I really need a better foundation in the sciences, especially physics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 Will this affect religious belief? No. Regardless of whatever science builds or learns in the future Christians will just look through their Bible and pretend that some vague passage prophesied that it would be so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chikirin Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 Warp drive + cryo-sleep will enable us to spread the seed of humanity amongst the stars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 Warp drive + cryo-sleep will enable us to spread the seed of humanity amongst the stars. I would rather see a permanent cruise liner type of ship. A sustainable town in space if you will. The people living there go about their buisness living life. Many generations later the ship might reach another star. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 okay.. I get it, I think lol Have to look up the torpedo reference... thanks. Can't wait for further info as i could only find these very sparse headline snippets about it... all sorts of questions though, how does one 'move' space? Is it only effective in a vacuum?, and—would a nebula affect it? Or strong gravity wells? (a solar system or even neutron star in proximity?) Would making this possible require quantum computing? If faster than light speed is possible is there an upper limit? or do distance/velocity become irrelevant beyond light speed? since space and time are two sides of the same coin, could time be suspended/accelerated within this action? (wild speculation here) Man.. I really need a better foundation in the sciences, especially physics. Good questions about what might affect a ship travelling in a warp bubble, Raven! http://en.wikipedia....rstellar_medium The Interstellar medium is what scientist call the stuff between the stars. Mostly gas, dust and radiation. A starship at rest is in no danger from the first two and is safe from the last, if it's got adequate shielding. But once the ship starts to move (without a warp bubble) it causes the gas and dust to strike it's hull at whatever speed it's moving. Therefore, at 99% c (light speed), these otherwise harmless molecules of gas and paricles of dust are impacting the ship at 99% c. This makes them very dangerous indeed! Just think about the Large Hadron Collider, for a moment. This giant machine accellerates protons to 99% c and when it's doing so, all personel are evacuated from it's immediate vicinity. Why? Because it's dangerous! So, a starship moving this fast would be running into something like the main particle beam of the LHC across it's entire frontal surface, for however long it takes to get to it's destination. That kind of bombardment would be hazardous to humans and electronics, without a serious amount of shielding. The catch is, the more shielding you use, the more massive the starship becomes and the more energy you have to use to push it up to near light-speed. Will a ship in a warp bubble be safe from this kind of punishment? I dunno! But, even if it is and the ship is totally isolated from the outside universe, in it's own mini-universe, there's another question that comes to mind. How the hell do you navigate from A to B in this universe, if you're totally insulated from it, inside your own warp bubble? In science fiction the main screen on the bridge of the Enterprise shows the outside universe moving past at incredible speed. In science fact, how would that be possible - from inside a warp bubble? Lastly, would a deep gravity well de-stabilize the warp bubble? http://en.wikipedia....vitational_well Theoretically, nowhere in the universe is unaffected by gravity and therefore, every location is space experiences some degree of gravitational curvature. A starship accellerating away from Earth is leaving this planet's gravity well, but is still within the Sun's and the Milky Way's larger gravity wells. Having said that, the Eagleworks labs are at the bottom of the Earth's gravity well. So if they can get warp technology to function here, then they must be compensating for a deeply curved space-time metric, from get go. If they can't do so, then we might have to wait until warp bubble experiments can be performed well beyond the Moon's orbit, where the gravitational gradient is much weaker. Or maybe (worst case scenario), warp drive can't be made to work anywhere but in interstellar space. That would be bad news. It's taken the Pioneer and Voyager probes decades, just to reach the outer limits of our solar system. Thanks, BAA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 BAA. I think, ironically, The movie Stargate might have been on to an answer to that question. We know approxamately how much the Sol system moves per Solar year around the galatic core. We know the location of our system relative to pulsars in the nearby area. So we have two Linear points(x axis) Multiple other points for y and z axis. This we can pinpoint Earth in 3d space. To get to somewhere else we would probably have to start out mapping from nearby stars such as Alpha Centari, then we could actually use those points to begin to map out to further systems were the pulsars or other "anchor" points could be different or even unknown. The other side of this is an assumption that the stars will 1) continue to exist. reasonable assumption given stars long life 2) the stars will continue to move predictably relative to the galactic core 3) The stars will continue to move in a predictable manner relative to each other. 4) Either the ship have instant communication or the processing power to calculate where things "should be" to keep the maps up to date based on relative position. (given the advances in crystal storage technology that is a possibility) The other side of the whole thing is once you have position you have to take into account time. Thus starting "small" with close stars. It is easier to make the time and thus position adjustment at 5 light years to Alpha Centari then for 100's of light years for other locations. Plus as the Spore's galactic stage pointed out. You can't always get to the distant star directly. Its usually more efficient to go to a close star and the go from there. Thus the scifi trope of galactic trade routes. But that is getting off topic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeasabird Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 BAA. I think, ironically, The movie Stargate might have been on to an answer to that question. We know approxamately how much the Sol system moves per Solar year around the galatic core. We know the location of our system relative to pulsars in the nearby area. So we have two Linear points(x axis) Multiple other points for y and z axis. This we can pinpoint Earth in 3d space. To get to somewhere else we would probably have to start out mapping from nearby stars such as Alpha Centari, then we could actually use those points to begin to map out to further systems were the pulsars or other "anchor" points could be different or even unknown. The other side of this is an assumption that the stars will 1) continue to exist. reasonable assumption given stars long life 2) the stars will continue to move predictably relative to the galactic core 3) The stars will continue to move in a predictable manner relative to each other. 4) Either the ship have instant communication or the processing power to calculate where things "should be" to keep the maps up to date based on relative position. (given the advances in crystal storage technology that is a possibility) The other side of the whole thing is once you have position you have to take into account time. Thus starting "small" with close stars. It is easier to make the time and thus position adjustment at 5 light years to Alpha Centari then for 100's of light years for other locations. Plus as the Spore's galactic stage pointed out. You can't always get to the distant star directly. Its usually more efficient to go to a close star and the go from there. Thus the scifi trope of galactic trade routes. But that is getting off topic. Maybe this is exactly what you said and I just didn't understand, but wouldn't it reason that the farther you wanted to travel, the older your information would be on the makeup of the stars and whatnot in the area? In other words, if you wanted to travel 1 million light years, the light you can see is 1 million years old and you'd have no way of knowing whether it was even still there at the current moment. Thusly, it would be more likely in reaching your destination you might pass through a supernova or other rearranging of the cosmos, that would result in you having a really bad day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 BAA. I think, ironically, The movie Stargate might have been on to an answer to that question. We know approxamately how much the Sol system moves per Solar year around the galatic core. We know the location of our system relative to pulsars in the nearby area. So we have two Linear points(x axis) Multiple other points for y and z axis. This we can pinpoint Earth in 3d space. To get to somewhere else we would probably have to start out mapping from nearby stars such as Alpha Centari, then we could actually use those points to begin to map out to further systems were the pulsars or other "anchor" points could be different or even unknown. The other side of this is an assumption that the stars will 1) continue to exist. reasonable assumption given stars long life 2) the stars will continue to move predictably relative to the galactic core 3) The stars will continue to move in a predictable manner relative to each other. 4) Either the ship have instant communication or the processing power to calculate where things "should be" to keep the maps up to date based on relative position. (given the advances in crystal storage technology that is a possibility) The other side of the whole thing is once you have position you have to take into account time. Thus starting "small" with close stars. It is easier to make the time and thus position adjustment at 5 light years to Alpha Centari then for 100's of light years for other locations. Plus as the Spore's galactic stage pointed out. You can't always get to the distant star directly. Its usually more efficient to go to a close star and the go from there. Thus the scifi trope of galactic trade routes. But that is getting off topic. Maybe this is exactly what you said and I just didn't understand, but wouldn't it reason that the farther you wanted to travel, the older your information would be on the makeup of the stars and whatnot in the area? In other words, if you wanted to travel 1 million light years, the light you can see is 1 million years old and you'd have no way of knowing whether it was even still there at the current moment. Thusly, it would be more likely in reaching your destination you might pass through a supernova or other rearranging of the cosmos, that would result in you having a really bad day. Yes, that was my point with starting with Alpha Centari. It's about 4.5 - 5 lightyears away. Therefore, we could be more certain that it is still there. And as often as it has been viewed, if anything was in the way we "should" know about it. Although I doubt you would know if you were having a bad day. My guess would be if you "flew" through a supernova that it could most likely shatter the warp bubble. This would most likely expose you to the nova and probably fry you extra crispy instantly. You'd probably not even know it. This also is a reason to have several warp points if you will. Hopping from system to system. It would probably be easier to stop at each known gravity well, recalculate and head out again. However, it is not known yet just how all this stuff will actually work. Since we would be traveling "through" the fabric of space and not "along" it, would the gravity even matter? It would seem that we would be emulating quantum physics, so we could just be popping into and out of existence willfully instead of randomly. But that gets into an area of physics that I am only a layman in. Not like I am an expert on any of this...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 Maybe if we can understand and master the Higgs field, we can make a "quantum" drive and jump outside of time and space... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 Maybe if we can understand and master the Higgs field, we can make a "quantum" drive and jump outside of time and space... or just suppress it and then all these mass issues would go away........though that does lead to other issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 or just suppress it and then all these mass issues would go away........though that does lead to other issues. Like they say, the reason they call it the God particle... without it we wouldn't have mass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 or just suppress it and then all these mass issues would go away........though that does lead to other issues. Like they say, the reason they call it the God particle... without it we wouldn't have mass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 I like those old chants. It's pretty amazing to listen to in a large cathedral with echo/reverb effects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roadrunner Posted September 24, 2012 Share Posted September 24, 2012 Will this affect religious belief? No. Regardless of whatever science builds or learns in the future Christians will just look through their Bible and pretend that some vague passage prophesied that it would be so. The neutrino experiment was released just after i closed the door on religion. I remember pondering whether or not this brought up the possibility of a much younger universe. Dinesh D'Souza really underscores this idea as he says something to the effect of how science was supposed to have long disproved religion and now its "christianity is riding alongside science" with all that is being discovered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted September 26, 2012 Share Posted September 26, 2012 http://www.quora.com/Astrophysics/How-does-the-White-Juday-Warp-Field-Interferometer-work-and-how-will-it-help-us-achieve-a-real-warp-drive Best explanation of this gizmo that I've seen so far. BAA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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