Leading on from my other thread, faster than light travel?

[iambowelfish]

NASA - Status of "Warp Drive"

There are some interesting, easy to understand articles there about interstellar travel, though the illustrations are a bit useless.

I think if it does turn out to be impossible it won't prevent interstellar travel. Assuming no apocalyptic events I reckon the normal time constraints of human life will be overcome in the next couple of hundred years. Maybe it'll be conscious computers, or human bodies in some prolonged unconscious state, but I can't see us not finding some way to just wait out the hundreds or thousands of years it'll take to travel between stars.

[o'dium]

So how do they do it on Star Trek?

Back where I'm from, we call those "special effects".

No shit, really?

[plained]

i hear once you outrun light, it gets pretty dark.

hope that helped

[o'dium]

So it may not be possible to go faster than light, but its possible it sounds to go bat shit insane fast, nearly at the speed of light? It just takes a lot of energy?

Then it doesn't matter really does it? Because we can still go pretty damn fast...?

[seremtan]

Why does he have to envisage the method of it happening in order to not rule it out?

Your position is as dumb as a cryptographer who believes a particular method is completely infallibla.

herr splish has "moved beyond" einstein. i was just wondering what wonders he saw there

dumbass

[SplishSplash]

no actually you were being an idiot

[Tsakali_]

So it may not be possible to go faster than light, but its possible it sounds to go bat shit insane fast, nearly at the speed of light? It just takes a lot of energy?

Then it doesn't matter really does it? Because we can still go pretty damn fast...?

nah, you'd only be able to cruise around the neighborhood with that kind of speed, nothing more.

[seremtan]

no actually you were being an idiot

WE'VE MOVED BEYOND

[tnf]

BTW forget all this "proof" that nothing can travel faster than light. We've moved beyond that.

Sure, if all you have is a really big rocket, it's true. But that's kinda like saying "Humans will never be able to fly because nobody can possibly run fast enough for takeoff!"

No, because flying was obviously not in violation of what is viewed as an immutable law of physics...we just didn't have the means at the time.

I won't say its against all possibility that a paradigm shift of sorts in physics will occur at some point, with a new theoretical understanding of the universe in which FTL travel will be possible. But until then, the laws of physics govern things.

It isn't just a lack of technology that prevents FTL travel at the moment. Humans knew flight was possible - mathematically and just with observation. In the same way, we 'know' FTL travel is not possible by those same laws of physics.

[SplishSplash]

No. You're still coming from the same point of view.

Consider things like quantum entanglement and you could say that we are already observing FTL travel. Of course, an information about an Ion isn't the same as a star ship, but a bird isn't the same as a human either.

And we already know that FTL travel was possible if we knew how to bend space-time. The same could be said about pre-flight humans: They already knew flight was possible, it was only a matter of time until they figured out how to build wings and strong enough engines.

Nobody said it'll be easy. But that's no reason to go "OMG the laws of physics don't allow it!" - Yeah, just like hurling a couple hundred tons of metal from one continent to another.

[SplishSplash]

WE'VE MOVED BEYOND

We've moved beyond giving up on something just because it seems difficult?

I have, maybe you haven't.

[Grudge]

The speed of light still puts constraints on moving objects, what you are describing is related to something else than actually moving through time-space faster than light (which you can't).

Hence, travelling without moving.

[SplishSplash]

We all get the idea, there's no need to be anal about it.

[Grudge]

People just need to be clear about what they really mean when they talk about "faster than light" travelling. If not, misunderstanings are inevitable.

[Grudge]

Also, since time and the speed of light is intimately connected to each other, if you were able to "jump" through space between two points faster than light would travel between those points, you would then also jump backwards in time.

[Turing]

I dunno, I think it's fairly clear. If something is one light year away and I get there in less than a year, I'd say that qualifies as ftl even if the actual physical mechanism of travel involves going 20 MPH in a Pinto.

[Grudge]

Seems like everyone isn't really clear about that though.

[Tsakali_]

it always seems that when a limitation presents itself , the solution usually tempts to go around and not through it if you know what I mean.

[plained]

i woulda though when you out run light its all white and swirly with neat color smears transformerizing and morfing and shit

[Fjoggs]

ftl doesn't involve acid

[d3mol!t!on]

i woulda though when you out run light its all white and swirly with neat color smears transformerizing and morfing and shit

I guess it would be like going the speed of sound... surely if you travel faster than the speed of sound you can't hear sounds travelling in the same direction as you that are coming from behind, which would also mean there would be no point in having a rear view window in your light-speed machine :icon32:

[Grudge]

you need to read up relativity

[tnf]

No. You're still coming from the same point of view.

Consider things like quantum entanglement and you could say that we are already observing FTL travel. Of course, an information about an Ion isn't the same as a star ship, but a bird isn't the same as a human either.

And we already know that FTL travel was possible if we knew how to bend space-time. The same could be said about pre-flight humans: They already knew flight was possible, it was only a matter of time until they figured out how to build wings and strong enough engines.

Nobody said it'll be easy. But that's no reason to go "OMG the laws of physics don't allow it!" - Yeah, just like hurling a couple hundred tons of metal from one continent to another.

You didn't read my post very closely - I mentioned paradigms that we base our understanding of the laws which govern the universe potentially shifting to one day allow it, but as we understand the universe now, the situation we are facing with FTL travel is not really like the situation that we faced with something like flight. Flight was an observable phenomena on the macroscopic scale and hence was obviously allowable by the laws which governed the universe. Hurling a couple hundred tons of metal from one continent to another would be known NOT to be a theoretical impossibility for hundreds of years before we could do it.

Currently, the behavior of the macroscopic universe is explained in the context of relativity, which specifically renders FTL travel impossible (save for things like warped spacetime...which I will get to in a second). Quantum mechanics, in its current inception, doesn't work to explain things on this scale - and one day we may have that unified theory that will shift paradigms and give us the realization that FTL travel may indeed be possible, but until that happens (and the string theorists still have a long ways to go), we say that FTL travel is no more a theoretical possibility than me jumping out of a window and flying up instead of downwards. The laws of physics just don't permit it, and saying "well, we used to think we'd never be able make a machine that could fly" doesn't present a parallel line of thinking.

The use of a Alcubierre drive (only know the name because we were just discussing them last week) to use warped spacetime for FTL travel is by no means a theoretical slam dunk regarding its inherent possibility like seeing a bird flying IS a theoretical slam dunk.

So, while I don't rule out the possibility of it being a possibility one day, a long long way down the road, the reality is that there is no undebatable model using the current physics (quantum and relativity) that makes FTL travel a simple issue of lacking technology (simple being a relative term here). In the case of flight, it was a simple issue of lacking technology. Getting back to my original point, and the core of this whole issue, is that some significant advancements and very likely shifts in our theoretical framework of understanding the universe from the subatomic scale on up are going to be necessary before we can say FTL travel is a possibility. So, that's a very long way to say that this discussion is not the same as debating the possibility of machines that can fly.

[SplishSplash]

You didn't read my post very closely

Yeah I did, you're just trying to shut me up with this massive technobabble bomb now which has nothing to do with what I said.

I mentioned paradigms that we base our understanding of the laws which govern the universe potentially shifting to one day allow it, but as we understand the universe now, the situation we are facing with FTL travel is not really like the situation that we faced with something like flight. Flight was an observable phenomena on the macroscopic scale and hence was obviously allowable by the laws which governed the universe. Hurling a couple hundred tons of metal from one continent to another would be known NOT to be a theoretical impossibility for hundreds of years before we could do it.

And yet people seemed to think so. Maybe in a hundred years when we've figured out that Heim theory was right all along (unlikely, but this is just an example) they'll be like "Look, it wasn't a theoretical impossibility to them back then!".

Currently, the behavior of the macroscopic universe is explained in the context of relativity, which specifically renders FTL travel impossible (save for things like warped spacetime...which I will get to in a second). Quantum mechanics, in its current inception, doesn't work to explain things on this scale

Yeah, in its current inception. Which is why people are working on stuff like string theory and LQG, which is what I was talking about all along. (See my first post in this thread.)

and one day we may have that unified theory that will shift paradigms and give us the realization that FTL travel may indeed be possible, but until that happens (and the string theorists still have a long ways to go), we say that FTL travel is no more a theoretical possibility than me jumping out of a window and flying up instead of downwards. The laws of physics just don't permit it, and saying "well, we used to think we'd never be able make a machine that could fly" doesn't present a parallel line of thinking.

See? I said you're still coming from the same point of view, and you just explained it.

The use of a Alcubierre drive (only know the name because we were just discussing them last week) to use warped spacetime for FTL travel is by no means a theoretical slam dunk regarding its inherent possibility like seeing a bird flying IS a theoretical slam dunk.

So why don't our planes flap their wings? Technology... (continued below)

So, while I don't rule out the possibility of it being a possibility one day, a long long way down the road, the reality is that there is no undebatable model using the current physics (quantum and relativity) that makes FTL travel a simple issue of lacking technology (simple being a relative term here). In the case of flight, it was a simple issue of lacking technology. Getting back to my original point, and the core of this whole issue, is that some significant advancements and very likely shifts in our theoretical framework of understanding the universe from the subatomic scale on up are going to be necessary before we can say FTL travel is a possibility. So, that's a very long way to say that this discussion is not the same as debating the possibility of machines that can fly.

... and theory (theory of aerodynamics anyone?) go hand in hand, and from my first post on I said this is a matter of theory.

Your whole argument was "Right now, it's impossible!" and you keep defending this even though I never said anything to the contrary.

I said that people shouldn't pay attention to the "It's impossible!" crowd because it's counterproductive. FTL travel is as impossible to us as flight was impossible to cavemen. They didn't have a theory of flight, we don't have a theory that allows FTL travel.

Are you really saying it's somehow "more" impossible because we haven't watched anybody do it yet? Or because you can't just strap some wood and paper to your back, climb on a hill and try it out?

Hindsight is 20/20, that doesn't mean cavemen had any idea how to fly. They didn't sit there and go: "Man, I got this aerodynamics crap all figured out! If only I had the technology!!!"

[bikkeldesnikkel]

Faster than light travel has already happened, no? Instant communication between quantum pairs.