dsc.discovery.com — Seems strange, but by manipulating extra dimensions with astronomical amounts of energy, two Baylor University physicists have outlined how a faster-than-light engine, or warp drive, could be created that would bend but not break the laws of physics.
Jul 28, 2008 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountJul 28, 2008
Its gonna suck if when we finally do meet aliens, they were hoping that OUR technology would help THEM out, and everyone ends up screwed
deepblJul 29, 2008
"Exactly how the 11th dimension would be expanded and shrunk is still unknown."How ironic- this is the same problem I'm having with my perpetual motion machine!
blatant3Jul 29, 2008
Funny. Lazar outlined this exact same system over 10 years ago. Trust No One.
harbinger1080Jul 29, 2008
FTA: "Warp drive isn't doable now, and probably won't be for the next several millenia," said Cleaver"In the meantime, then, lets get perfecting cryogenics. I need to be frozen so I can use this.
trevorhJul 29, 2008
Except you aren't moving faster than light or even necissarily at relativistic speed but instead bending space so you don't have to travel as far.
walkertxclockerJul 30, 2008
Well to be fair, the following historical archive from starfleet shows 2061 even though it isn't "canon" <a class="user" href="http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:Historical_archive%2C_Starfleet_(production_resource).jpg">http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:Historic ...</a>/hangs head in shame
beautifulleperJul 31, 2008
I completely agree with you. and I can't even really call myself a real scientist. But I also know the sciences have tended to scoff at using yourself as the subject of study and looking at things from a "objective" observer standpoint. Yet many observations and theories i have made about the human animal I came up with on my own using myself, friends and lovers to theorize what I later found in studies and your right that is deductive reasoning instead of inductive reasoning, the scientists did the actual work for me studying thee actual statistical data cause I had so few variables to deal with and a lot of personal insicurities. Some aspects of the sciences have old standing biases that may sometimes hinder progress as well. I think there may be a problem that at the smaller scale you try to probe into reality the harder it is to answer the questions. And so pure math becomes your only way to try to find the needle in the hay stack until certain new ways and approaches actualy lead to evidence (maybe likely). My problem is I don't even care if there are strings or not, I just don't believe matter is anything other than a dance, It is a law of motion, It is a energy state. And at some point we are no longer interacting with something in our weak human senses seeing, touching, and even hearing to be what we think of as solid may be quite abstract and why some people believe in god. maybe reality is different relative energy states interacting with each other, maybe the universe is made up just math, maybe everything is simply relative to state of quantitative abstraction. And we may some day find a theory that works as in, is able to be used for practical calculations but without a real way to visualize what is really happening on such small scales or ruff estimates, which supposedly our solar system like model of the atom that is supposedly inaccurate but works well enough for us to somewhat grasp what is happening on a subatomic level. So whatever the real final, most powerful theories might end up being. that start to describe evidence which should be comming out in the next 20 years it won't matter to me wether it is described as strings or little small vagina's.At the same time I think your perspective is one of the biggest and most important criticisms of string theory, the very valid question, what if we have been wasting our time on a dead end? was that a waste of scientific time (I think many inventers would say that inventions are as much the art of finding out what materials do not work for future generations as much as finding out what does work like the filiment in the light balb) This leads me to the question, why are we looking for the theory of everything? Why isn't the goal simply to refine and discover new ways of looking? To think our feeble little minds can even conjure up a theory of everything, might be a absurdist play and may be somewhat like religion or searching for a holy grail. I don't care about the idea of understanding "god" (I'm an atheist), so in a way I am in strong agreement with you on string theory. Yet I also believe that many profound ideas are discovered by people way before they even understand what they discovered, so who knows. And it is mind boggling to my small little math illiterate brain that mathmaticians can even rap their heads around such complexed math I am not sure what point I am trying to make. At the same time I am glad that scientists are looking for a unified theory. I am just not sure if it is important. It may be a futile task. None the less, I do not think it is anymore of a waste than the arts or music (I am a musician and it make my life less stressful which is a asset to society because then I am not freaking out on my co-workers and family). I think when math crosses with art it is beautiful mixture. If string theory ends up just being a elegant sculpture, I will still be happy that humans were able to conjure up such complexity. many brilliant thinkers these days value creativity as much as sound logic and think the two need to be fused in order to make valid discoveries.I think before we can settle this debate. Scientists need to finish the construction of the next set of larger colliders.For me, resources that get used to conjure up war and destruction compared to the small amount of money paid to people to create things and discover things is such a shame. To me that is a greater error than scientific dead ends Cause humans ability to create is far more impressive to me then our ability to destroy.
darklight1999Jul 31, 2008
"It is possible to travel faster than light. You just wouldn't travel faster than light." WTF?!
utahdragonSep 20, 2008
You have an interesting theory about space and its acceleration but i do have one bone to pick with you about and that is time itself. you must remember that time is relative to the observer at that moment of space in that location, to say that time slows down when something accelerates past you is a misnomer. If that object returns back does time speed up for it? and so when it reaches you or you reach it time must be the same for both objects at that location. So if i go faster than twice the speed of light and reach alpha proxima while your in route it is true I will be younger when i reach that planet than you are, but in reality i will be the same age as you at that current moment no matter our separation of distance or the speed of my travel to that distance. In other words time is relative to the observer, just as the fact that billions of stars are already dead in nova explosions even though we are still seeing their light through our telescopes. As for the universe expanding ever faster and faster who's to say that were looking at the hard edge of the expansion, but just maybe the energy or fog if you will of the edge seems to dissipate faster the further it travels away from us, getting smaller as you would like to put it, at least in that part of your theory I would agree with you about.
gratedrake1Apr 1, 2009
if you wanr a magnet implus engine that prototype worked in the 1970s and was taken by nasa along with the design but was never coppied of or used its on my utube depending on the work load it could run up to 470 years max before needing repairs it never needed any fuel and could lift hundereds of times its own weight every body that saw it work kept calling it warpdrive it did not give off heat or move the wind wile running it could run in forward and reverse it pulled agenst space only it was the real thing it worked in 1978 why not now we could have been to mars already and pluto in a ship the size of a star treck ship and nasas holding back way back so its using horse and buggie every time they do something takes forever i just want to see some progress we should be tearaforming mars and traveling past pluto by now if you dont belive the engine works just build one i dair you thats how the first prototype was built dad wanted to stop me drawing designs for machines that he said would never work so he had me explain how it worked as simply as i could to his smart rich friend shut him up when it worked his friend tested the engine and told me it would make mars a 4 hour trip that makes pluto a 2day trip one way or 4day round trip the space station would take about 10to15minutes like a space beer run yes this engine could pass the speed of light in about 6 hours but you could not see were your going at that speed