Warp drives or bust!!

[K^2]

Mass interacts with higgs boson, the higgs field imparts inertia

Stop saying that nonsense. Higgs has NOTHING to do with inertia. Just stop.

Warp drives come in two fundamental flavors: FTL and sub-light. There is a conjecture in General Relativity that states that any FTL travel requires negative energy density. (It's more complicated than that, but that's how it applies to warp.) All known warp configurations of space-time are FTL-capable, and so all require negative energy density. In fact, they are all variations on Alcubierre Drive. We're likely never be able to get around that limitation. I wouldn't give up on FTL warp completely, but there are still things we don't fully understand about vacuum to speculate about ways of achieving negative energy densities required. Let alone start talking about technical feasibility of it.

On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing in modern physics that puts prohibitive limits on sub-light warp. So there is hope there. Sub-light warp would still be affected by relativistic effects, and must obey current conservation laws, most notably energy and momentum conservation. Which limits its use in a Solar System. But it should require dramatically less energy than FTL warp, has way fewer problems with radiation, and still lets you get around the tyranny of rocket formula. However, I am not aware of a single pure sub-light warp configuration. All we know at the moment is that there is no reason for one not to exist.

[GeneralVeers]

That would be against the big bang theory. It's highly unlikely that there was a big bang with some of the antimatter escaped.

Based on what? Close proximity? Most of the antimatter being immediately annihilated just after the Big Bang?

Time to do the crucible thing: I'm gonna throw a theory at you guys, and see if it holds up. Incoming!

How is antimatter annihilated? By colliding with an EQUAL QUANTITY OF NORMAL MATTER. It would seem to me that such annihilations must conserve the balance between positive and negative. So, any collisions between matter and antimatter just after the Big Bang would have destroyed equal amounts of both, making it impossible that such collisions could have caused the imbalance we (allegedly!) see today.

Okie dokie, folks: start shakin' the tree and let's see what falls out.....

If some region of the universe is made of antimatter the boundary would light up like a christmas tree.

Goodie! More fun with science.

As far as we know, antimatter responds to gravity the same way positive matter does. Though, to be fair, this has been extremely difficult for modern science to verify, because we can only make a few particles of antimatter at a time, and observing the effect of gravity on a single particle is nearly impossible. Anyway, assuming gravity affects antimatter the same as normal matter: in the early years after the Big Bang, as gravity pulled mass into clumps, matter and antimatter would have annihilated whenever they made contact, and the universe would have been sorted into clumps of entirely one or entirely the other. So it's highly likely the universe already "lit up like a Christmas tree" billions of years ago.

[PB666]

Stop saying that nonsense. Higgs has NOTHING to do with inertia. Just stop.

Warp drives come in two fundamental flavors: FTL and sub-light. There is a conjecture in General Relativity that states that any FTL travel requires negative energy density. (It's more complicated than that, but that's how it applies to warp.) All known warp configurations of space-time are FTL-capable, and so all require negative energy density. In fact, they are all variations on Alcubierre Drive. We're likely never be able to get around that limitation. I wouldn't give up on FTL warp completely, but there are still things we don't fully understand about vacuum to speculate about ways of achieving negative energy densities required. Let alone start talking about technical feasibility of it.

On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing in modern physics that puts prohibitive limits on sub-light warp. So there is hope there. Sub-light warp would still be affected by relativistic effects, and must obey current conservation laws, most notably energy and momentum conservation. Which limits its use in a Solar System. But it should require dramatically less energy than FTL warp, has way fewer problems with radiation, and still lets you get around the tyranny of rocket formula. However, I am not aware of a single pure sub-light warp configuration. All we know at the moment is that there is no reason for one not to exist.

Still holding onto the warp drive, the concensus is that its a bust. The problem with warp drive is that it requires a substantial amount of energy to accomplish in Sub FTL. What do we know that can warp space. Well it is possible to have a black hole without mass, but it has never been observed, and since every thing on the event horizon is frozen in our time just how would we move it. The shape is important, how would we shape something like that. On the backbside expansion of space-time what are we looking at now, dark energy. And how do we control this, we dont even know what it is, just what it isn't. There is nothing to stop sub-light watping but the is nothing we know of that could levergage the energy consumed to warp space to the degree it woukd be better than simple propulsion. I hold more hope for the cannae than for near-light speed warp.

[PB666]

in the early years after the Big Bang, as gravity pulled mass into clumps, matter and antimatter would have annihilated whenever they made contact, and the universe would have been sorted into clumps of entirely one or entirely the other. So it's highly likely the universe already "lit up like a Christmas tree" billions of years ago.

That is what I was calling selection, the problem with selection is that it statistically unviable after many rounds unless matter and antimatter were produced in groups, so that if matter of one part hit antimatter of something else the remaing matter would be pushed in the direction of its cluster and the antimattervto its cluster. All of this would have had to have happened very early in the opaque phase. This would mean that the appearance a pair in one place simultaneously influenced the appearance of a pair in close proximity. Oh in terms of being lit up CMBR.

The problem is this. Suppose you are on a sphere and you are travelin on a radial vector of 3c, That means a rotation of 90 is traveling away from you at 4.3c, 45 degrees rotation on the surface is 2.1c, 30 rotation = 1.5c, Around 18 degrees rotation is 1c beyond which observer will never see. even so that observer may only be able to observe to about 12 degrees. Anything within 12 degrees matter antimatter transfers are possible including cosmic rays. cosmic rats howver can under transformation or loss in space, so there may be other problems. But if an anti-matter cosmic ray were to reach earth it would be kind of noticed. A pretty hefty light flash in the gamma spectrun in our atmosphere.

Its kind of hard to get antimatter so far away it does not happen, which would mean polarization would have had to occur pretty early or even before the opaque phase began, in fact before inflation began.

[rtxoff]

I still say you can't have both. Either the big bang or a universe where there is antimatter. You choose.

The nature of the big bang demands total annihilation of matter and antimatter in equal proportions and there was more normal matter which formed our known universe.

You can't have the forming of matter and antimatter out of a singularity without them both annihilating.

[K^2]

Still holding onto the warp drive, the concensus is that its a bust. The problem with warp drive is that it requires a substantial amount of energy to accomplish in Sub FTL. What do we know that can warp space. Well it is possible to have a black hole without mass, but it has never been observed, and since every thing on the event horizon is frozen in our time just how would we move it. The shape is important, how would we shape something like that. On the backbside expansion of space-time what are we looking at now, dark energy. And how do we control this, we dont even know what it is, just what it isn't. There is nothing to stop sub-light watping but the is nothing we know of that could levergage the energy consumed to warp space to the degree it woukd be better than simple propulsion. I hold more hope for the cannae than for near-light speed warp.

That's because you don't know any physics and keep extrapolating from computations carried out by third parties under irrelevant constraints. One of the key restrictions of FTL warp is bubble wall thickness. That simply isn't an issue for sub-light, since there are no causality concerns. Taking sigma = 1, even Alcubierre metric yields -5x10²⁰J, or about 6 metric tons worth of exotic energy for a bubble 20m in diameter traveling at 100km/s. Other than the negative sign, this is an entirely reasonable amount. In fact, we are getting close to energy densities we can achieve with plasma in magnetic confinement. I couldn't tell you precisely what that plasma needs to be doing or what sort of mag fields it will take to keep it there without knowing the correct metric for a sub-light warp, but absolutely everything indicates that these are going to be reasonable quantities. Not your everyday amounts, but achievable by an organized effort.

Will it be practical compared to ion drives? Hard to tell. One of the potential advantages is "regenerative braking" ability of a warp drive. For example, a cycler ship can transition to warp to complete the long part of its journey, and drop out of warp near each of its destination planets to pick up cargo and passengers, while spending very little energy to switch between warp and normal orbit. Even if ion drives end up way more efficient for a single leg, a sub-light warp cycler might be just the sort of thing that makes travel around Solar system actually economically viable.

Finally, comparison of warp and EMDrive is just silly. One is a prediction of a well-established theory, the other is a mistake that nobody has invested enough effort into correcting.

[MajorLeaugeRocketScience]

So have I extracted the nerd from all if you ? :-)

[GeneralVeers]

You can't have the forming of matter and antimatter out of a singularity without them both annihilating.

Actually, you can! Here's how: if all the energy erupting out of the singularity takes the form of photons.

In this case, matter and antimatter wouldn't mutually annihilate, because, as far as I can determine from my reading, the photon is its own antiparticle. There's no such thing as an "antiphoton". So, if the Big Bang was all photons, which differentiated into matter and antimatter afterwards: problem solved.

But that's just theoretical. There's no proof this actually happened; it's simply one way it might have happened.

So have I extracted the nerd from all if you ? :-)

Heheheh. See above for the answer. I got plenty o' nerd to go around.

[PB666]

Actually, you can! Here's how: if all the energy erupting out of the singularity takes the form of photons.

In this case, matter and antimatter wouldn't mutually annihilate, because, as far as I can determine from my reading, the photon is its own antiparticle. There's no such thing as an "antiphoton". So, if the Big Bang was all photons, which differentiated into matter and antimatter afterwards: problem

Very powerful photons can annihilate to form matter and antimatter. Less powerful photons can add mass to electrons or positrons, and still lower energy electrons give mass by increasing the wobble of atoms in the form of heat.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reionization

Reionization is responsible for CNBR.

[rtxoff]

What decides what the photon will transform into then?

[PB666]

What decides what the photon will transform into then?

[Mazon Del]

My understanding is that one of the current prevailing theories (that is starting to look weak though) is that yes, there should have been roughly an equal amount of M/AM made during the big bang, but that something about AM causes it to degrade faster than M thus resulting in the imbalance that we currently see in the universe.

K^2: Regarding the sublight warp drive, that is pretty much what is going on at the White-Juday Micro Warp Field Interferometer. The end goal for them is indeed an FTL warp, but since we don't have any real method as of yet for experimenting with expanding space (the back end of the drive for those unaware) they are working on proving that the front end is possible (contracting space). So far there are no definitive results, but early tests look promising. Their lab has detected something that they think is the contraction they are looking for, but they are currently undergoing (or seeking to undergo) upgrades to up the power and thus the obviousness of the result. Their two grad interns from a previous year went back to their universities and started their own efforts using different methods to detect the same result and are also showing similar detection spikes. These are the results as of about a year ago, supposedly we'll get an update during the next Starship Congress that happens.

[rtxoff]

@PB666

That is not a satisfactory answer. Tell me if it was like this that the big bang started with all photons which formed matter and antimatter isn't it that it would happened more or less randomly which one of the two forms it possessed? If this is the case then most of the matter and antimatter created by that way is already annihilated and only a very minor amount of the matter survived.

The thing is if there is still antimatter in the universe then this distribution was not random at all, then somebody influenced large regions where all this photons only assumed one of the two forms which seems to me to be very unlikely. But yeah everything is possible maybe i'll see tomorrow pink unicorns outside my window.

[K^2]

K^2: Regarding the sublight warp drive, that is pretty much what is going on at the White-Juday Micro Warp Field Interferometer. The end goal for them is indeed an FTL warp, but since we don't have any real method as of yet for experimenting with expanding space (the back end of the drive for those unaware) they are working on proving that the front end is possible (contracting space). So far there are no definitive results, but early tests look promising. Their lab has detected something that they think is the contraction they are looking for, but they are currently undergoing (or seeking to undergo) upgrades to up the power and thus the obviousness of the result. Their two grad interns from a previous year went back to their universities and started their own efforts using different methods to detect the same result and are also showing similar detection spikes. These are the results as of about a year ago, supposedly we'll get an update during the next Starship Congress that happens.

The contract/expand analogy is a very bad one for warp-drive, both because it isn't exactly what happens, and because it leads to some bad intuition. Such as the statement that we can contract, but can't expand. Alcubierre Drive ONLY has negative energy density, which does both "contracting" and "expanding". And it's possible to come up with positive-definite stress-energy densities that do both as well. For example, consider Schwarzschild in moving reverence frame.

But the crux of it is that FTL and FTL-capable warp metrics allow for CTCs, which appears to require negative energy densities. A sub-light warp doesn't have to. But sub-light warp doesn't have the simplicity of Alcubierre Drive, which makes it extremely difficult to come up with a warp scheme which conserves currents and has positive-definite stress-energy density.

[GeneralVeers]

What decides what the photon will transform into then?

That, modern science doesn't know. But modern science does know the quark-gluon plasma which would eventually form matter (and presumably antimatter) didn't exist until some time after the Big Bang. Before the quark-gluon state formed? Something else, of course. Something even more elementary.

<cue Spock saying "pure energy">

@PB666

That is not a satisfactory answer. Tell me if it was like this that the big bang started with all photons which formed matter and antimatter isn't it that it would happened more or less randomly which one of the two forms it possessed?

Yup. Entirely possible. Unlike electric charge, there doesn't seem to be any rule about conservation of a matter/antimatter balance; antimatter can be formed from normal matter, usually through high-velocity particle collisions. So, yes; it's possible the formation of a mostly-matter universe was completely random. Though, modern science tends to avoid that possibility because people don't like it when their origin is a random fluke.

If this is the case then most of the matter and antimatter created by that way is already annihilated and only a very minor amount of the matter survived.

Why would this be the case? Matter and antimatter only annihilate on contact with each other. And, obviously, there are a lot of things in the universe that aren't touching each other.

It's already known that antimatter can be formed (from matter!) because we've done it in the laboratory. Also, it's known that some radioactive elements such as potassium-40 emit antimatter (positrons) in the process of radioactive decay. So, clearly, antimatter can form without being instantly annihilated by the matter that formed it. The trap people seem to fall into here is one of assuming "at the Singularity, everything was touching everything else". The problem being, we don't know that. We can't see, predict, or model the Singularity because as we go back in time towards it, all the math and all the laws of physics collapse. The equations start spitting out infinities and values divided by zero. There are some things we will never be able to know.

The thing is if there is still antimatter in the universe then this distribution was not random at all, then somebody influenced large regions where all this photons only assumed one of the two forms which seems to me to be very unlikely. But yeah everything is possible maybe i'll see tomorrow pink unicorns outside my window.

Or on your TV set.........

[Mazon Del]

K^2: Fair enough.

[kiwi1960]

Firstly, the photo in the OP is wrong... yes, while it pulls space time closer at the front... it shoves it out the back in the total opposite of how its seen in the photo...

If its pulled closer at the back as well, then both effects (front and back) cancel each other out... in fact, the Enterprise would probably just cease to exist.

As for this becoming reality... I'm going to make a prediction... we will have warp drive within 100 years.

Why.... think about it...

since 1900 to 1945... development was slow... but then, the atomic bomb was dropped....

A very short 24 years later, we were walking on the moon... a short time later, sending probes to other worlds in our solar system...

The pace of technology is speeding up since 1945, not slowing down. Sadly, when you think about genetically modified or engineered foods, our ethics haven't kept pace...

while science marches on, the people have been left behind wondering if half the stuff is safe... look at cellphones causing cancer debates....

So.... while I say it will be within 100 years, that is dependent on society... if they do not allow this then it ends before it starts.

BESIDES...... we should all know that space travel will soon be obsolete.... when the aliens arrive through the STAR GATE.....

which is where?

Stonehenge of course. They will have a new control panel and zero point module to bring Stonehenge on line again.

Then, once we kill them.... we can start to populate the Galaxy with humans and kill off the lizard people (The Gorn) and the Pointy ears! (Romulans)

(please take most of this post as a tongue in cheek answer....)

[PB666]

@PB666

That is not a satisfactory answer. Tell me if it was like this that the big bang started with all photons which formed matter and antimatter isn't it that it would happened more or less randomly which one of the two forms it possessed? If this is the case then most of the matter and antimatter created by that way is already annihilated and only a very minor amount of the matter survived.

The thing is if there is still antimatter in the universe then this distribution was not random at all, then somebody influenced large regions where all this photons only assumed one of the two forms which seems to me to be very unlikely. But yeah everything is possible maybe i'll see tomorrow pink unicorns outside my window.

There are a couple of things, because of the CMBR its speculative, the conversation before pair-pair production becomes increasingly speculative (despite what you see on TV). But a reasonable assumption is that as electrons and positrons appeared, they annihilated and produced light, but not necessarily hitting their own anti-particle, some where traveling faster, some slower. Those traveling faster would have produced more intense EM, and interaction between powerful EM or larger particles may have created, IOW, given a kinetic distribution of energies, somethings produced matter and somethings did not have enough energy and spread away as CMBR.

You have to read the chronology of the big bang, at the very beginning (inflation: before inflation its all quantum physics) very exotic material poured into the universe, a very hot by our standard universe, in fact it was so hot that normal matter could not exist (therefore as one researched said, it was cold). During that stage of the universe electromagnetic radiation at the Comptom limit could have existed and through processes, that electromagnetic radiation began to lower its frequency and as it did it tended to form matter more stably. Thus this radiation was capable of generating some of the most massive elementary particles known, but they were not stable and quickly underwent decay to other stuff that was too unstable to survive eventually generating photons. The reason we don't see that radiation today is because the universe spread out an cooled so instead of proton-antiproton plasma forming EM the EM we see, largely from the sun, is UV, capable of knocking electrons from a lower orbital to a higher orbital. Light, which largely knocks the orbitals of chemicals that have looser electrons, like those in the orbitals of heterocyclic organics or oxides of transition metals. These electrons are released from the sun because of its temperature and ability to excite. When you see a solar event, these are throwing very hot gas, and this is emitting X-rays. X-rays can knock electrons clean off an atom.

So with chemicals we have a good means of looking at the problem. A chemical known as flourescent absorbs light at one wavelength (x/frequency) will emit at a lower frequency. The electron returns to its orbit, but some of the energy in the excitation and relaxation increases the rate of wobble of the molecule and atoms in the molecule, this is heat energy and it is released separately. The sun actually can heat the surface of the earth by this mechanism, and the radiation released is almost always a lower wavelength of radiation.

So that is the basic non-QM cascade of EM, now the weird stuff.

Dirac equations have that each time an event takes place this is occurring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_equation

And it basically revolves around the observation that if an electron is excited, it does not migrate from one orbit to the next orbit. The electron disappears from one orbit and reappears in the second immediately, as fast as the speed of light. And because an electron has mass we know that this is impossible, and this is explained by pair production. IOW, the interaction of a photon with matter in the atom produces an matter antimatter pair, the positron consumes the first electron and the second electron appears in the higher orbit. Poof.

So apparently in quantum mechanics this is happening all the time. In fact virtual particles are being generated all the time, but are so short-lived we don't catch them. You might think well whats the likelihood that a random virtual particle suddenly appears right as a UV ray is passing an orbital.

So then, quantum space is very small, its 10s of magnitudes smaller than an atom, and quantum time is very small, So the question then what is the likely hood of such particles appearing over gigantic number of Planck lengths gigantic units of planks time, the likelihood increases. So that on the quantum physics matter and antimatter are not uncommon, but the events that make the appear to have an effect or stable enough to survive are much less common.

The problem with the big bang was whether the quantum mechanical universe was different, was it alot easier to generate crazy virtual particles, and might it be possible today to generate such crazy particles. Here is the crux, QM was the preinflation phase, there was no other physics, and it dominated the inflation phase, and thus we could ask the question whether QM virtuals, or some deeper harder to visualize physics caused inflation and in the case of dark energy might a similar process. So if you could harnass either of these you could create 'pressure' in space-time. We are talking pure speculation.

The bottom line is that a pressure energy existed, appeared twice in the history of the universe, but we have no idea what it is.

[K^2]

And it basically revolves around the observation that if an electron is excited, it does not migrate from one orbit to the next orbit. The electron disappears from one orbit and reappears in the second immediately, as fast as the speed of light. And because an electron has mass we know that this is impossible, and this is explained by pair production. IOW, the interaction of a photon with matter in the atom produces an matter antimatter pair, the positron consumes the first electron and the second electron appears in the higher orbit. Poof.

Absolutely wrong. Orbital transition is a gradual process that takes finite time. Electron, at no point, jumps from one orbital to another. The energy states are discrete, and during transition, the electron goes through a superposition between the two energy states. However, wave function is simply a linear combination of the two eigen states at every point in between, giving a smooth evolution of the probability distribution function from one state to another.

Likewise, all of your "conclusions" on this misunderstanding of how basic QM works are completely wrong.

[PB666]

The energy states are discrete, and during transition, the electron goes through a superposition between the two energy states. However, wave function is simply a linear combination of the two eigen states at every point in between, giving a smooth evolution of the probability distribution function from one

Discrete states, hmmm, sounds like what is said, super position implies simultaneity. If what you are saying is correct then flourescense and phophorescnce cannot exist, because the product photon could result from any state between its incident energy and dE of the excited state. But this is not the case, flourescence spectrum comes in a dsitribution completely separated from the excitation frequncy. If what you are saying true and there is a continuous sspectrum of eigenstates, a photon will spontaneously appear at any and thus the relaxation photn energies would not exhibit a discrete distrbution relative to the exciting photon. Show you explanation of dicrete flourescent states.

[GeneralVeers]

Will the Kerbalnaut with the space capsule bumper sticker that reads "I brake for asteroids" please be aware... you left your headlights on...

You DO realize, that simply by putting a PB-NUK radiothermal generator on your capsule, the above becomes not a problem? (geez, I bet this guy still uses LV-T30's....)

[kiwi1960]

Not only that... but I name all my probes Sputnik!

What's your excuse?

[rtxoff]

*snip*

The bottom line is that a pressure energy existed, appeared twice in the history of the universe, but we have no idea what it is.

That's a big nice wall of text there still it does not contribute much to the preceding discussion if there is any antimatter left or not in the universe. I was reasoning the statement "why i think there is no antimatter anymore" and there was IMO still nothing reasonable that could counter that yet. But i'm patient maybe someone can come up with it.

[MajorLeaugeRocketScience]

Has anyone else heard the theory that under very extreme circumstances, light/photons can become a gas, and if you freeze that you can have solid light? I'm just checking the validity of this claim. I can't remember where I read it though

[PB666]

Has anyone else heard the theory that under very extreme circumstances, light/photons can become a gas, and if you freeze that you can have solid light? I'm just checking the validity of this claim. I can't remember where I read it though

I've heard that under the right condition the seed storage carbohydrates of legumes can become a gas. In fact I think I'm hearing those conditions right now.