posted
I look around this forum and see mainly starship info and the like. However, those few of you interested in space exploration and faster than light drive should check out this site: http://www.surfnetusa.com/pschafer/phoenix.htm
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)
posted
Yes, you got it right this time. This is the right Forum... :-)
BTW, you're using my signature... *L*
------------------ "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
posted
Can I correct the science on those pages? I'm going to anyway....
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.
Alpha Centauri
Usually seen somewhere in the Southern skies
Member # 338
posted
You experience 'anti-time' theoretically if youself moves FTL. Since relativity forbids that, time travel is impossible. OTOH, if you move space-time at FTL (which is not forbidden by relativity), and you're in the moving 'bubble', you do not experience something such. Since you have zero speed comparing to your frame of reference, this is a method of effectively travelling at FTL, while not violating causality. This is the concept that has been worked out by Miguel Alcubierre. Recent studies, however, indicated that in order to create this effect, you'll need to collect and store negative energy around your spaceship, in a donut-shaped ring. The total required energy to create FTL propragation following this method is estimated at ten billion times the total energy in the entire universe (if you make all the energy in the universe negative).
------------------ 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!"
posted
Actually, Miguel Alcubierre pointed out in his paper that his method of FTL travel left causality issues open.
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.
posted
No, I am afraid that #4, positional and directional computation, is entirely a problem for traveling at faster than the speed of light. Reason being, if an object is traveling at the speed of light (or greater) the craft will have no way of detecting how fast its going, because it travels faster than any sensors hit an object and then bounce back with information. True, if the craft was in some kind of "bubble" then perhaps it would be outside the realm of normal space/time and we would not have to worry about colliding with asteroids or other planets. Nevertheless, it is a problem.
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.
Alpha Centauri
Usually seen somewhere in the Southern skies
Member # 338
posted
Hmmmm... Looks like I was wrong. But then, I never fully understood the concept. And temporal physics is a hard subject. I wish I had access to the paper itself. Is it there a copy somewhere on the web?
------------------ 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.
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