A question about super fast travel

I want to know how vehicles travelling up to and faster than lightspeed are able to dodge objects that might be in the way. I know hitting a baseball in my car going 55mph will do substantial damage, imagine hitting one at 186,000mps!

[edit on 20-7-2007 by Quasar]

yep major obstacle for light speed travel. Hitting a grain of dust would cause a near nuclear explosion- a force feild that vapourizes everything in your path might work

I've heard of a theory that space travel is not acomplished by super speeds, but by eliminating distance.

Ever seen a flightpath from say minnesota to seattle? The path isnt a straight line, the path actually goes into canada on a curved route.
They follow the curvature of earth, and apparently its actually a shorter distance. I dont know how it works,I just know thats how its done.

Now Imagine this, on a piece of paper put a dot at one end and another dot at the opposite side. The fastest route is a straight line, unless you fold the paper in half, then the distance is nothing.

I have no idea if that is how a supposed alien ship moves or not just a theory I have heard.

Also our space shuttles go pretty fast also, must have hit a rock or two along the way. Have their been any explosions because of say a 5 lb boulder? I dont know?

Yeah, the paper folding theory, I forgot about that. I'm gonna see if I can find where I saw that before and put up some links.

Ahh yes, wormholes. Not a big fan of them, but thats the paper folding concept.

The basic idea of a wormhole derives from a simple analogy. If the universe is like the skin of an apple (from a topological viewpoint), a worm trying to crawl to diametrically opposite points could save time by boring through the apple, rather than staying on the surface. Another version of this kind of analogy uses the idea that you can bring two distant points on a sheet of paper together - by folding the paper.

www.space.com...

This guy has a pretty good idea as well.

We can see that our two dimensional map can be curved into a three dimensional globe. Now imagine that we curve our three dimensional space around back onto itself. Now take two points in space, very far apart. It is concievable that the straight line drawn in three dimensional space between the two points is longer than the line drawn in four dimensional space*, if the three dimensional space is curved. If we could figure out a way to travel in the fourth dimension, then it is concievable that we could "burrow" to different points in space.

www.tfproject.org...

Double post

[edit on 20-7-2007 by Quasar]

Ive sometimes thought about that myself. I watched a special on discovery science on different ways scientists think we could speed up our travel through space with current technology.
One method was using a huge parachute type device that was extended in FRONT of the craft and then use a series of nuclear detonations to push the parachute thus pulling the ship to great speeds.
Now the problems it would possibly encounter would be numerous imo.
One of the problems would be that this ship would not be very maneuverable, so basically it seems that a path would be set and it wouldnt be able to deviate from that path very easily.
Setting a path to avoid planets and their bigger, well known moons wouldnt be that big of a problem. However, what about navigating it through the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter? Thats just an example, im sure there are other threats out there as well but smaller probes with thrusters on them that are able to fire and move the craft around such things is easier than trying to maneuver this giant parachute type craft.
There are other propulsion theories out there as well, like a craft using gravity to travel, altering the gravity in front of the craft so that it somehow pulls the ship.
Maybe this method would create some type of energy field that would push smaller objects out of the way before the craft could hit it??
Idk, just some thoughts..
peace

So do you guys mean something like teleportation? when you talk about paper folding theory.

Getting anywhere near the speed of light in vacuum (and by near I mean within a tenth of a percent of the speed of light) would be damn near impossible. There are silly things like interstellar ionized gas and dust between you and your destination. These interlopers may seem harmless at our snail's pace but at any fraction of C maintaining a macroscopic structure in the face of interactions with this matter is daunting. As you approach the SoL, mundane things like light will be blue-shifting and that means regular ol' starlight light become gamma rays!

Humans will, after trying every conceivable way to travel near the speed of light, be shown how - when the sun goes nova!

Jon

[edit on 7.20.2007 by Voxel]

Originally posted by _Phoenix_
So do you guys mean something like teleportation? when you talk about paper folding theory.

No, they are referring to wormholes. Put a dot on the top of a piece of paper and a dot on the bottom. To travel from dot to dot, in a straight line would take forever, if you look at it in terms of interstellar space. Fold that piece of paper in half and the dots would be on top of one another. Scientists theorize that if you were able to now connect those two dots together via a pathway or "wormhole" the distance between them would shorten, considerably and so would the time it would take to travel from dot A to dot B

Originally posted by _Phoenix_
So do you guys mean something like teleportation? when you talk about paper folding theory.

Well, sort of. If you were to stand on one side of a dollar bill, for instance, and wanted to get to the other side, the shortest way would be to walk across in a straight line. Now if you were to fold the dollar bill in half, you could simply step onto the other side instantly. Thats a simple concept of a wormhole. If you were to fold space, you could travel light years away in a fraction of the time.

There's a good picture on this page that shows space folded, and the wormhole.

www.slais.ubc.ca...