4 ms·
This explanation is wrong, and is not what the article is talking about at all. This article is about creating a warp bubble using negative energy, which chang
by calhoun137 13y ago
This explanation is wrong, and is not what the article is talking about at all. This article is about creating a warp bubble using negative energy, which changes the distance between two points. You can think about it sort of like creating a kink in a piece of metal with a piece of dust inside of it, the kink then propagates through the metal by distorting the geometry of the larger object in such a way that the distance traveled by the piece of dust is less than the original distance between the start and end point of the kink. The reason this works has nothing to do with special relativity, it comes from the fact that if you plug negative energy into the equations of general relativity, you get warp bubble solutions which travels between two points faster than light could travel between the two points if there was no warp bubble.
A few years ago I actually read through most of the original paper[1], and worked out a lot of the equations.
Although I don't see it mentioned in the article, and I'm speculating here, the reason the approach described in the article might work out for photons is that negative energy has been discovered at the quantum scale in something called the Casimir effect[2]. The Casimir effect happens when you have two conducting plates which are placed very very very close to each other, then in the space between the plates, something which behaves exactly like negative energy exists[3], and it causes an attractive force to be exerted between the two plates.
A natural thing to try would be to harness this type of negative energy to create a tiny warp bubble, and try somehow to stick a quantum particle like a photon in it.
[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/grqc/0009013 http://arxiv.org/abs/grqc/0009013
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
[3] http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/47922/can-negative-energy-be-created-by-the-casimir-effect http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/47922/can-negativ...
- mattheww 13y agoI will explain why lisper's explanation of light speed is wrong. The fundamental problem is that it violates the premise of relativity and is a classic example of appealing to an absolute frame. Velocities are only measured relative to other objects. The explanation given by lisper requires an absolute reference frame. Otherwise, you have no way to figure out how much you're actually moving through space, and thus, through time because you can never figure out your "true" speed. Relativity tells me that no matter what speed I travel at, I will experience time at the same rate. From my frame of reference, I will perceive things to happen in other reference frames at different rates. When we calculate time dilation and length contraction, we're determining that if something took time "t_a" in Frame A, it will appear to have taken time "t_b" to an observer in Frame B. Furthermore, it's impossible under relativity to have a frame of reference that moves at the speed of light in any other frame.
- juretriglav 13y agoThanks for the great explanation! Would you be willing to write up your summary of this paper in the form of a gist? http://sciencegist.com/arxiv/gr-qc/0009013 http://sciencegist.com/arxiv/gr-qc/0009013