The Alcubierre drive and Gravitational waves (Not a disscussion of them)

[Spaceception]

Since faster-than-light travel is (Theoretically) possible, how soon would we be able to build a ftl starship? Would physics say "Screw you" and destroy anything you try to FTL? And (2/12/16) finally: Does the recent confirmation of gravitational waves help make the Alcubierre drive just a bit more possible?: Video

and Video

Gravitational waves:

Warp 5, engage!!

Edited February 12, 2016 by Spaceception

[Randazzo]

FTL travel is theoretically possible by bending the rules (and space) a bit, so physics shouldn't go around destroying warp ships. Now if a warp bubble were to collapse for some reason, I imagine that could be quite destructive. Or not.

Of course before that happens we need to get our hands on some exotic matter and work out some fusion power at the very least, if not matter/antimatter reactors.

[Bill Phil]

It's probably possible, but impractical for small vessels. And it may very well cause an Event Horizon like scenario. So... Do you really want it?

[SargeRho]

Maybe in 2-300 years or 5, but not any time soon.

[CalculusWarrior]

Not this century, anyway. Like others have said, there are loopholes in the laws of physics which provide for such things, but I don't think the political focus will be on researching such means for a good while yet (and ignoring the time it takes to actually develop such systems).

There's just not a whole bunch of reasons to devote a lot of time and money into FTL travel at the moment, as other stars would take many years to get there regardless, and we don't really need it for intra-system travel as we don't have any colonies, etc. set up around the place (not that we'd need it for colony maintenance, but it's a nice thing to have)

[1of6Billion]

It all depends on when the technological singularity arrives

I doubt we'll even make it to Duna Mars in this century. So 2050-2100 is out of the question.

Edited December 16, 2015 by 1of6Billion
mars..

[SomeGuy123]

FTL travel isn't needed and is more likely than not impossible.

Why isn't it needed?  Because if you could merely travel at 0.1C to 0.5C, you could cross our entire galaxy in a mere million years or less. Universe is billions of years old, there's plenty of time.  It's a creation of science fiction authors that we need it - long before we have starships at all, we will have one fix or another for human mortality.  (the 2 obvious fixes are either a method using stem cells to continually replace failing parts in the human body, or uploading humans to digital computers that can be backed up and distributed and repaired.  The uploading method is a lot more practical and would trivially let someone live as long as free energy is available and someone else doesn't kill them on purpose)

The problem is that a classic science fiction story typically is something like (1) young man who is risky and brash explores the universe and gets in fights, eventually getting fat stacks or accolades and lots of women.

This kind of story is appealing to humans, and a more realistic story, where only near immortal cyborgs who cannot be killed by any mere mishap (their minds are copied multiple places and are not on the same ship, for example) and who don't make very many mistakes and who think in a way alien to us humans today isn't as entertaining.

Why is it impossible?  Remember the Von Neumann thread?  Assume Von Neumann machines are possible, for the sake of argument.  

Well, if true FTL travel is possible and there's no upper limit (standard for sci fi, it varies from mere hyperdrives to engines that can cross between galaxies in a few hours), you could build a von neumann machine that ate the universe in a few years.  Since the universe appears to be uneaten, but von neumann appear to be possible, the most likely explanation is that either

        1.  FTL travel that doesn't involve at least a slower than light startup phase is impossible.  For example, it would be possible still if it involved wormholes but you can only move a wormhole mouth slower than light.

       2.  It caps out with a hard cap relatively close to the speed of light, with infinite energy needed to go faster.  (10x faster or something, this was how it was limited in Star Trek though warp 9 was absurdly quick)

Edited December 16, 2015 by SomeGuy123

[PB666]

5 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Since faster-than-light travel is (Theoretically) possible, how soon would we be able to build a ftl starship? Would physics say "Screw you" and destroy anything you try to launch ftl? And would Aliens make contact with us? Here are a couple of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ed4v_T6YM

and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7tU0H6rD-g

Warp 5, engage!!

You left off, not possible but still investigate the possibility. Kind of dumb poll, its like asking when will we disciver if tachyeons exist.  When will we discover if fire breathing dragons exist. 

[Frozen_Heart]

I reckon the 2100-2150 estimate. Our technology is increasing faster and faster so I don't think it would be too long to wait.

 

If it is even possible that is. There is a good chance it isn't.

[Elrond Cupboard]

53 minutes ago, SomeGuy123 said:

Well, if true FTL travel is possible and there's no upper limit (standard for sci fi, it varies from mere hyperdrives to engines that can cross between galaxies in a few hours), you could build a von neumann machine that ate the universe in a few years.  Since the universe appears to be uneaten,

This looks a bit like a restatement of the Fermi paradox, and that little git remains a paradox even in the absence of FTL, given the vast periods of time available.

[Plusck]

The Fermi paradox, like a lot of the so-called paradoxes out there, fails miserably by integrating time into the paradox and then conveniently ignoring the effects of time...

And yet we are perfectly aware of how things break down in reality. There isn't a human machine in existance that has ever worked for more than what, 50 years without needing to be expensively reworked, repaired or restored. Even if we manage to mutiply our reliabilty by a factor of 10 or 100 (hah!), the outer reaches of our not-very-big future interstellar civilisation are going to be working full-time to recreate an industrial base just to stop things from falling apart. Without FTL - forget it.

And with FTL? It would have to be very fast and low-energy to make a significant impact on the "things crumbling to dust" problem.

[Spaceception]

5 hours ago, PB666 said:

You left off, not possible but still investigate the possibility. Kind of dumb poll, its like asking when will we disciver if tachyeons exist.  When will we discover if fire breathing dragons exist. 

I added it.

[Spaceception]

So, with the recent confirmation of gravitational waves, does this make the Alcubierre drive just a little bit more possible?

[PB666]

6 hours ago, Spaceception said:

So, with the recent confirmation of gravitational waves, does this make the Alcubierre drive just a little bit more possible?

Uh, well if you consider that the energy sent out by those two modest sized black holes in those moments of ultimate marriage that we measured was about as much energy as every star our galaxies produced in a day. We are arguing in this group about how to dissipate waste heat of 10 to 100 MW of power, not a chance in hell can we generate the power to actually create the warping of space, let alone confining that warp to a coconut shell and impossibly creating the antithesis of that.

Alcubierre is a trek wannabe fantasy. If  (x unknown exists) and (y unknown exists) and we could produce e at several magnitudes higher than we are  currently capable, and negative e then . . . . . nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

1.3 billion light years away they warped space time over a surface of 4/3rds pi r2 ( sufficient to detect here on earth), think about it, Thats a surface of  ~1 x 10⁵¹ meters which it chirped.

[HebaruSan]

We have observed this:

We are hoping to create this:

The former phenomenon still has normal mass-energy as the origin of all of its gravitational warping, so I don't think it helps us in solving the problems involved in creating that big up-surging shape you need behind your ship.

[K^2]

On 12/16/2015 at 10:42 PM, Spaceception said:

Does the recent confirmation of gravitational waves help make the Alcubierre drive just a bit more possible?

It's another confirmation of the math behind Alcubierre Drive, but no serious scientist has had any doubts about it for a while, so impact's negligible. It certainly doesn't give us any new information that would make it easier to build one.

The soonest we could have an FTL drive is not far removed. Any breakthrough in high energy physics could be decisive. Then we can have practical implementations before the century's out.

On the other hand, it's not very likely. We are far more likely to have sub-light warp long before we have FTL warp. And based on our modern understanding of gravity, that's likely hundreds of years removed, provided that we come up with a suitable configuration in the near future.

[Guest]

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but 50 years ago, they said that in 50 years, we'd be on hover boards and already colonizing Mars?  

[Wjolcz]

The whole internet is freaking out about this. All I can think of is that it's just another way of observing and understanding the universe, or are there any other benefits of directly detecting gravitational waves?

[K^2]

4 hours ago, CliftonM said:

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but 50 years ago, they said that in 50 years, we'd be on hover boards and already colonizing Mars?  

Instead, I have more than equivalent of all of the computing power they've had in the world in my pocket along with access to nearly all of Human knowledge from the same device. We did not get power and propulsion systems they've predicted in the 60s, but we got many things they wouldn't have dreamed of. You win some, you lose some.

So while I agree that trying to predict if we'll have certain kind of technology in 50 years or longer is silly, the pace at which tech develops would certainly allow for many things that seem impossible today. But whether we'll finally make a leap in space exploration, biology, cybernetics, or something we aren't even thinking of now, who knows?

[PB666]

5 hours ago, CliftonM said:

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but 50 years ago, they said that in 50 years, we'd be on hover boards and already colonizing Mars?  

Nobody over 50 can ride a hover boards, don't you watch the news, they day you hit thirty your butt smacks the ground.

3 hours ago, Veeltch said:

The whole internet is freaking out about this. All I can think of is that it's just another way of observing and understanding the universe, or are there any other benefits of directly detecting gravitational waves?

It is kind of cool they way they got black holes to chirp. I think the small black hole was actually saying    help Help HELP HELP! oh-F. (silence).

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, K^2 said:

It's another confirmation of the math behind Alcubierre Drive, but no serious scientist has had any doubts about it for a while, so impact's negligible. It certainly doesn't give us any new information that would make it easier to build one.

The soonest we could have an FTL drive is not far removed. Any breakthrough in high energy physics could be decisive. Then we can have practical implementations before the century's out.

On the other hand, it's not very likely. We are far more likely to have sub-light warp long before we have FTL warp. And based on our modern understanding of gravity, that's likely hundreds of years removed, provided that we come up with a suitable configuration in the near future.

How hard would it be to make an slower than light Alcubierre drive? 
Would you escape many of the impossible requirements for the FTL one? 

[Spaceception]

20 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

How hard would it be to make an slower than light Alcubierre drive? 
Would you escape many of the impossible requirements for the FTL one? 

That would be a good stepping stone, plus you wouldn't need to wait days, weeks, months, or even years to get up to really high speeds.

As for the requirements, I have no clue:/ But it probably depends on how fast you want to go

Edited February 13, 2016 by Spaceception

[HebaruSan]

44 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

How hard would it be to make an slower than light Alcubierre drive? 
Would you escape many of the impossible requirements for the FTL one? 

I believe it'd be no more or less possible. You'd still need negative mass, just not as much of it.

[fredinno]

17 hours ago, CliftonM said:

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but 50 years ago, they said that in 50 years, we'd be on hover boards and already colonizing Mars?  

Well, we CAN make hover boards, just they are too impractical to bother right now, since they need to be on rails.

 

[Spaceception]

16 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Well, we CAN make hover boards, just they are too impractical to bother right now, since they need to be on rails.

Actually, a special type of 'road' is needed because it uses superconductors and magnets to work.

But lets get back on track now.

Edited February 13, 2016 by Spaceception