[QUOTE=DaysBefore;44057059]But then we'd be playing right into the Reaper's plans[/QUOTE]
Don't worry.
We have Conrad.
We don't need to mess around with warp drives or star gates or ancient alien technology. We just need to create an Infinite Improbability Drive, seeing as using the drive sends you through every conceivable point in every possible universe you could possibly end up at one of these planets.
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;44075706]It hasn't been ruled out as a possibility, or else more people would know. The fact that you don't see "FTL disproved" on the news is because scientists aren't sure it's 100% impossible, and neither are you. And you say current understanding, that is always subject to change. Years ago the current understanding of the earth was that it was flat and the universe revolved around it, but advances in technology and science proved otherwise. I don't see why the same can't happen for FTL, science holds many secrets and we're only at the tip of the iceberg.[/QUOTE]
I get the impression you don't really understand this stuff. Also how could one ever disprove FTL when you would just declare "Wait, maybe our understanding of physics is wrong!"
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;44075706]It hasn't been ruled out as a possibility, or else more people would know. The fact that you don't see "FTL disproved" on the news is because scientists aren't sure it's 100% impossible, and neither are you. And you say current understanding, that is always subject to change. Years ago the current understanding of the earth was that it was flat and the universe revolved around it, but advances in technology and science proved otherwise. I don't see why the same can't happen for FTL, science holds many secrets and we're only at the tip of the iceberg.[/QUOTE]
relativity and causality are both demonstrably true, causality more so, and both completely rule out the possibility of FTL travel. relativity has been endlessly experimented on and tested since its inception, and never once has it shown even the vaguest signs of being wrong. causality we definitely know exists just by the fact that events precede other events, giving us consistent rules of physics that don't unpredictably change for no reason.
so as we know causality is true, if you want FTL travel, you need to provide a theory to both falsify and replace relativity that has equally as much documentation and proof as its predecessor. i'm going to guess that you don't have something like that.
so as you can see, the reason you never see "FTL disproved" on the news isn't because we don't know for sure it's 100% impossible, it's because A) we've actually [I]always known[/I] it was impossible under relativity and literally every branch of physics that stems from it, and B) there'll always be people like you trying to maintain its plausibility even when it makes absolutely no sense and has no backing whatsoever other than the faint hope that Einstein was actually a huge doofus.
[editline]28th February[/editline]
"u dont know its 100% impossible!!!" is more or less a grave insult to everyone with a high school physics education
If we do use the Warp, then wont there be fucking daemons and shit everywhere.
You won't get to Jupiter without being skullfucked by a daemonette
[QUOTE=007JamesBond007;44077670]You won't get to Jupiter without being skullfucked by a daemonette[/QUOTE]
Aww...
[QUOTE=007JamesBond007;44077670]If we do use the Warp, then wont there be fucking daemons and shit everywhere.
You won't get to Jupiter without being skullfucked by a daemonette[/QUOTE]
Star trek invented warp drive, everything does not revolve around warhammer, yknow?
[QUOTE=Falubii;44057741]Yes all we need is a negative energy density (probably doesn't exist).[/QUOTE]
Pretending it did, is the concept of moving without actually moving by warping space at least remotely plausible?
[QUOTE=markedOne;44077948]Star trek invented warp drive, everything does not revolve around warhammer, yknow?[/QUOTE]
There is a big difference between the words warp in "warp drive" and "the Warp." One is a faster than light speed, the other is space hell.
[editline]28th February 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Cone;44076339]relativity and causality are both demonstrably true, causality more so, and both completely rule out the possibility of FTL travel. relativity has been endlessly experimented on and tested since its inception, and never once has it shown even the vaguest signs of being wrong. causality we definitely know exists just by the fact that events precede other events, giving us consistent rules of physics that don't unpredictably change for no reason.
so as we know causality is true, if you want FTL travel, you need to provide a theory to both falsify and replace relativity that has equally as much documentation and proof as its predecessor. i'm going to guess that you don't have something like that.
so as you can see, the reason you never see "FTL disproved" on the news isn't because we don't know for sure it's 100% impossible, it's because A) we've actually [I]always known[/I] it was impossible under relativity and literally every branch of physics that stems from it, and B) there'll always be people like you trying to maintain its plausibility even when it makes absolutely no sense and has no backing whatsoever other than the faint hope that Einstein was actually a huge doofus.
[editline]28th February[/editline]
"u dont know its 100% impossible!!!" is more or less a grave insult to everyone with a high school physics education[/QUOTE]
Thank you for making me not have to type this out.
The Alcubierre drive is not strictly impossible under our current knowledge but it relies on form of matter which are only hypothesized. It may also rely on placing this exotic matter along the direction we want to go to beforehand, so that we already need to have traveled to a place in order to travel there faster than light. It may also rely on placing this matter along the path as faster-than-light speeds, so that we need an Alcubierre drive to create an Alcubierre drive and it's actually just impossible overall.
There are a whole host of problems more than these, and comparing these arguments to "man was not meant to fly," is an insult to the work scientists do.
[QUOTE=Cone;44076339]relativity and causality are both demonstrably true, causality more so, and both completely rule out the possibility of FTL travel. relativity has been endlessly experimented on and tested since its inception, and never once has it shown even the vaguest signs of being wrong. causality we definitely know exists just by the fact that events precede other events, giving us consistent rules of physics that don't unpredictably change for no reason.
so as we know causality is true, if you want FTL travel, you need to provide a theory to both falsify and replace relativity that has equally as much documentation and proof as its predecessor. i'm going to guess that you don't have something like that.
so as you can see, the reason you never see "FTL disproved" on the news isn't because we don't know for sure it's 100% impossible, it's because A) we've actually [I]always known[/I] it was impossible under relativity and literally every branch of physics that stems from it, and B) there'll always be people like you trying to maintain its plausibility even when it makes absolutely no sense and has no backing whatsoever other than the faint hope that Einstein was actually a huge doofus.
[editline]28th February[/editline]
"u dont know its 100% impossible!!!" is more or less a grave insult to everyone with a high school physics education[/QUOTE]
You seem under the impression that when I say FTL travel, I mean physically making something that has a mass go faster than the speed of light in a given reference frame, but I'm not. I'm referring to the alcubierre drive, were we manipulate space to go faster than light.
This is not impossible, scientists already theorize that the dark energy expanding our universe can and will make space go faster than light, this will cause red shifting in our local cluster at first since light can never catch up, and this doesn't violate any laws since it's space itself that is moving faster than light.
The alcubierre drive does something similar, expanding the space behind it and contracting it in front. This doesn't make the mass itself go faster than light, and doesn't violate Einsteins laws.
So, it might be not be "100% impossible!!!", but there are many complications and things to research before we can see any of it as feasible.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44077973]There is a big difference between the words warp in "warp drive" and "the Warp." One is a faster than light speed, the other is space hell.
[editline]28th February 2014[/editline]
Thank you for making me not have to type this out.
The Alcubierre drive is not strictly impossible under our current knowledge but it relies on form of matter which are only hypothesized. It may also rely on placing this exotic matter along the direction we want to go to beforehand, so that we already need to have traveled to a place in order to travel there faster than light. It may also rely on placing this matter along the path as faster-than-light speeds, so that we need an Alcubierre drive to create an Alcubierre drive and it's actually just impossible overall.
There are a whole host of problems more than these, and comparing these arguments to "man was not meant to fly," is an insult to the work scientists do.[/QUOTE]
I don't see it as much of an insult, people thought it would be impossible or very expensive to ever cross the atlantic, but improvements in research and engineering proved otherwise. There could be improvements in our research and engineering that will prove the alcubierre drive is a possibility, or it could prove it's impossible.
You also say may a lot, so I assume you mean nothing is concrete, and though I'm sure you mean it's unlikely (like they said crossing the atlantic in a plane was unlikely...), I'm optimistic that it may be possible someday.
I don't know much on the topic, and I know you know very much, but I haven't seen anything in my small research disproving the possibility that an alcubierre drive can be used for space travel.
Dark energy doesn't violate causality.
[editline]28th February 2014[/editline]
I can see that you won't give up this belief though. You're only going to disappoint yourself.
[QUOTE=Falubii;44079016]Dark energy doesn't violate causality.
[editline]28th February 2014[/editline]
I can see that you won't give up this belief though. You're only going to disappoint yourself.[/QUOTE]
Mind explaining why dark [del]matter[/del] energy can make space and its contents go faster than light without violating causality, while a utilisation of negative mass and normal mass to achieve a similar effect cannot?
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;44079039]Mind explaining why dark matter can make space and its contents go faster than light without violating causality, while a utilisation of [b]negative mass[/b] and normal mass to achieve a similar effect cannot?[/QUOTE]
Well there's your first problem.
And keep in mind the difference between dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is the stuff causing anomalies in the orbital speed of stars around their galactic center, while dark energy is driving the expansion of space.
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;44078990]You also say may a lot, so I assume you mean nothing is concrete[/quote]
"You're not 100% certain" is not a very scientific reason to believe in something. The very possibility of the Alcubierre drive is not concrete.
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;44078990]I don't know much on the topic, and I know you know very much, but I haven't seen anything in my small research disproving the possibility that an alcubierre drive can be used for space travel.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive#Difficulties[/url]
I haven't seen anything in my research proving the possibility that an Alcubierre drive is even physically realizable, let alone that it can be used for space travel, and there are a host of potential problems. It turns out that's how burden of proof means you should demonstrate that it does work, and "you can prove it can't exist" is not a very good argument. Optimism is fine. Optimism tempered with skepticism is leagues better.
[editline]28th February 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;44079039]Mind explaining why dark matter can make space and its contents go faster than light without violating causality, while a utilisation of negative mass and normal mass to achieve a similar effect cannot?[/QUOTE]
Because the expansion of space doesn't actually cause local violations of Lorentz invariance or allow closed timelike curves in most physically realistic models, whereas the Alcubierre metric allows for closed timelike curves, which violate causality.
I may be incorrect, but my interpretation is that because we are within the expanding universe, everything appears to be expanding [i]away[/i] from us. Sometimes things expand away from us FTL, and we never interact with them because the light and forces they emit never reach us. Objects do not move towards us at superluminal speeds because of dark energy, hence there is no violation of causality. It's a good question though and I'm sure JohnnyMo or someone else could give a better explanation.
We can still see such galaxies, but as far as I understand (astronomy is not my area of expertise) they have already emitted the last light that will reach us. That light will still be redshifted to look as though the galaxy is moving away faster than light because the redshift is not really caused by relative velocity, but by expansion of the wavelength of the photons as they travel to us through expanding space.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44079500]We can still see such galaxies, but as far as I understand (astronomy is not my area of expertise) they have already emitted the last light that will reach us. That light will still be redshifted to look as though the galaxy is moving away faster than light because the redshift is not really caused by relative velocity, but by expansion of the wavelength of the photons as they travel to us through expanding space.[/QUOTE]
I meant once the galaxy has reached superluminal velocities relative to us, we never interact with them again. That's true right? I mean any photons emitted after exceeding c don't reach us.
[QUOTE=Falubii;44079522]I meant once the galaxy has reached superluminal velocities relative to us, we never interact with them again. That's true right?[/QUOTE]
Apparently it actually takes a little while longer after they've passed the speed of light to be unable to communicate anymore for some reason I don't understand fully.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44079565]Apparently it actually takes a little while longer after they've passed the speed of light to be unable to communicate anymore for some reason I don't understand fully.[/QUOTE]
Apparently it has something to do with the variable rate of expansion of the universe.
You guys need to realise that slower than light interstellar travel would still be rad as hell. You may have to give up dreaming about travelling to distant systems yourself in your lifetime, but the sole idea of other humans reaching other stars and expanding all over the universe is exciting, even if you could only communicate with them with a big latency.
Can some explain the causality thing to me? Like would you be going back in time or something even if you weren't moving conventionally?
[QUOTE=Mingebox;44079990]Can some explain the causality thing to me? Like would you be going back in time or something even if you weren't moving conventionally?[/QUOTE]
An alien leaves its planet, travels to Earth FTL, and blows up the Earth. In the Earth's reference frame, it would appear that the alien arrived and blew up the Earth, then left its planet (because it moved faster than the light it emitted). Clearly it is necessary for the alien to leave its planet before it can arrive at ours.
It's also nice to remember that our solar system has a lot of resources in it already, so we have a lot of stuff in our hands before we have to worry about leaving the system, that is unless you want to shoot for another earthlike planet. Attempts at terraforming planets such as Mars, although a technical prowess and certainly not possible within this century, would be a better investment than searching for a FTL travel method that we are sure doesn't exist.
[QUOTE=Falubii;44080116]An alien leaves its planet, travels to Earth FTL, and blows up the Earth. In the Earth's reference frame, it would appear that the alien arrived and blew up the Earth, then left its planet (because it moved faster than the light it emitted). Clearly it is necessary for the alien to leave its planet before it can arrive at ours.[/QUOTE]
So are you saying that FTL is impossible not because nothing moves faster than light, but because moving faster than light means that you don't move because time gets fucked or what? I'm sorry I'm stupid.
[QUOTE=Falubii;44080116]An alien leaves its planet, travels to Earth FTL, and blows up the Earth. In the Earth's reference frame, it would appear that the alien arrived and blew up the Earth, then left its planet (because it moved faster than the light it emitted). Clearly it is necessary for the alien to leave its planet before it can arrive at ours.[/QUOTE]
I don't really see the paradox though. That just sounds like it would an illusion.
[QUOTE=Broguts;44080263]So are you saying that FTL is impossible not because nothing moves faster than light, but because moving faster than light means that you don't move because time gets fucked or what? I'm sorry I'm stupid.[/QUOTE]
i'm super educated on this, but here's my understanding:
say your friend 4.37 lightyears away in the Alpha Centauri system waves at Sol, then hops in his FTL starship and meets you for lunch here on Earth. 4.37 years after your lunch with him, you look at Alpha Centauri through your interstellar telescope and see your friend waving at Sol, then hopping in his FTL starship to meet you for dinner on Earth. since you directly saw him arrive to Earth but the light of him leaving to meet you has only just been perceived, causality is violated - the events do not logically precede each other.
obviously he couldn't have arrived before he left, and that right there is a loophole that allows for paradoxes to take place. anything that revolves around you doing something before you do it is now perfectly possible, and logic has gone entirely out the window as a result - event A no long precedes B. at this point physics and deduction as a whole become 100% trivial, as nothing makes sense and things happen before they happen and all that kind of self-circling windmills of your mind craziness starts going down.
pretty much, apply the usual time travel paradoxical stuff. FTL travel always circles back in on itself eventually.
[editline]28th February[/editline]
whoops meant to say i WASN'T super educated on this sorry if i made it out like i went to MIT or something
[QUOTE=Broguts;44080263]So are you saying that FTL is impossible not because nothing moves faster than light, but because moving faster than light means that you don't move because time gets fucked or what? I'm sorry I'm stupid.[/QUOTE]
The axioms that underlay Special Relativity are as follows:
1) The laws of physics are the same throughout the universe; basically there is no possible experiment that could test which inertial reference frame is the "proper" frame of the universe. This is known as the principle of relativity.
2) The speed of light, or c, is constant for all observers regardless of their relative velocities. This can be shown from Maxwell's equations, but perhaps more importantly it has been experimentally verified.
From these two axioms it can be shown that all interactions of nature, including forces between objects, have to obey the universal speed limit c if we want to preserve any notion of cause and effect. We have to since cause and effect is fundamental to physics.
tl;dr The speed of light is constant for everyone as verified by experiment, if we break the speed limit physics won't work.
Sorry if that wan't a very good explanation.
[QUOTE=Cone;44080547]i'm super educated on this, but here's my understanding:
say your friend 4.37 lightyears away in the Alpha Centauri system waves at Sol, then hops in his FTL starship and meets you for lunch here on Earth. 4.37 years after your lunch with him, you look at Alpha Centauri through your interstellar telescope and see your friend waving at Sol, then hopping in his FTL starship to meet you for dinner on Earth. since you directly saw him arrive to Earth but the light of him leaving to meet you has only just been perceived, causality is violated - the events do not logically precede each other.
obviously he couldn't have arrived before he left, and that right there is a loophole that allows for paradoxes to take place. anything that revolves around you doing something before you do it is now perfectly possible, and logic has gone entirely out the window as a result - event A no long precedes B. at this point physics and deduction as a whole become 100% trivial, as nothing makes sense and things happen before they happen and all that kind of self-circling windmills of your mind craziness starts going down.
pretty much, apply the usual time travel paradoxical stuff. FTL travel always circles back in on itself eventually.[/QUOTE]
i'm not a science but isn't that more the light going slower than the spaceship than a violation of casuality
[QUOTE=Lambda 217;44080604]i'm not a science but isn't that more the light going slower than the spaceship than a violation of casuality[/QUOTE]
That's where the principle of relativity comes in. No single inertial frame of reference is correct, they are all valid. In that frame, something just happened before it's cause happened. As you can see this is a complete mindfuck and does not work.
[QUOTE=Lambda 217;44080604]i'm not a science but isn't that more the light going slower than the spaceship than a violation of casuality[/QUOTE]
No, because for any signal which signal which gets somewhere faster than a light beam, we can find a reference frame of an observer who sees that signal going backwards in time.
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