What needs to be done for faster than light travel?

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Tajlakz
If you have 0 mass, then superluminal travel wouldn't be effected by S. Relativity's rules right?

Uh, no, at least in regular physics. Like a photon.

Sorta side stepping them all together.

I figured the Arhonov Drive significantly reduced mass allowing for really, really fast but still far short of light speed since not all of the test mass is completely influenced by the drive at it's outskirts acting like a skeg of sorts.

Somehow reducing inertia temporarily would be an amazing trick and astonishingly usefl, but even if you did that, it still doesn't give you warp drive.

And I don't understand how one could do this inertia-be-gone stff and maintain say conservation of energy, if you still believe in equivalence principle you could make a conveyor belt in a gravitational field in a loop and reduce inertia/mass on one side, and you get magic free energy)

The Mach Drive allowed for Ultraluminal travel since there was zero mass all together.

Like a photon?

There has to be at least 100 pages of new physics to explain if any of it is real.

originally posted by: Bedlam
Generally, what needs to be done for faster than light travel is to run out on your in-system drive until you're in gravimetrically flatter space, then engage the Mach drive.

That takes a while to start up, it's the checklist from hell.

You mean, flying through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops? Without precise calculations, we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end our appropriation real quick, wouldn't it?

originally posted by: Bedlam
Let's say you run into a highly advanced civilization that is practicing deceit as the most energy-efficient form of defense. You see wasteland, or early industrial civilization, or a modest modern one. But what you actually have are weird pissed-off Organians or Talosians. Their degree of technical capability can't be assessed by a civilization at our stage. So they track you back home and it's all over but the shouting. Or they get onboard and infest you with nanobots of some sort. Or a tailored biologic.

And if they were so advanced, why would they pick this time to wipe us out, vs before, or never? What's it to them?

The problem is that you can't easily distinguish a primitive intelligent civilization from an extremely advanced one, if they're practicing masking or lapwing.

Wouldn't they get tired of 'pretending' and not using the fruits of actually having an advanced civilization?

It would be like everybody voluntarily deciding to live like 11 century england in some sort of Monty Pythonish farce. For 100,000 years, on the off-chance a droid probe comes around, it's all infections, pig poo and bring out yer dead.

originally posted by: Jukiodone
a reply to: Bedlam

Secret agent /special person with extraordinary abilities on the run from 3 letter agencies has been done to death.

Indeed. It would be slightly more interesting if the 3 and 4 letter agencies, at least some of them, turned out to be the good guys. Maybe it's really important to protect the world against mutants.

I don't think nerds can come up with really good plots, motivations and characters. They/we are good at world-building, aka 'production designer' in cinema.

Myself, I always thought that Coriolanus could be adapted as an amazing space political opera. Done right, it could sweep half the Oscars.

Where does matter get its mass from?

Am I asking that right?

originally posted by: onequestion
Where does matter get its mass from?

Am I asking that right?

Yeah. The real apparent fact/mystery which makes no sense as physics to me is how mass can seemingly come from everything, electromagnetism, weak force, strong force gluon binding strength, quarks, Higgs, belly button fungus, whatever, with just a scalar coupling constant and it's all the same, and just adds up. Completely different from all other basic particle physics.

Adding up all the contributions of mass is like doing stuff that you're never supposed to do, mix "units", adding oranges plus kumqats plus kangaroos.

originally posted by: mbkennel

originally posted by: onequestion
Where does matter get its mass from?

Am I asking that right?

Yeah. The real apparent fact/mystery which makes no sense as physics to me is how mass can seemingly come from everything, electromagnetism, weak force, strong force gluon binding strength, quarks, Higgs, belly button fungus, whatever, with just a scalar coupling constant and it's all the same, and just adds up. Completely different from all other basic particle physics.

Adding up all the contributions of mass is like doing stuff that you're never supposed to do, mix "units", adding oranges plus kumqats plus kangaroos.

If the Universe is in fact a super fluid vacuum then Mass could just be an effect caused by breakdown of symmetry within the "bits" that make it up (like an analogous gap generation mechanism).


arxiv.org...

Makes sense to me - but I'm not a physicist : (

Would seem to make any claims of being able to isolate a space faring vessel (at least partially) from the effects of "average space" more likely- but happy to be corrected.

What needs to be done for faster than light travel?
Easy, you would have to first set yourself a destination to travel to, and then go there really really fast.
Like super fast.
Faster than most people can likely run.
Simple no?

originally posted by: mbkennel

Indeed. It would be slightly more interesting if the 3 and 4 letter agencies, at least some of them, turned out to be the good guys. Maybe it's really important to protect the world against mutants.

They're all pitched as having reasonable motivations. They're just all jumping to conclusions.

I know! i know! You have to aim at slower than light travel and miss!

(with apologies to the late Douglas Adams.)

a reply to: Jukiodone

Well, that paper is about yet another mass-generating mechanism in a nonlinear quantum field theory. Note that this "nonlinear" business in the field theory is entirely hypothetical and probably doesn't match our actual universe. In particular the photon mass appears to be nearly zero to very high precision.

Understand that in theoretical particle & cosomological physics, there are explorations of what the consequences of all sorts of novel physical hypotheses might be, but the overwhelming majority of these hypotheses will not turn out to be true or are not strongly indicated by observation.

Think of it as physics-influenced mathematics.

a reply to: Bedlam

So does a Mach shielding effect screw up quantum entanglement?

I know that the shielding would cut the system off from the EM radiation of the universe, but it's possible to entangle more than just photons, right?

For an interstellar capable craft...it is probable that a photon propulsion engine --- that uses an unlimited source of fuel [such as starlight photons] --- is essential for sustained speeds in the superluminal realm.

For such a photon engine...a stasis sphere, inside the bottom hull of starship, would house a micro-mini black hole [the size of a proton], with photon receptor ports installed on the outside hull of the starship --- so as in order to funnel starlight photons to the micro-mini black hole. The BH [black hole] would form an accretion disk, and eject the photons at both of it's magnetic poles as jets of light at near the speed of light.

The polar jets are directed to various thruster tubes and ejected out of thruster ports on the hull of the starship...with speed increasing --- exponentially squared --- easily up to the speed of light barrier; and beyond into the superluminal realm.

The micro-mini BH would form one or two gravitational magnetic fields outside the hull of the starship, thus giving the craft anti-gravitational capabilities, including protection against the speed of light barrier and various foreign objects.

In places that lack starlight...a small amount of seawater would be needed for fusion power plasma generation by the two offboard magnetic shields of the starship.

a reply to: Erno86

I still don't understand why you'd need starlight. Why not just any light. How bright is star light from a distance if you are cruising around deep interstellar space?

Please explain to me why it's gotta be starlight only. Or sea water. Not that it uses it but WHY it needs to use that specifically.

Please.

Based upon what I saw I believe GL of Star Wars fame has it correct. Jump to Light Speed my friend.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Erno86

I still don't understand why you'd need starlight. Why not just any light. How bright is star light from a distance if you are cruising around deep interstellar space?

Please explain to me why it's gotta be starlight only. Or sea water. Not that it uses it but WHY it needs to use that specifically.

Please.

Because starlight is the most abundant source of light photons in our universe. I'm talking about galactic travel here, not intergalactic --- Though intergalactic travel might still be possible with photon propulsion. Seawater might be the most easily assessable abundant source of deuterium in our universe --- If that kind of fusion is possible with aneutronic fusion --- Since low fusion temperatures are a must for any plasma shield surrounding the starship.

Photons do impart momentum...so if we take the momentum per inertia of the photons --- Would it be powerful enough to power a starship into the superluminal realm, if the photons were ejected out of the micro-mini BH and into thruster outlet ports on the starship?

Allow me to answer my own question...Photons propelled from a micro-mini black hole propulsion unit on a starship, would probably provide enough thrust to at least reach the speed of light barrier --- if not into the superluminal realm.

I hope that provides an answer to Michio Kaku's perplexing problem....on the subject of photon thrust for a starship.

Link:
www.youtube.com...

I've been doing more research and I've found some interesting effects. I'm not sure what everyone's standpoint is on Edgar Fouche. But it seems like what he said has some validity to it. Gravitomagnetic forces are a very unexplored part of relativity. Apparently rotating matter can create "artificial gravity". Similair to how a rotating electromagnetic field produces a magnetic field. It's sounding like gravity has a close friend. Can you say equivalence principle? If gravitional forces are the exact same as inertial forces, can we harness this part of gravity? I'm willing to bet be can. Lab tests have shown using superconductors, that we can generate partial mass reduction. For whatever reason, super conducting material seems to play a big part in this. Maybe we should try rotating some plasma at a high velocity and see if we can reduce said objects wait. Sound familiar?

originally posted by: IAmTheRumble
I've been doing more research and I've found some interesting effects. I'm not sure what everyone's standpoint is on Edgar Fouche. But it seems like what he said has some validity to it. Gravitomagnetic forces are a very unexplored part of relativity. Apparently rotating matter can create "artificial gravity". Similair to how a rotating electromagnetic field produces a magnetic field. It's sounding like gravity has a close friend. Can you say equivalence principle? If gravitional forces are the exact same as inertial forces, can we harness this part of gravity? I'm willing to bet be can. Lab tests have shown using superconductors, that we can generate partial mass reduction. For whatever reason, super conducting material seems to play a big part in this. Maybe we should try rotating some plasma at a high velocity and see if we can reduce said objects wait. Sound familiar?

there is more than one way to skin an gravity cat:

www.sciencedaily.com...

www.ibtimes.co.uk...

phys.org...

plus GR does show a coupling between gravity and electromagnetism. it's really really really tiny but it is actually there as a part of GR. no "woo woo" needed.