There is a reference section, forum, and links on the front page that any trek-nology person should feel interested in. (and you cant move this to the officer's lounge...its about technology)
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Creator of Project Phoenix
[email protected]
[This message has been edited by Amadeus (edited August 04, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Amadeus (edited August 04, 2000).]
BTW, you're using my signature... *L*
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"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, and then, suddenly, it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-Matt Groening
On the anti-matter page:
"Anti-matter particles have the same mass as their
normal matter couterparts, but they have a
different electromagnetic charge."
Only part of the story. Neutrons are neutral. Anti-Neutrons are also neutral. But they have opposite spin moments and other quantum numbers. It's not just electric (no such thing as electromagnetic charge) charge which is reversed.
"When anti-matter and matter come into contact with one
another, the end result is both pieces being
annihilated, with a dispersment of an immense
amount of energy...energy that could be used to
power the warping of space and time."
Well no. The energy released from mutual annihilation is perfectly normal. Most modern theories suggesting methods on FTL require negative energy and/or negative mass which is nothing at all to do with matter/anti-matter annihilation.
"If only a half of a kilogram of
antimatter reacted with a half a kilogram of
normal matter, the energy realeased would equal 90000 terawatts. an amazing amount of energy."
Watt is a unit of power not energy. You mean 90,000 TerraJoules.
On the FTL restraints page:
1. is the main restraint to FTL.
2. Speed does not place a strain on living beings, accelerartion does. Moving at a constant million miles/hour is the same as standing still - that's the whole point of relativity.
3. An issue as you approach light speed using normal propulsion. In the real world FTL is the same as time travel. At c you would experience no time at all, so you could go to Alpha Centauri and back and experience no delay but over eight years will have passed for the folks you left behind. At c+ you would in theory experience a negative amount of time...
4 and 5. are an issue whatever speed you are moving at and have no special relevance to FTL.
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-->Identity Crisis<--
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Advertisement in the United Federation NewsPADD, SD 53675:
"Now for sale at your local dealer: Antares class vessels, as good as new! They can shapeshift! Everybody in the galaxy has one! Now for only $800!"
Causality issues have nothing to do with local velocity, and everything to do with getting between point A and B faster than light could. Using a wormhole, a local space warp, psychic teleportation, beaming yourself as tachyons, running really fast - it doesn't matter.
Check out Jason Hinson's FAQs on the subject:
http://www.physics.purdue.edu/~hinson/ftl/
Joshua
Lets see. Your right about the acceleration thing...thanks for pointing that out. I will also change the antimatter section when I figure out what the hell it is.
The last problem is also somewhat relevant (though I put it as number 5), because whatever system allow for faster than light travel, an additional normal Newtonian propulsion method will have to be used. For example, if we come out of warp, what would slow the craft down? It might require a more advanced engine than is currently available. And that would, indeed, be a problem.
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Creator of Project Phoenix
[email protected]
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Advertisement in the United Federation NewsPADD, SD 53675:
"Now for sale at your local dealer: Antares class vessels, as good as new! They can shapeshift! Everybody in the galaxy has one! Now for only $800!"
If you poke around there you can find a LaTeX version (but that's a format only us old timers will recognize), PostScript (you'll need a PS render; I don't know what's available these days). Searching for his name and "Warp" on a good search engine should turn up an HTML translation.
Re: General FTL stuff
Attempting to talk about real-world FTL travel without spending time doing some reading about relativity and general physics (e.g. Hinson's FAQ, a high-school physics course involving Lorentz transforms, etc) is akin to discussing an ocean if you've lived your entire life in a desert - your experience with torrential rain once a year doesn't count for much, and you'll end up mostly just embarassing yourself.
The fact that the science of physics is complex and people spend their entire lives researching it doesn't mean they're wrong and idiots - despite the "distrust of establishment" memes running rampant in our society. Physicists are not foolishly making something more difficult than it must be, and some offhand speculation by someone who won't put out the effort to learn the basics won't come up with things they miss.
Fortunately, real-world physics has very little to do with Star Trek.