Scientific Ramblings Thread

[MrZayas1]

You know, I am just making this post to make some non-scientific assumptions, and to blow off some nerdy steam i guess. The first thing I kind of want to discuss, Light speed travel. This idea has been in our minds for a while, and I wanted to propose a few things on this subject.

First off, the improbabilities of the theory. Light speed in many concepts seems possible, maybe not right now, but certainly it is possible. One of the main problems of this is that the energy required to produce this much thrust is equal to over 299,792,458 m/s. This is the minimal speed that light travels, and to achieve it would require astronomical amounts of energy, more energy than a red giant can produce in it's lifetime. So let's talk about this. Although no one really knows how much energy a red giant burns, let us imagine that it could propel us to the speed of light, unless we find some other scientific geeky way to do this. So we have the technology to harvest a red giant, and use it's energy to produce light speed. The next problem is this. Currently, even travelling over 50km/s (50000 m/s) is extremely dangerous, even a dust particle could rip microscopic holes in a spaceship doing this speed. Now multiply that by 5000 and you will get a number around 200,000,000 m/s. (Supposing that this speed is enough) At that speed, either you will break basic physics, and be able to go so fast to go through objects, or logically, atoms that are distributed throughout space would rip your spaceship apart into trillions of atoms per millisecond. That would mean that you would be ripped up almost instantly at the time you hit warp speed. So, some people may think that there are better ways to do this and there are obviously are. Such as energetic shielding. If you were to blast through space faster than light with a big energy shield around you, you would be fine right? Well not exactly. First off, the amount of energy needed to counter the particles would also be astronomical, since this is indeed an energy shield using electrified/magnetic particles to protect a vessel. Or second, you would have to have such a dense amount of energy that it would be infeasible to be able to wedge any atoms inbetween the particles and reach the hull of your spaceship. Another theory is to put a big hunk of metal on the front of your vessel as a interstellar heat shield and you might as well discard this idea immediately because it just isn't feasible and should not even be considered. (End of discussion and yes i have breathed in this writing)

If you would like to leave some suggestions (or correct my math) please do so in the comments below, and I do also enjoy crazy theories and discussions/debates as these so please leave your rants on this page so that I can read them!

P.S I realize that this post is using just basic knowledge that I had at the time, and a few days after writing this i did indeed watch a few videos on quantum mechanics and physics! Please do not hate for misinformation as this was just a thread to see how logical a topic was! Thanks!

Edited February 10, 2014 by MrZayas1

[K^2]

1) We do know how much energy a red giant burns. Or any other star we can observe.

2) Doesn't matter how much energy you put into it. To travel at light speed, you need an infinite amount.

[Rakaydos]

One of the older interstellar drive ideas was the Buzzard Ramjet. It was a fairly standard Fusion Torch drive, that magnetically "scooped" intersteller hydrogen, compressed it, and rode the fusion flame. However, the nature of the scoup led to drag losses- given the efficency of fusion, it caps out at about .2 c.

One varient of the Many Worlds theory says a new timeline is split off anytime a quantum superposition decays, one universe for each result. (This is not the same as "any time someone flips a coin or rolls a die"- loaded dice exist, and more universes exist in which the loaded number comes up than otherwise) A device to travel to another timeline would only be able to reach those nearest our own- that is, the ones split off in the last picosecond by some particle, somewhere in the nearly infinite universe, that you''ll probably never interact with. Useless? But what if you didnt appear at the same spot that you left? if you could adjust where in the taget world you arrived, you'd effectively have a single universe jump drive. (This concept is used in the book Old Man's War, though it takes a while till it's explained- it's just a generic jump drive)

Cathrine Asari's novel series has an even more interesting one. Mathamatically, going past the speed of light makes your mass an imaginary number. But if you treat (i) as an actual dimention of travel, if you could accelerate in a mathematically "imaginary" direction, you could go AROUND the lightspeed wall and keep accerating on the other side.

Edited February 9, 2014 by Rakaydos

[K^2]

One varient of the Many Worlds theory says a new timeline is split off anytime a quantum superposition decays, one universe for each result. (This is not the same as "any time someone flips a coin or rolls a die"- loaded dice exist, and more universes exist in which the loaded number comes up than otherwise) A device to travel to another timeline would only be able to reach those nearest our own- that is, the ones split off in the last picosecond by some particle, somewhere in the nearly infinite universe, that you''ll probably never interact with. Useless? But what if you didnt appear at the same spot that you left? if you could adjust where in the taget world you arrived, you'd effectively have a single universe jump drive. (This concept is used in the book Old Man's War, though it takes a while till it's explained- it's just a generic jump drive)

Many Worlds relies on superposition principle, making it impossible to travel between worlds. To put it simply, from perspective of any world, all physics is equivalent to that one and only one world existing.

Of course, if the underlying field theory isn't actually linear, and superposition is just an approximation, things could be different, but then, strictly speaking Many Worlds doesn't hold either. We'd need a different many-histories theory to explain all of it.

As for allowing for travel, you'd effectively be back to dealing with geometry of space-time, so you might as well cut out the middle man and talk about warp drives and wormholes to begin with.

[Ravenchant]

Well then, I'll chime in

One of the main problems of this is that the energy required to produce this much thrust is equal to over 299,792,458 m/s.

Energy is measured in Joules, electronvolts or equivalent, not speed.

This is the minimal speed that light travels

Nope, it's the maximal speed. Light can move really sluggish in some media

and use it's energy to produce light speed

wat

At that speed, either you will break basic physics, and be able to go so fast to go through objects, or logically, atoms that are distributed throughout space would rip your spaceship apart into trillions of atoms per millisecond. That would mean that you would be ripped up almost instantly at the time you hit warp speed.

2/3 lightspeed is more than enough for relativistic effects to become noticeable, but it's far from the *practically-at-c* weirdness, fortunately. So basic physics remain unbroken- the ship wouldn't be able to go through objects (except for the occasional quantum tunneling particle), but shielding would be a b*tch. A Bussard-ramjet magnetic scoop would only work for charged particles, so that's not a perfect solution. Hmm...tricky.

[rkman]

the energy required to produce this much thrust is equal to over 299,792,458 m/s.

299,792,458 m/s would be the required delta-v, how much energy that takes depends on the mass of the vessel (see ksp for reference) - that's aside from complications due to Relativity.

[TheDarkStar]

299,792,458 m/s would be the required delta-v, how much energy that takes depends on the mass of the vessel (see ksp for reference) - that's aside from complications due to Relativity.

Of course, relativity tells us that you can't actually reach c due to requiring infinite energy.

[MrZayas1]

I was more talking about the Delta V required for this amount of speed, whatever the amount of energy that you use to transform it into that amount of DeltaV is really irrelavent in relative speaking, i was using an example.

[MrZayas1]

Relativity does say so but realize that a black hole has a singularity that makes all theories of relativity break down, this might also be the case for traveling light speed, as light does not escape (or in this case encounter) your vessel, so we might see this as another possible way to create an almost imaginary state of physics, but hey, we are still on earth what do we know? (alot)

[K^2]

Yes, head-diving into a black hole is a known way to break the light barrier. Unfortunately, that is not a very practical thing to do even if you have one sitting around.