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New study simulates gravitational waves from failing warp drive
- oulu2006 2y agoI love the summary: "we study the signatures arising from a warp drive ‘containment failure’, ...." "Our work highlights the importance of exploring strange new spacetimes, to (boldly) simulate what no one has seen before." Have just been re-watching StarTrek Voyager.
- vessenes 2y agoI love, so much, the idea that we might get a sort of galactic-scale AAA roadside warning service “Uh-oh, 2 billion years ago somebody’s warp drive went wonky in Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Beta” before we can easily move around our own Solar System. Humans would be like the old guy in a neighborhood listening to the police scanner, essentially.
- floren 2y agoThis was done computationally, no gravitational waves actually came into existence.
- jkingsman 2y agoI think the commenter's point was that a model for detecting events caused by advanced tech before we even get our space exploration training wheels off would be a funny irony.
- Already__Taken 2y agokinda the premise of Stargate where most aliens copied other aliens advanced tech. So actually anyone who could build it from scratch was kinda rare.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> kinda the premise of Stargate where most aliens copied other aliens advanced tech This is how all technology has always worked.
- noduerme 2y agoPyramids, writing, and agriculture with irrigation developed independently in at least two completely separate places on Earth within just the last 3000 years.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoAnd, as a percentage of cultures using pyramids, writing, and agriculture, that would be...?
- dumpsterdiver 2y agoIrrelevant.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoI think you mean "zero". Why would you expect technology to work any differently between planets?
- dumpsterdiver 2y agoNo, I mean irrelevant, as is your newest argument. The functional capabilities of technology between planets is irrelevant to the observation that disparate groups develop similar levels of technology independently.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> The functional capabilities of technology between planets is irrelevant to the observation that disparate groups develop similar levels of technology independently. That "observation" is false.
- quotemstr 2y agoThe absence of such detections is yet another unsettling input to the Fermi paradox.
- marshray 2y agoOn the bright side, maybe it is evidence against Dark Forest theory?
- shepardrtc 2y agoThe Dark Forest theory is fear-mongering anyway. If there's a civilization out there that wants to conquer others, it just has to send a probe to every star out there. Sufficiently advanced automation would allow this to happen without much work on their part. In theory, WE could do that right now, though very clumsily and with many failures. 3D printing, AI, harvesting materials off asteroids. Not outside of possibility, just hard at our level of tech. Now imagine the boogeyman of the Dark Forest theory - they would obviously have a greater level of tech if they're so dangerous, and it would be much easier.
- SoftTalker 2y agoWhy unsettling?
- quotemstr 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoYou don't need FTL travel to expand into our light cone at this point in the evolution of the universe.
- pfdietz 2y agoThat makes absence of FTL detections comforting, not unsettling.
- m463 2y agothe trick is to say: Looks like your ship has a mechanical problem <click for more...> and collect click information about their civilization before they get any information about their warp drive
- pimlottc 2y agoToo bad the Arecibo Telescope collapsed: “We've Been Trying To Reach You About Your Starship’s Extended Warranty…”
- dreamcompiler 2y agoOr like the Vulcans, who were constantly listening for warp signatures and thus discovered the humanoids of Earth after Zefram Cochrane invented the warp drive. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zefram_Cochrane https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zefram_Cochrane
- vessenes 2y agoAhh the non-dark-forest angle on finding aliens! So hopeful!
- josefritzishere 2y agoThey're simulating imaginary things?
- mr_mitm 2y agoThey do that all the time.
- throwaway48540 2y agoThe latest research in this field says it's physically (not just mathematically) possible - negative energy is no longer a requirement.
- vlovich123 2y agoDo you have any pointers?
- throwaway48540 2y agohttps://www.space.com/warp-drive-possibilities-positive-energy https://www.space.com/warp-drive-possibilities-positive-ener...
- LeifCarrotson 2y agohttps://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.02709 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.02709 https://github.com/NerdsWithAttitudes/WarpFactory https://github.com/NerdsWithAttitudes/WarpFactory I'm impressed that they've removed the requirement for negative energy, but it's not quite ready to hand the drawings to your local machine shop to build one. It requires matter packed to an energy density on the order of 10^39 joules per cubic meter. According to [1], oil has a (chemical) energy density of 4.5x10^10 joules per cubic meter, purified uranium produces 1.5x10^15 J/m^3 in a fission reactor, and that same uranium in pure mass-to-energy conversion produces on the order of 10^21 J/m^3. Uranium has a density of 19x10^3 kg/m^3, and the nucleus of an atom or neutron star has a density on the order of 4x10^17...if you can build the entire ship out of pure neutrons, you're still coming up short by a factor of ~100. All that does suggest that it seems reasonable we'd be able to observe gravity waves from a long distance if a machine like that ever experienced a loss of compression. [1]: https://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/greatworks/pdf_sum10/WK8_Layton_EnergyDensities.ashx https://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/greatworks/pdf_sum10/WK8_La...
- Tomte 2y agoPBS Spacetime: https://youtu.be/8hvzF5oQe1g?si=dU7YRdomARPQzDtd https://youtu.be/8hvzF5oQe1g?si=dU7YRdomARPQzDtd
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 2y agoA positive would mean two amazing news at once: that there are aliens travelling in deep space and that they do so using faster-than-light spaceships.
- Filligree 2y agoOnly one of those. Warp fields are useful if they can be made, but probably won't allow for FTL.
- quotemstr 2y agoRight. Because FTL, no matter its form, breaks causality.
- JonChesterfield 2y agoAnd causality is known to be axiomatic because?
- Joker_vD 2y agoBecause it seems to hold empirically quite stubbornly.
- K0balt 2y agoNot really at the quantum level, at least not in the form that is typically understood as causality. There are all kinds of ways that you can interfere with probability and when you do, the “no taksie-backsies” rule goes out the window. You can prove this to yourself with a flashlight and 3 diffraction gratings.
- Filligree 2y agoOnly if you don't think MWI is accurate...
- m3kw9 2y agoYou have 2 things that have not been discovered/invented yet and you go and simulate how one fails
- snakeyjake 2y agoEvery single second spent 'studying' warp bubbles is a second wasted. A dollar misspent. A CPU cycle squandered. "How do you move the warp bubble?" uh... uh... uh... uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... this paper's title is sexy and will get me published! Even string theory is better than this nonsense.
- groby_b 2y agoWhat interesting research are you currently pursuing? Would love to read the papers!
- snakeyjake 2y ago15 years ago I played a small, insignificant but still important, role in saving Hubble: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20080023344/downloads/20080023344.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20080023344/downloads/20... Now I design sensors that go on things designed to kill Russian soldiers in Ukraine. I am very confident that what I have done has been a tangible net benefit to humanity and is not the modern-day equivalent of spending time and money on the study of Orgone Energy.
- snapcaster 2y agoSo you were helping kill people who you've never met but bashing on the dudes studying warp drives? Not even saying you're a bad person but stones and glass houses man
- snakeyjake 2y ago>So you were helping kill people Not were, am. My sensors are also good at quantifying sea level changes, measuring shore erosion, determining plant foliage density and water content, and can find ancient buried ruins given the right conditions so it's a win-win for all of humanity!
- snapcaster 2y ago
- KingOfCoders 2y agoThere is zero evidence for aliens, still people believe in them. And millions and millions are wasted in the search. Just because neon green elephants are and seam possible, doesn't mean there are any. In fact, there are none, except we create them.
- ViktorRay 2y agoThe universe is so fast. Why are you so certain that life only evolved on our planet? When you say “there are none” it seems you are making a more unbelievable statement than the people who say aliens exist.
- tgv 2y agoTBF the comment says that there's no evidence, not that there are none. And indeed, the belief in extraterrestial aliens is much, much bigger than its theoretical underpinnings warrant.
- KingOfCoders 2y agoIndeed, especially as 85% of atheists in the US believe in aliens. With zero evidence, no signs, nothing.
- ViktorRay 2y agoThe parent comment literally said: “In fact, there are none, except we create them.” I was saying that the claim that life in this universe only evolved on our planet is more extraordinary than the claim that life evolved elsewhere. So the parent comment’s claim that “there are none” would be a belief that is actually bigger than the belief that there are.
- postalrat 2y agoIt's the biggest and most important question we can answer.
- elphinstone 2y agoThe amount of tax dollars to SETI vs. amount given in bank bailouts in various crises is orders of magnitudes different, setting aside historic and scientific importance.
- negativelambda 2y agoHere is the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02466v2 https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02466v2
- mrlonglong 2y agoI firmly believe we just need to build extremely sensitive gravitational wave detectors to pick up these "warp" traces. That'd validate the Fermi equations. How sensitive do they need to be? 3,000km long detectors floating in space might do the job.