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Theoretically it's impossible to travel through space at or more than speed of light. But space itself can move faster than light speed, and a warp drive would
by sidcool 3y ago
Theoretically it's impossible to travel through space at or more than speed of light. But space itself can move faster than light speed, and a warp drive would help something similar that you mentioned. That is possible theoretically. But the amount of energy or mass it needs is very high and no current technology (or in foreseeable future) can achieve it. So FTL remains a dream.
My hunch based on nothing is that we will achieve FTL no earlier than 2250.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago> My hunch based on nothing is that we will achieve FTL no earlier than 2250. I see you too have been forced to give PMs estimates when you don't understand the problem.
- actionfromafar 3y agoAnd without a later bound, so a very reasonable estimation too.
- time0ut 3y agoIs this before or after the estimate is rejected and arbitrarily cut in half?
- davrosthedalek 3y agoYeah, we really should have had FTL by 1125! You'll have to work overtime for the next sprint.
- sidcool 3y agoLol I feel you.
- automatic6131 3y agoIt's fun to imagine the species in x-hundred years. My college physics professor once told us that in 500 years, physics professors will still teach Maxwell's equations in the format he was showing us. And honestly, I think he's right. Somethings we will do the same way for hundreds of years, like the wheelbarrow will still exist in 500 years as it has for likely the previous 5,000. Otoh, I doubt we will be going faster than light this millenium.
- rkagerer 3y agoNaw in another 500 they'll be antigravbarrows
- nine_k 3y agoWe still teach the Newton laws that are comparably old. We also teach that they are approximate, but work flawlessly for household-scale speeds and masses.
- zzzeek 3y agothere will be "physics professors" in 500 years, I see we are being optimistic about humanity
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agothe only plausible possibility for a major change in Maxwell's laws is if we discover a magnetic monopole. It's fairly unlikely, but there isn't a solid reason one shouldn't exist as far as I know.
- SkyMarshal 3y agoYeah the only energy source that can produce enough energy to power an Alcubierre drive (warp drive) that humanity has ever even conceived is a matter-antimatter reactor. But we don’t even fully understand matter, much less antimatter, and are pretty far from that. 2250 at the earliest is not an unreasonable estimate.
- ben_w 3y agoAntimatter wouldn't be even close to powerful enough, and both matter and antimatter have got the wrong sign for every (or almost every, depending on which headline I trust) warp drive variation. As antimatter is as powerful as one can get, it not being powerful enough is a good reason to think it's not going to work.
- amelius 3y agoHow would someone _inside_ space make use of FTL movement of space itself?
- DexesTTP 3y agoTo simplify, the same way that a surfer on the sea can use the movement of the sea itself (waves) to surf! An Alcubierre drive (they're theoretical) would basically constantly compress the time curve of spacetime in front of the craft, allowing the craft to "ride" this compression as it moves forward, which means that the local speed of light of the craft is faster than the speed of light of an external observer. Note that the main issue we have is to find something that can compress space, and then to have it have enough energy for it not to be trivial (because 110% of the speed of light, while technically FTL speed, is still very slow for interstellar travel). And of course, while the existence of something that does this spacetime curve compression fits the math we have, we've yet to find a material or technique that actually does so.
- amelius 3y agoSorry, I don't get it. Imagine you are on a rubber ruler. You can move at most 1 mark per second on the ruler. This is true regardless of how much the ruler is stretched or compressed. So to move from mark 1 to mark 100 will always take the same time at top speed, regardless of any stretching/compression.
- cglan 3y agoDon’t take my word at all, but I think in your analogy you can’t imagine it as you’re only allowed to go 1 ruler tick a second, but imagine you can only move 1mm per second. If you compress the rubber ruler you traverse more ruler per second than before while still going the Same speed
- dotnet00 3y agoThe idea is similar to how we detect gravitational waves in interferometers, when space gets compressed, the distance the photon has to travel shrinks slightly. To take your ruler example, if you compress it by 1mm, you can traverse its entire length traveling 1mm less than before, thus, from the reference frame of someone who can't see that you've compressed the ruler, you've traveled slightly faster.
- mjburgess 3y ago'space' isnt a substance that can move at any speed. What's meant by the claim that 'space moves faster than light' is that extremely distant objects are moving away from each other, relative to each other, 'faster than light' -- which is permitted, so long as that distance can never be bridged by light. The claim amounts to, in other words, that the universe is so large that we can compare objects at distances greater than those light could travel between them, and if we do that, they travel faster than light. This is an "illusion in measurement" more than anything else. Nothing is travelling faster than light.
- TechBro8615 3y agoHere's an article that explains this distinction in detail: https://medium.com/the-infinite-universe/why-galaxies-receding-faster-than-the-speed-of-light-are-still-visible-664ff21f0829 https://medium.com/the-infinite-universe/why-galaxies-recedi...
- rkagerer 3y agoSo it can't fold on itself and form a wormhole that bridges light?
- gpderetta 3y ago> space moves faster than light I think this simply refers to the metric expansion of the universe [1]. While nothing actually travels FTL, the distance between some objects really expands faster than FTL and is not an illusion. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe
- mjburgess 3y agoThe illusion is the impression that something moves faster than light. 'distances' arent literally 'expanding' -- this metaphor of expansion describes a shift in the matter distribution of the universe over time which seems like an expansion of an underlying substance 'space'. This is the illusion. The metric is just that matter distribution. And the fact of its changing we call 'expansion'. This metaphorical, substantival language, creates a lay impression that some physical object moves faster than light.