FTL - How realistic is that technology looking forward?

c0y0te

So - we've seen references to this *type* of technology in lots of different shows (warp drives in star trek, FTL in BSG etc.).. but exactly how realistic is it that such technology or methods of propulsion could be engineered in the future.. and how far away are we from such science-factual leaps towards the technology.

Thought it would be an interesting discussion / debate to keep us going between now and episode 8:)

All the usual suspects, start your engines. Rep points to the most constructive and interesting responses.

c0y0te

davej

Hmm,

Is it really set in the future? In the original series the "next generation" arrived at present day earth (well 80's earth anyway)...

davej

Peace

Due to the vastness of space, it would take hundreds of years to get anywhere at sub light speeds.

It just makes it harder for the marketing department to sell a product that is basically "Watch us float around in a cyongenic sleep."

FTL/Warp Drive etc etc... sells.

c0y0te

but... is it possible? Is it theoretically possible or just marketing spin?

ixoy

There's a nice big paper on it here.

Praetorian

c0y0te wrote:

but... is it possible? Is it theoretically possible or just marketing spin?

It may or may not be possible. Nobody knows for sure. What we do know is that the faster you go the more time slows down. Perhaps if you reach the speed of light time stops completely.

What we also know is that it would require a huge ammount of power to reach the speed of light. It may not be possible to create and harness this much energy.

Our galaxy (the Milky Way) is about 100,000 light years in diameter. So even if we reached light speed, it really wouldn't be quick enough.

Interesting link:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/relativity.htm

Personally I don't think it's possible. I reckon worm holes (folding space), artificial or otherwise would be our only way of travelling great distances quickly.

Quantum physics maybe?

Retr0gamer

21. Warp Drives
A warp drive would be a mechanism for warping space-time in such a way that an object could move faster than light. Miguel Alcubierre made himself famous by working out a space-time geometry which describes such a warp drive. The warp in space-time makes it possible for an object to go FTL while remaining on a time-like curve. The main catch is the same one that may stop us making large wormholes. To make it you would need exotic matter with negative energy density. Even if such exotic matter can exist it is not clear how it could be deployed to make the warp drive work.

Silly physics people. Aren't dilithium crystals now available in spar?

Haruspex

Personally this is my favourite theory from a while back - The Antimatter Sail

From the article:

"Conceptually if we found the funding, we could do it in a year," Howe laments

Anyone feel like donating to this worthy cause? :eek:

ixoy

I remember they achieved near-FTL in Stephen Baxter's "Space". However, the only way to do it was to have a micro-sized ship. Apparently the energy requirements for anything greater than say a matchstick size, is too much.

IIRC, the other alternative is to use two tears in space and communicate, like a wormhole, between them. I think that's the basis of an Einstein-Rosenberg bridge.

Bass.exe

The Wormhole appears to be the most viable theory for FTL travel. Although, really, it's not FTL, as you are travelling through non/hyper/sub space where the laws of physics don't quite apply.

azezil

Psssh silly talk of course FTL travel is possible, professor Azey McScratch n Sniff shall explain:

Egg heads whinge that you can't go faster than light as it requires infinite energy yada yada yada, shut up cup!
Right when one approaches light speed the energy require is great, however it is attainable, cause I said so.

Once you pass light speed you move out of our space time continuum, the rules of normal space time no longer apply, as a result you can cover vast distances in a matter of moments, or that's how people in our continuum would perceive the passage of time to distance traveled.

For the crew of the ship however they will perceive the passage of time as far greater. For the crew they will perceive that they've traveled for whatever amount of time it would take in our universe to cover the distance at that volocity.

e.g. if they're traveling to the nearest solar system, at a volocity just faster than light, the crew would perceive that they've traveled for nearly 4 years but people in our universe would perceive it as just a matter of minutes.



END

Bass.exe

Egg heads whinge that you can't go faster than light as it requires infinite energy yada yada yada, shut up cup!

I think I trust Einstein's opinion more than I trust yours ;P

Once you pass light speed you move out of our space time continuum

Why?

Stark

In the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons they had the pretty cool concept of a Hawking drive. Basically this was just an efficient conventional drive for travelling distances of around 10 light years or so. It would go 3/4 the speed of light or something. Because of relativity laws, people on the ship would perceive 8 months as having passed (they'd often be put into cryogenic sleep) whereas to people back home it would seem like they've been gone 11 years.

Bass.exe

If you want to learn something about Hyper-Space Physics, go read the "Elite" game manual. It contains a whole chapter on Hyper-Space physics... which are used in game... it's a good read actually.
Essentially, you open a rip in Space/Time, and travel through Hyper-Space (a wormhole) and end up in a different Solar Sytem. Only a few moments pass to the crew on board, but a few days pass outside of Hyper-Space. Also, if you had a particularly fast hyper-drive engine, you could "outrun" someone who entered hyper-space, and end up at their destination a few days before them.
Of course, inter-system travel had to be done at <Light Speed.... much less. Took weeks of game time, thank god for the Star Dreamer...
Also, the time-frame for that game was the year 3000. Let's hope it doesn't take that long....

Fenster

Problem with wormholes is the oul blizzard of radiation coming from them and the fact they only transmit random noise. Sooo...

I think FTL will be beyond our grasp for some time to come, if such a thing is even possible. Like before, exploration is going to be in slow steps. In the next 30 years, we can probably expect a privately-funded manned return to the moon, the USA or some other large body putting a group onto Mars (you don't fly out there and simply do an Apollo-style glory shoot) and plans put in place for an extensive survery of the Jovian system if JIMO returns a "yes" on oceans on the moons.

In short, I don't expect it this side of 2050 at the soonest.

ixoy

Returning to Baxter, who seems quite into his physics, you come across the concept of wormhole. He uses a teleportation system (quite interesting, involving quarks and so on) that transmits people across systems as an encoded signal. The problem being that, when the people return from these trips, earth has moved on many years, sometimes by a century. The results of relativity are dealt with quite well, including the culture shock.

Mantel

ixoy wrote:

Returning to Baxter, who seems quite into his physics, you come across the concept of wormhole. He uses a teleportation system (quite interesting, involving quarks and so on) that transmits people across systems as an encoded signal. The problem being that, when the people return from these trips, earth has moved on many years, sometimes by a century. The results of relativity are dealt with quite well, including the culture shock.

It was in his book Space wasn't it? They weren't really wormholes, more of a scaning device/transmitter. The object entering them was scanned and the information of it transmitted to the linked device. Transmissions happened at the speed of light so something that was 10 light years away took 20 years for a round trip. There was still the part of getting the gates in place.

They where supposed to use entangled particals to exchange the information, I'm not quite sure but thats supposed to happen instantaly instead of at the speed of light.

That book explored a few ways to get beyond a solar system. Like mining a planet and creating small worldlet's (like micro dyson spheres) and shooting them out towards another system, handy if your small Or use of solar sails and makeing a star explode to get a push start.

secret_squirrel

ixoy wrote:

Returning to Baxter, who seems quite into his physics,

Him being a physicist an all

My personal favourite is the thought of developing a 'field' or other medium in which the speed of light is greater than usual. The star trek warp drive fits this rather nicely. Parallel universes where the speed of light is faster is also a common one.

Therefore you can travel faster than light without actually doing so. No nasty relativity issues.

Entangled particles is a good candidate for stargate/matter transfer type travelling. Still have the problem of getting the second of the pair to the other end first though.