3 ms·
> warp speed travel is now a lot more likely in a much shorter timespan than we previously thought. That is cool, but at the same time it only works for sublum
by WJW 6y ago
> warp speed travel is now a lot more likely in a much shorter timespan than we previously thought.
That is cool, but at the same time it only works for subluminal speeds so not really what "warp" speed usually refers to.
Offtopic, but it kinda reminds me of the science fiction story of a young scientist trying to get funding for hyperspace research. In the end it turns out that hyperspace has been explored decades ago but the speed of light is even lower in hyperspace than in real space.
- AlgorithmicTime 6y agoWell, then you need to go to hypospace.
- wmeredith 6y ago> warp speed travel is now a lot more likely in a much shorter timespan than we previously thought. That's some cold comfort, since all timespans are much shorter than "never".
- rbanffy 6y agoWhen the whole universe is in a stable thermal equilibrium after the last proton decays, what's the meaning of time and space anyway?
- slowmovintarget 6y agoProtons don't decay (as far as we can tell), they get ripped apart in black holes which evaporate into photons, mostly. All that's left are photons, moving at the speed of light, experiencing no time, and never meeting each other as the universe expands away faster than they move. "It's hard to bore a photon." -- Roger Penrose
- rbanffy 6y agoThey may decay, but when the lower bound for their half-life is more than 10^36 years, it'll certainly be very hard to observe it.
- officialjunk 6y agoagree for science fiction usage, but from a physics perspective, the "warp" is warping spacetime to travel. to warp spacetime is independent of the relative velocity.
- yellowapple 6y agoEven if it only gets us to subluminal speeds, that's still promising for Solar System exploration; even 1% of the speed of light would get us to pretty much anywhere in the Solar System within days or weeks rather than months or years.