DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Exactly. And siteless teleporters are teleporters.Turboprops are propeller planes.
Exactly. And siteless teleporters are teleporters.Turboprops are propeller planes.
Very little in science is taken as such.Right. They are exceedingly theoretical and their plausibility is entirely dependent on our understanding of the theoretical physics involved. I'm slightly skeptical about theoretical physics. It seems to work well enough now, experimentally and observationally, but I'm not sure how likely that is to continue indefinitely into the future. Put a different way, I'm happy to give relativity theory provisional acceptance for the time being, but I'm less comfortable giving any of the pronouncements of theoretical physics absolute acceptance. I don't perceive the heiroglyphs of theoretical physics as eternal and necessary truths, the Word of God.
I've read somewhere (apologies, no link) that even theoretical wormholes would only be tiny, as it requires a certain amount of negative energy consolidated in one place, and this seems to have a limit.The problem that I have with wormholes is more practical, I guess. I don't see how a traveler could steer them so as to end up where desired. And opening one would probably require such violent physical conditions that it wouldn't be anything like a Stargate. (More like a black hole.) You wouldn't want to be standing near one.
The issue with FTL, as far as I see it, is not that something can't go FTL but that it can't accelerate past the asymptotic barrier of lightspeed itself.The first paragraph in the reply above applies here too. It's true that there are seemingly impossible mathematical consequences to violating the speed of light in Einstein's scheme. But Einstein's scheme seems to me to just be a working out of the consequences of the speed of light being the same in all frames. When Einstein assumed that, he had to do all kinds of counter-intuitive things to space-time metrics so that everything remained consistent. My point is that Einstein's theories are the logical result of the assumptions that he made. It's true that predictions made on that basis have been verified many times, but there isn't any metaphysical necessity that this model has to be an absolutely correct depiction of reality, any more than Newton's mechanics was. That was exceedingly well verified too.
"Warp" per Star Trek is not actually FTL in the true sense, but more akin to stretching and contracting spacetime itself in front and behind the vessel.For the purposes of science fiction, I can imagine that the seeming cosmic speed limit might not be inviolate. I don't think that achieving superluminal velocities necessarily implies physical conditions that would kill everyone nearby. And a spaceship traveling at "warp velocity" could still be steered to a desired destination.
Aye.Regarding the hypothetical science fiction quantum drive, one problem I see is that while a particle might theoretically be anywhere in the universe, it would presumably have an exceedingly low probability of being most of those places. So if we reduce a starship to a wave function spread out over the entire universe, causing it to manifest itself in another star system would mean causing it to assume a low probability state. For the purposes of science fiction, I can imagine that requiring energy (like raising a mass to a higher potential energy position), so that longer jumps would require more powerful engines or something.
No. It's not a barrier; it's an aysmptotic limit.The issue with FTL, as far as I see it, is not that something can't go FTL but that it can't accelerate past the asymptotic barrier of lightspeed itself.
Please don't get hung up on the use of barrier v limit.No. It's not a barrier; it's an aysmptotic limit.
Very little in science is taken as such.
Science is always open to correction.
I've read somewhere (apologies, no link) that even theoretical wormholes would only be tiny, as it requires a certain amount of negative energy consolidated in one place, and this seems to have a limit.
But if this limit was removed, some have calculated that a wormhole the size of a grapefruit would take energy equivalent to our sun's output for 100 million years.
The issue with FTL, as far as I see it, is not that something can't go FTL but that it can't accelerate past the asymptotic barrier of lightspeed itself.
The closer you get, the more energy is required, the heavier you get relatively etc.
At light speed you are of infinite mass, require infinite energy etc.
Or so the equations suggest.
I wasn't just being pedantic over terminology.Please don't get hung up on the use of barrier v limit.
If you had read what I wrote it is clear that I am using the term barrier as you would use the term limit.
Yet in the end our understanding does improve.Or that's the myth anyway. I don't entirely believe it.
It's the energy that helps keep the universe at net-zero balance.I'm not sure what 'negative energy' means.
Highly speculative, even.I guess that quantum uncertainty stuff might allow micro-wormholes down there on the Planck scale. Or something, I don't know. That's all speculation.
Possibly.It seems to me that somehow warping the universe to make here and 20 lightyears away physically coincide, would be a hugely violent thing. It would (so my science-fiction intuition tells me) create all kinds of distortions in the space and presumably the resulting physics surrounding the wormhole.
It might.It wouldn't be a nice benign little Stargate that you could hide in a mineshaft in Colorado where you could just dial up a destination when you want to and then step through. If Einstein attributed gravity to geometrical warping of space, I suspect that the tunnel entrance to a worm-hole would resemble a black-hole. A very nasty thing to be standing anywhere near. Trying to travel through one might mush you into subatomic particles.
Seems to be confirmed with every experiment, though.Sure, but what if the equations aren't exactly right? I tried suggesting to Sarkus that Einstein's general relativity equations are basically the result of Einstein assuming that the speed of light is constant in all (non-accelerated) frames, no matter how fast they are moving relative to one another. So Einstein had to monkey around with other spatial-temporal variables and metrics, so as to allow everything to remain consistent. That's where all that asymptotic stuff comes from as C is approached.
But once again, it's only as good as the assumptions that went in.
Excellent thought!We already know that the speed of light varies in different media. The speed of light is slower in water, even slower in glass, and only something like 70,000 miles per second in diamond. So lets assume (simply for the sake of science-fiction) that 'vacuum' isn't the same thing as 'nothing'. (We've been arguing about that in another thread.) Let's hypothesize that all that quantum field theory stuff is something and that it has some effect on retarding the speed of light, just as water and glass do.
So imagine some damping field that smooths out all the unruly quantum field stuff (without thereby evaporating the spaceship that's generating the field, I don't know how that would work, maybe the damping field could be contained in its generator and projected ahead of the ship) converting the kind of quantum field theory 'false-vacuum' that we observe in space into a more voidy kind of vacuum (hypothetically with a higher speed of light).
Purely for the sake of science-fiction remember. It's all speculative fiction.
Sure, the model / equations may well have a limit of applicability but that does not make them any less correct in the realm at which they are applicable.That kind of scenario might call for some future modification of Einstein's mechanics, just as things like the Michelson-Morley experiment and the failure to detect ether drift led to Einstein's modifications of Newton's mechanics. Those modifications might get rid of the asymptotes, at least for super-luminal velocities in interstellar space.
I assure you we are using the terms interchangeably.I wasn't just being pedantic over terminology.
You went on to say that a barrier is something you could jump over, as if there is another side. So no, we're not using the terms interchangeably.
I think it's a mistake to think of it that way, or encourage others to think of it that way.
Yes, even in science fiction.
If I remember the tchnobabble well enough, the wormholes in Stargate were artificial, and were formed by dialling the address of the destination gate.Until or unless someone can explain why the end points of wormholes should remain stationary or move relative to the surfaces of planets, or track the position of moving Gou'auld spacecraft, this (a 'Stargate') remains another one of those "absolute Euclidean-relativistic aerher wind geometrical space" fantasies.
Yeah. I thought the placement was strange also.I have only just now noticed this thread - any objection to moving this to Sci-Fi and Fantasy (and fixing the thread title because... rage... yeah... lol)