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I think the problem with the warp drive is topological. His drive relies on expanding space behind you and contracting it in front. OK. But what happens when yo
by Tloewald 13y ago
I think the problem with the warp drive is topological. His drive relies on expanding space behind you and contracting it in front. OK. But what happens when you turn the drive off? Assuming all this squashing and stretching doesn't involve discontinuities, at best you're back where you're started from. At worst, you're in some kind of weird messed up crappy nook in spacetime where you're a long way from your starting point and your destination.
- zeckalpha 13y agoSo it's more of an improbability drive?
- themstheones 13y agoYes, of the infinite variety.
- Tloewald 13y agoOr infinitely ;-) But, hey, I'd love to be wrong.
- mistermcgruff 13y agoMy understanding is that using a substance called "spice gas" you're able to enable this drive through a process called "folding."
- textminer 13y agoHN-as-a-hivemind really should approve of this sort of snark. It's nerd-snark!
- mattstocum 13y agoI think that's why you still move the ship forward within the warp bubble (to borrow a Star Trek term). So you're compressing space in front of you, while moving forward into the compressed space.
- snowwrestler 13y ago> Assuming all this squashing and stretching doesn't involve discontinuities, at best you're back where you're started from. Are we sure space is perfectly elastic? What if space is infinitely plastic? Then when you turn the drive off, for all observable data you would be sitting in normal space just short of your destination.
- rdmcfee 13y agoNot so much. It's more analogous to surfing on a wave. Any object with mass warps spacetime towards itself. This doesn't cause an infinite buildup of 'spacetime' on the object's surface. There are concerns with built up energy in front of the spaceship but not being sent back to your origin.