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The Alcubierre drive might or might not work on our universe; it requires something which may not exist. If it did work, it would also be a time machine, and so

The Alcubierre drive might or might not work on our universe; it requires something which may not exist. If it did work, it would also be a time machine, and so far causality has been a safer bet. M-theory is engaging and fascinating, filled with great math, but there is no indication that it describes our reality. Worse, M-Theory flirts with unfalsifiability. All told, when looking at things like the original question raised by the article, we have to look to established theory backed by observation.

danenania 9y ago
Sure, I'm not trying to say that this stuff is very plausible. My point is that we do have some reasonable indications that some of our hard and fast laws might be more slippery than is commonly thought, and given the strangeness of consciousness, how it works could be pretty slippery as well. Imagine that human civilization survives and progresses for 100 million years. Do you think that they'll be able to look back on any of our "laws" without laughing? At that point we'd likely be far beyond Dyson spheres, harvesting large quantities of antimatter, solar system scale particle accelerators, artificial black holes, quantum supercomputers, etc., etc. Whatever would be discovered is almost guaranteed to be unimaginable by us.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  I think that to the best of anyone's ability to tell, the speed of light is ultimately fixed and represents the speed of causality. I think that we can do a lot within those limits, much of it beyond belief today. That said, I truly doubt that we're going to exceed the speed of causality, create time machines, and that kind of thing. For the artificial black holes, Dyson spheres, antimatter, quantum computers, and giant accelerators to actually work, the laws of physics they're based on can't be that wrong. They can be incomplete, requiring their place within a greater theory, but not simply wrong. There is observation consistent with the notion that the speed of light has been constant for the last ~14 billion years, everywhere we can see.

danenania 9y ago

Sure, I'm not trying to say that this stuff is very plausible. My point is that we do have some reasonable indications that some of our hard and fast laws might be more slippery than is commonly thought, and given the strangeness of consciousness, how it works could be pretty slippery as well. Imagine that human civilization survives and progresses for 100 million years. Do you think that they'll be able to look back on any of our "laws" without laughing? At that point we'd likely be far beyond Dyson spheres, harvesting large quantities of antimatter, solar system scale particle accelerators, artificial black holes, quantum supercomputers, etc., etc. Whatever would be discovered is almost guaranteed to be unimaginable by us.

QAPereo 9y ago
I think that to the best of anyone's ability to tell, the speed of light is ultimately fixed and represents the speed of causality. I think that we can do a lot within those limits, much of it beyond belief today. That said, I truly doubt that we're going to exceed the speed of causality, create time machines, and that kind of thing. For the artificial black holes, Dyson spheres, antimatter, quantum computers, and giant accelerators to actually work, the laws of physics they're based on can't be that wrong. They can be incomplete, requiring their place within a greater theory, but not simply wrong. There is observation consistent with the notion that the speed of light has been constant for the last ~14 billion years, everywhere we can see.