NASA Scientists to Test Warp Drive Theory

tanka418

ZetaRediculian

I'm more curious why all the aliens speak English and look like humans with bad costumes.

Who said any ETs speak English? If they use telepathy, you do the translation yourself and understand ET in "English" even though ET never spoke in the first place.

And why wouldn't ET look like you; many ETs ARE Human.

Step back from yourselves for a minute and catch your breath, y'all ain't special.

The point was that there are plenty of forms intelligent life can take based on just the diversity of life we know of on earth. Why would aliens resemble humans when they could have 6 legs (most common form of life on earth does) or other things?

I am not huge into Star Trek cannon (though I like the shows/movies) but I believe that the explanation for the visual similarity between alien intelligences and us was attributed to having a common ancestor who seeded the Galaxy billions of years before any of the species in Star Trek existed with DNA which was pre-programmed to produce humanoid type bodies in the more or less in the image of the ancestor species but with variation brought about due to adapting to different planetary environments.

There were intelligences in the original series that were not humanoid (the blob they encountered in one episode, a crystaline creature they found in another, and of course "I am Nomad") but they weren't remembered as much because well, we relate to things which look more or less like us.

JadeStar

The point was that there are plenty of forms intelligent life can take based on just the diversity of life we know of on earth. Why would aliens resemble humans when they could have 6 legs (most common form of life on earth does) or other things?

ALL of the advanced, sentient / intelligent life forms native to Earth are bipeds (and a relative of Humans). As it turns out one of the most efficient forms for life to take on is "Humanoid".

I am not huge into Star Trek cannon (though I like the shows/movies) but I believe that the explanation for the visual similarity between alien intelligences and us was attributed to having a common ancestor who seeded the Galaxy billions of years before any of the species in Star Trek existed with DNA which was pre-programmed to produce humanoid type bodies in the more or less in the image of the ancestor species but with variation brought about due to adapting to different planetary environments.

There were intelligences in the original series that were not humanoid (the blob they encountered in one episode, a crystaline creature they found in another, and of course "I am Nomad") but they weren't remembered as much because well, we relate to things which look more or less like us.

edit on 29-10-2013 by JadeStar because: (no reason given)

How many of these non-humanoid creatures were space-faring, or even used tools?

Space faring peoples get that way because they can build things, typically it is the Humanoid form that builds.

DNA is not unique to earth, and it does not have to be sourced by an "ancestor species". Humans, that is to day, genetic humans originate on many different worlds, and galaxies. They are not necessarily related to each other, well not in any sort of conventional way, more by accident. Though the DNA of these various Humans is all remarkably similar, with the largest differences being in the individual genetic markers. It is possible for instance, to find a person living on Earth, that "tests" completely "Human", yet, is not related to any Terrestrial Human.

reply to post by JadeStar

I predict that we'll have a working model by April 5, 2063, if not sooner...

In all honesty though, I've always been waiting for this to happen. I just hope they remember to add some inertial dampers to counter the effects of rapid acceleration and deceleration of the ships.

reply to post by ThePeaceMaker


Deflector Field to repel dust, rocks, asteroids etc...that's what they call the Navigational Fields, or Shields. Just a lower setting for the fields/shields than combat levels.

I've heard rumors that in F-22 hangers, workmen are getting sick around the fighters. Could be radiation from structural integrity and inertia dampening fields that I think are necessary because of the abrupt turns the F-22 can do. New tech has new radiation to deal with...we probably don't even know how to make shielding against it. Anyway, its fun to think about....

tanka418

ZetaRediculian

I'm more curious why all the aliens speak English and look like humans with bad costumes.

Who said any ETs speak English? If they use telepathy, you do the translation yourself and understand ET in "English" even though ET never spoke in the first place.

And why wouldn't ET look like you; many ETs ARE Human.

Step back from yourselves for a minute and catch your breath, y'all ain't special.

I have personal experience with ETs and they aren't human. None of them are. In fact, they are all robots that I created In the future and sent back in time to destroy the whole Andromeda galaxy which has already happened. They don't have telepathy either. The voices you hear in your head are your own. We were talking about star trek anyway. Now be gone. Weren't you banned already?

tanka418

JadeStar

The point was that there are plenty of forms intelligent life can take based on just the diversity of life we know of on earth. Why would aliens resemble humans when they could have 6 legs (most common form of life on earth does) or other things?

ALL of the advanced, sentient / intelligent life forms native to Earth are bipeds (and a relative of Humans). As it turns out one of the most efficient forms for life to take on is "Humanoid".

Incorrect.

Cetaceans are intelligent.

Ants have been shown to have a "colony" or "shared intelligence".

Even among primates, bipedalism is rare.

Octopi are considered to be fairly intelligent.

Elephants have exhibited signs that they are also intelligent and they have long memories.

How many of these non-humanoid creatures were space-faring, or even used tools?

The crystalline entity did. There was also a dark molecular cloud which was a massive scale intelligent being that they encountered on the original series.

Space faring peoples get that way because they can build things, typically it is the Humanoid form that builds.

And an intelligent space faring species of Octopi with 8 limbs presumably cold manipulate and build things greater than our two puny (by comparison) hands.

What I hear is a human-centric or homochauvanism with regards to the kinds of forms intelligent and technological extraterrestrials.

The fact is that the universe is likely weirder than anything imagined in our rather limited sci-fi depictions of aliens (its hard to get Octopi and Elephants to go to acting classes )

DNA is not unique to earth,

And you know this how?

Amino acids are not unique to earth and we've found some very complex amino acids in space and inside meteorites but as far as I know we've not found any DNA from off the Earth. That would be a pretty big deal. One of the biggest stories of science if not the story of the year. (And I keep pretty up on astrobiology as it is my chosen interest and hopefully future career.)

and it does not have to be sourced by an "ancestor species". Humans, that
is to day, genetic humans originate on many different worlds, and galaxies. They are not necessarily related to each other, well not in any sort of conventional way, more by accident. Though the DNA of these various Humans is all remarkably similar, with the largest differences being in the individual genetic markers. It is possible for instance, to find a person living on Earth, that "tests" completely "Human", yet, is not related to any Terrestrial Human.

I see, this is your belief (which you're entitled to) but it's not science (yet!).

wyldwylly
reply to post by JadeStar

 

I predict that we'll have a working model by April 5, 2063, if not sooner...

The funny thing is there is actually a guy with the last name Cochran who among other things....works in the area of advanced propulsion physics and extra solar planets. He's at the University of Texas

www.nap.edu...

They also held the first meeting to found the 100 Year Starship organization: 100yss.org... in San Francisco not far from the Golden Gate bridge in an area not far from where the fictional "Star Fleet" of Star Trek is based!

Life imitating art no doubt, but fun nonetheless.

In all honesty though, I've always been waiting for this to happen. I just hope they remember to add some inertial dampers to counter the effects of rapid acceleration and deceleration of the ships.

If I were to guess I'd say that unless we learn how to generate the exotic matter (maybe in some supersized version of the LHC) we won't be able to scale this up in this century. Maybe in the 22nd, or 23rd.

But I remain hopeful and we have no idea what may pop out of the physics world. There have been some amazing breakthroughs in materials science in just the last 50 years. Weird stuff like Aerogels and Memory Metals which would have seemed like magic at the beginning of the 20th century.

By the way there are some good books on the subject:

Making Starships and Stargates: The Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes By James F. Woodward (Caution: Uses a lot of math but still a good read for the casual person with no interest in mathematics.)

The Physics of Stargates: Parallel Universes, Time Travel, and the Enigma of Wormhole Physics [Paperback]
Enrico Rodrigo (very good non-technical introduction to the whole subject)

Going Interstellar by Les Johnson (very good casual read)

Time Travel and Warp Drives: A Scientific Guide to Shortcuts through Time and Space
Allen Everett (i have not read this one yet, but it is on my "to do" list).

NASA is not a military agency. If it was they'd be getting a crapload more money and would not have to shut down science programs left and right due to budget cuts (which never seem to affect the black budget by the way).

Well, from my knowledge, NASA, has it's origin from NACA

From the NACA wikipedia page here is a quote:

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

I could be wrong, but from this, I see NASA as being from military origins indirectly of course, but this is part of its history doesn't it?

More over, I heard that the creation of NASA was to compartmentalize its work so that a team working on a certain project would be aware of what another team is doing, this is excluding of course the higher echelons of the organization.

Thruthseek3r

JadeStar

SovereignEve

ThePeaceMaker
One thing I've always thought when watching Star Trek and they go into warp .. When travelling so fast through space that has asteroids planets stars suns meteor/ asteroid fields .. When travelling so fast what's going to stop you slamming into one of these

I've often wondered the same thing. I also have pondered the thought how a human body can be brought to such speed and suddenly "stop" without turning to...well...vapor. Our bodies couldn't endure that kind of speed unless we were protected with some kind of special suit and even then... I don't know.

~Sovereign

Because the ship has "intertial dampers". It's the same reason they do not all float around in weightlessness.

The inertia and gravity inside the ship is maintained by part of the warp engine.

Which may not be too far off because under the real warp theory the ship itself would be encased in its own bubble outside of space and time. In that bubble it is not moving much at all. The bubble itself is moving. So the crew would neither experience g-forces nor time dilation because its outside of space/time when warping.

I heard something similar while playing Mass Effect 2 on Xbox 360 and listening to the story and mechanics behind the ship core engine while talking to the engineers/mechanics of the Normandy SR2.

I do not know how this really works, but I heard something similar to this and it seemed very interesting to me.

ThePeaceMaker
One thing I've always thought when watching Star Trek and they go into warp .. When travelling so fast through space that has asteroids planets stars suns meteor/ asteroid fields .. When travelling so fast what's going to stop you slamming into one of these

They travel between dimensions in Hyperspace. They cannot collide with physical objects until they leave hyperspace.

overratedpatriotism
reply to post by ThePeaceMaker

 

its not the stars and planets which you can plot to avoid it is the specs of dust which will rip a ship in half when its travelling at near light speeds...

let me know when they have a working deflector dish.

The ship won't be travelling at anywhere near light speed, but the bubble will. Difficult to understand, I know, but if you imagine your spec of dust entering the bubble, it would be at a relatively low speed when it strikes the craft.

I suppose a good way of describing it is your ship moves at, say, 1000m/s through normal space, all the warp bubble does is make a metre "smaller", so it can cover a bigger distant without actually having to travel faster, if you catch my drift?

SovereignEve
I've often wondered the same thing. I also have pondered the thought how a human body can be brought to such speed and suddenly "stop" without turning to...well...vapor. Our bodies couldn't endure that kind of speed unless we were protected with some kind of special suit and even then... I don't know.

~Sovereign

The ship isn't accelerating or decelerating like you think it is. Within it's warp bubble, it travels at otherwise "normal" speeds. It is the bubble itself that is moving....

reply to post by ThePeaceMaker


I have always wondered that myself. They must have a detector on their ship steering them away from such phenomenon. Great question ThePeaceMaker!

Stari

For those who are unaware, they are actually not using general relativity here to do these tests. From what I've read thus far, it seems to me they are using a Machian approach that linearizes the Einstein Field Equations, and draws most of it's inspiration from the works of Dennis Sciama. Sounds fine and all, until you realize gravity in general relativity is an inherently nonlinear phenomena and hence there are valid solutions to the Field Equations that cannot be approximated by these naively simplistic approaches. My main objection is: if the sensitivity of the instruments are made sufficiently large, couldn't an experimenter detect even the negligible perturbations on space by atoms? How can they hope to filter out the noise from the signal assuming this is the case? I'm not a physicist or cosmologist, so I'll gladly appreciate the input of an actual physicist/cosmologist.

Still, one scientist has been working with this model and is getting some results last I heard. His name is James Woodward. In fact, White's quantum vacuum plasma thruster is based off of the works and these results of Woodward's experiments.

RothchildRancor

ThePeaceMaker
One thing I've always thought when watching Star Trek and they go into warp .. When travelling so fast through space that has asteroids planets stars suns meteor/ asteroid fields .. When travelling so fast what's going to stop you slamming into one of these

They travel between dimensions in Hyperspace. They cannot collide with physical objects until they leave hyperspace.

I think you got your shows mixed up, the Stargate tv shows used hyperspace like you stated, Star Trek used its deflector dish in the front and shields. The warp engines in star trek warped space in the front and back and the ship rides the wave while wrapped in a warp bubble. This way the space and time in the warp bubble stay ralative and space is moving faster than light but not the ship its self. Im a big fan of both and with they would come out with a new series. Other than fan made content.

JadeStar

Incorrect.

Cetaceans are intelligent.

Ants have been shown to have a "colony" or "shared intelligence".

Even among primates, bipedalism is rare.

Octopi are considered to be fairly intelligent.

Elephants have exhibited signs that they are also intelligent and they have long memories.

Yes, Cetaceans are quite intelligent, however, they do not use tools.

Ants, display quite remarkable signs of intelligent; so does my i7. Individuals are virtually incapable of extended survival with the rest of the colony, non use tools. How are they with abstraction?

Again, true apes are not true bipedal, they're sort of in-between. They also don't really fare much better than my Timber Wolf on the intelligence, though they can use tools, and have "invented" some from time to time. With time most might evolve into a space faring species; right after they become serious predators. Another trait of space faring ETs; they are all apex predators on their hoe world.

The crystalline entity did. There was also a dark molecular cloud which was a massive scale intelligent being that they encountered on the original series.

Both of these creatures natural environment was space, While they did display some degree of intelligence, most of the "warp tricks" displayed could have been natural...well except that it was star trek...

And an intelligent space faring species of Octopi with 8 limbs presumably cold manipulate and build things greater than our two puny (by comparison) hands.

What do you suppose the differences in manual dexterity would be between a actual "hand" and the small end of a tentacle? Do you not think the Hand is by far the superior device / manipulator?

What I hear is a human-centric or homochauvanism with regards to the kinds of forms intelligent and technological extraterrestrials.

The fact is that the universe is likely weirder than anything imagined in our rather limited sci-fi depictions of aliens (its hard to get Octopi and Elephants to go to acting classes

)

No actually, I listened to Hermes. While it might seem homo-centric, it is also reality. On Earth there is a large variety of life, literally millions of species. Only one has evolved into the "Apex" spot, and that is Terrestrial Humans.

It will be creatures very much like Terrestrial Humans that evolve into the Apex spot on all worlds. Also, I'm not saying all will actually be "Human", but they will be fundamentally humanoid.

"DNA is not unique to earth,"

And you know this how?

Amino acids are not unique to earth and we've found some very complex amino acids in space and inside meteorites but as far as I know we've not found any DNA from off the Earth. That would be a pretty big deal. One of the biggest stories of science if not the story of the year. (And I keep pretty up on astrobiology as it is my chosen interest and hopefully future career.)

A wee thing called logic, I'm sure you've heard of it, and of course Hermes. Perhaps no verified off-world DNA, but logic seems to demand that off-world DNA exists. And of course all the building blocks are there...in space that is.

I see, this is your belief (which you're entitled to) but it's not science (yet!).

Perhaps not science on Earth, but other worlds are not so encumbered.

The elements needed to produce any gravity phenomena has yet to be made yet. We have the know-how, but lack means to implement them.

Once we do that, warp drive will soon follow the same ways the Wright brothers acft propelled us to our current level of propulsion.

If we discover that element tomorrow, our kids will have colonized the system. Their children will colonize the galaxy...

-CN

The missing element to warp drive technology is that WE are the propulsion "fuel". The only exotic matter or anti-matter needed exists all around us, we just need to finally realize that the human brain is the catalyst.

tanka418

The problem is that the "warp theory" is still all speculation, at least until they have reproducible laboratory science to back up their theory.

When something gets to the stage that the theory can be tested in a lab, that's the science phase.

Again, referring to the chart: Conjecture was before Miguel Alcubierre crafted his warp equation, Speculation was the point between then and the experimental test referred to in the article on the first page, technology will be when we can reliably warp space at a more macro level than a single photon of light. Application is when we send a probe to another part of space by using the technology of the warp drive.

The Heim-Lorentz drive already has early engineering done, so it has progressed from speculation, through science, to Technology.

Really? Where is this technology being used? As far as I know it's still in the science phase.

The last reference I saw to it was in this 2010 paper by Marc Millis of the Tau Zero foundation (and former head of NASA's BPP program) presented at the 61st International Astronautical Congress:

Progress in revolutionary propulsion physics

Marc G. Millis
(Submitted on 5 Jan 2011)

Prior to 1988, traversable wormholes were just science fiction. Prior to 1994, warp drives were just fiction. Since then, these notions matured into published scientific discourse, where key issues and unknowns continue to be raised and investigated. In 2009, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics published a peer-reviewed, expansive technical volume on these and other investigations toward breakthrough propulsion. This paper summarizes the key assertions from that 739-page volume, describing the collective state-of-the-art and candidate research steps that will lead to discovering if, or how, such breakthroughs might finally be achieved. Coverage includes: prerequisites for space drive physics, manipulating gravity or inertia for propulsion, lessons from superconductor experiments, null results with "lifters", implications of photon momentum in media, quantum vacuum physics, and the faster-than-light implications of general relativity and quantum non-locality.

Comments: 10 pages, Summary table, 19 references
Subjects: General Physics (physics.gen-ph)
Journal reference: Presented at the 61st International Astronautical Congress, International Astronautical Federation, Prague, CZ, 27/Oct/2010 - 01/Nov/2010
Report number: IAC-10-C4.8.7
Cite as: arXiv:1101.1063 [physics.gen-ph]
(or arXiv:1101.1063v1 [physics.gen-ph] for this version)
Submission history
From: Marc Millis [view email]
[v1] Wed, 5 Jan 2011 19:56:34 GMT (1205kb)



You can read the paper in full here: arxiv.org...

It says its still in the conceptual/device testing as of 2010. Do you know of something more recent?

By the way there is a really good chart that showed where all of the breakthrough propulsion physics ideas were as of 2010:

thruthseek3r

NASA is not a military agency. If it was they'd be getting a crapload more money and would not have to shut down science programs left and right due to budget cuts (which never seem to affect the black budget by the way).

Well, from my knowledge, NASA, has it's origin from NACA

From the NACA wikipedia page here is a quote:

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

I could be wrong, but from this, I see NASA as being from military origins indirectly of course, but this is part of its history doesn't it?

Thruthseek3r

You would be wrong. NACA was a civilian organization, the FAA came out of it too. No one would argue that the FAA is a military organization.

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NACA was pronounced as individual letters, rather than as an acronym.