Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

87 点作者 mrrazz大约 4 年前

12 条评论

wolfram74大约 4 年前

It is early in the morning, so I'm still irritable, but this line is pretty egregious--The energy savings would need to be drastic, of approximately 30 orders of magnitude to be in range of modern nuclear fission reactors.” He goes on to say: “Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude.”--Say the fission reactor they have in mind is a collection of the biggest in human history and is a whole terawatt (1E12 watts). Another 30 orders of magnitude less power brings you down to 1E-18 watts.For context[1] a typical human cell consumes ~1E-12 watts. You could take a morning coffee poop and put it in a jar with a thermocouple and power your warp drive with the decomposing biomatter if those results are right.If the energetics are that favorable I would really like an explanation why we haven't encountered space whales, let alone rapidly expanding alien civilizations.[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)#Below_1_W" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)#Be...</a>

评论 #26410791 未加载

评论 #26411382 未加载

评论 #26411258 未加载

评论 #26411744 未加载

评论 #26410420 未加载

tobmlt大约 4 年前

I presently have no time to get into GR, but surely wish I did. Here instead of comment I offer two papers: Erik Lentz (underlying the work in the press release here):<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.07125.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.07125.pdf</a>And similar seeming work by another group at something called the “advanced propulsion lab” (who are they?)<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.06824.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.06824.pdf</a>It’s interesting that they both claim positive energy solutions that, eh hem, do the trick.

评论 #26410752 未加载

monkeycantype大约 4 年前

We don’t need hyperexotic negative energy to travel to the stars, we just need to live a lot longer, and we need our friends and family to live longer too so we can comeback and see them again.

评论 #26410180 未加载

评论 #26410034 未加载

评论 #26410088 未加载

评论 #26411186 未加载

dsqrt大约 4 年前

Coincidentally, Alcubierre recently posted a review article on warp drives: <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.05610.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.05610.pdf</a>. It looks like a good introduction to this topic.

IHLayman大约 4 年前

I am not a physicist by any means, so this may come off as a dumb question, but: If gravity waves have been discovered, and they move at the speed of light (speed of causality?), being thrown off by the most energetic events in the universe, how can something like an Alcubierre drive even work when essentially it is also a gravitational wave generated by far less energy?

评论 #26411649 未加载

Delk大约 4 年前

I'm not qualified to judge the paper or its contributions, but this particular paragraph in the press release quoting the author smells of way, way too much faith on part of the author himself:> “This work has moved the problem of faster-than-light travel one step away from theoretical research in fundamental physics and closer to engineering. The next step is to figure out how to bring down the astronomical amount of energy needed to within the range of today's technologies, such as a large modern nuclear fission power plant. Then we can talk about building the first prototypes," says Lentz.While I'm not a physicist, calling anything in the paper's area even a single step towards engineering rather than belonging firmly in the realm of theoretical speculation is an astronomically huge claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so on. (FWIW, I'm totally fine with research producing only theoretical speculation as long as it's sound.)While I (again) cannot judge the paper, that kind of a blurb by itself makes me automatically feel much more skeptical about anything in the study.I know it's from a press release, and press releases are a kind of marketing, but they should still be somewhat proportional.

klingon78大约 4 年前

Does “Craft using an inertial mass reduction device”[1] use the same concept as described?:I don’t know if there’s a difference between this and the Alcubierre drive.Perhaps the tic-tacs were prototypes, given the patent and claims made by others. They may not be FTL capable, though, at least not within Earth’s atmosphere[2].If the technology were to exist, it would be seen as a serious weapon and threat to security as much as a tool for colonization and exploration, so why a patent would be filed and left as much is beyond me.I don’t want to legitimize make-believe things, though, if that is what they are, which is tough to say with much certainty.[1]- <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en" rel="nofollow">https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en</a>[2]- <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html" rel="nofollow">https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-...</a>

nynx大约 4 年前

If warp drives actually are feasible (either sub or super liminal), that'd be great. However, it seems to me that it's much more likely we'll travel between stars as digitized minds that are recorporialized at the destination.

评论 #26411760 未加载

评论 #26411585 未加载

rurban大约 4 年前

All fine until he cited the Proxima Centauri problem. He cites 50,000 years to reach it with conventional rocket tech. But this nearest star is only about 4.2 lightyears away, so there's no need for exotic warp-drives. Conventional 1/5 (20%) lightspeed rockets could do it also in a lifetime, i.e. in 25 years.Soliton stuff is entirely unpractical, conventional tiny rockets are in our reach.

d_tr大约 4 年前

I wonder whether evolutionary algorithms could be of some use here, to help find good "shapes".

Gatsky大约 4 年前

Star Trek TNG: New Ground [1].[1] <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Soliton_wave" rel="nofollow">https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Soliton_wave</a>

person_of_color大约 4 年前

protip: ET is already here.