4 ms·
The energies involved are stupendous. It would be like being hit by a tsunami and wondering if a cruise ship caused it. But on a galactic scale.
by psychphysic 3y ago
The energies involved are stupendous.
It would be like being hit by a tsunami and wondering if a cruise ship caused it.
But on a galactic scale.
- edgyquant 3y agoAre not the energies required for a theoretical warp drive also stupendous?
- psychphysic 3y agoQuite likely. I'd say it's at present beyond our comprehension. A big enough cruise ship, accelerating fast enough, could cause a tsunami but it'd be far beyond anything we could reason about sensibly. If they control that much energy, maybe it's waves from their equivalent of a microwave oven.
- QuadmasterXLII 3y agoWe’re working with numbers with 30s and 40s in the exponent- plenty of room for stupendous things to be stupendously different
- akiselev 3y agoThe original Alcubierre paper came up with the energy equivalent of the entire mass of Jupiter, if I remember correctly.
- Retric 3y agoWhich as shocking as it sounds still small compared to large gravitational waves. The merger of black holes radiate something like 10% of that mass as gravitational waves. Start talking 2.5+ million solar masses black holes and ~500,000 solar mass worth of energy in gravitational waves seems plausible though obviously rare.