"Faster Than Light..."

First Thread here, so please excuse me if it's not up to normal par. I found a small blurb in 'The Toronto Sun' today which interested me. I'll just post the column from the paper:

Two Baylor University scientists in the U.S. have come up with a new method to cause a spaceship to effectively travel faster than the speed of light, without breaking the laws of physics. Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Richard Obousy, a Baylor graduate student, theorize that by manipulating the extra spatial dimensions of string theory around a spaceship with an extremely large amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could cause the ship to travel faster than the speed of light.

- Toronto Sun NEWS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2008 (Page 40.)

I now wonder how long it will take for the general public to hear about the first ship which can utilize this theory/technology. In my honest opinion, NASA or JPL have more than likely already had some sort of think tank on this topic going for quite some time... And if they haven't... Well, damn! What a waste of time! Anyone have any opinions on the subject?

[edit on 20-8-2008 by jephers0n]

There is a big problem with that theory.. you would need the energy of a planet in order to get it to work...Warp drive is still at least 100 years away... I think once we get fusion going it should be possible... Another alternative is technology that we already have gotten from somewhere else... that is being kept highly secret I highly suggest you look into Bob Lazar... he predicted element 115 and its properties almost 20 years ago... the element was recently discovered in a particle accelerater(albeit in very small amounts) purportedly this element was given to us by someone else.... The amount of power that is created by bombarding the element with antimatter is phenomenal... creating tons of heat that is coverted to electricity using a very efficient thermo electric generator(sterling engine?)... but the main power source was'nt electricity... it was a gravity wave.. by manipulating gravity you could in theory warp space\time to get to your destination much quicker... by bending space\time ... this is not so different then warping the space\time fabric and riding on a bubble... I beleive both theories would work. All in all a very good article and this is entirely feasable assuming we can develop the power source for this. Lets hope we can get fusion going soon

[edit on 20-8-2008 by thefreepatriot]

remember the craft would not be going faster then light... Einsteins law will still remain intact... you will be merely compressing\bending spacetime... One way you can see this in action is.. take a piece of paper which represents ource space time plane... then put an A for departure point in one end and B for destination... Whats the fastest way to get there? most people would say a straight line... wrong bend the paper anyway you wish so that the the departure point meets the destination... Gravity can bend space\time as evidenced by measuring the space shuttles clock to an Earth based clock... the shuttles time is off by .000000001 seconds (or somthing to that degree) both clocks are synced before the launch... the reason for the disparity is because the gravitational field cause by earths mass is actually distorting time.. the farther you get away from that field the less effect this gravitational field has on the space\time surrounding earth... you can say it wrinkles space\ time a bit.. Also how astronomers calculate the size of planets is usually by the amount of distortion of space time which is seen from the light from the sun has... its not that they actually see the planet..so if we can master gravity then we can possibly master long distance space flight within our galaxy and possibly time travel.... We just need a miniature particle accelerator.. element 115 and 3 waveguides to triangulate the target destination a I hope I am alive to see this when it happens.

Originally posted by thefreepatriot
remember the craft would not be going faster then light... Einsteins law will still remain intact... you will be merely compressing\bending spacetime... One way you can see this in action is.. take a piece of paper which represents ource space time plane... then put an A for departure point in one end and B for destination... Whats the fastest way to get there? most people would say a straight line... wrong bend the paper anyway you wish so that the the departure point meets the destination... Gravity can bend space\time as evidenced by measuring the space shuttles clock to an Earth based clock... the shuttles time is off by .000000001 seconds (or somthing to that degree) both clocks are synced before the launch... the reason for the disparity is because the gravitational field cause by earths mass is actually distorting time.. the farther you get away from that field the less effect this gravitational field has on the space\time surrounding earth... you can say it wrinkles space\ time a bit.. Also how astronomers calculate the size of planets is usually by the amount of distortion of space time which is seen from the light from the sun has... its not that they actually see the planet..so if we can master gravity then we can possibly master long distance space flight within our galaxy and possibly time travel.... We just need a miniature particle accelerator.. element 115 and 3 waveguides to triangulate the target destination a

I hope I am alive to see this when it happens.

sorry but einstein did say if you could fold the paper as u say, the a wormhole would allow you to do this.

Originally posted by thefreepatriot
remember the craft would not be going faster then light... Einsteins law will still remain intact... you will be merely compressing\bending spacetime... One way you can see this in action is.. take a piece of paper which represents ource space time plane... then put an A for departure point in one end and B for destination... Whats the fastest way to get there? most people would say a straight line... wrong bend the paper anyway you wish so that the the departure point meets the destination... Gravity can bend space\time as evidenced by measuring the space shuttles clock to an Earth based clock... the shuttles time is off by .000000001 seconds (or somthing to that degree) both clocks are synced before the launch... the reason for the disparity is because the gravitational field cause by earths mass is actually distorting time.. the farther you get away from that field the less effect this gravitational field has on the space\time surrounding earth... you can say it wrinkles space\ time a bit.. Also how astronomers calculate the size of planets is usually by the amount of distortion of space time which is seen from the light from the sun has... its not that they actually see the planet..so if we can master gravity then we can possibly master long distance space flight within our galaxy and possibly time travel.... We just need a miniature particle accelerator.. element 115 and 3 waveguides to triangulate the target destination a

I hope I am alive to see this when it happens.

I agree with all of this, and I FULLY hope I'm alive to see this happen! My point is just that I personally believe that NASA should have been exploring this theoretical propulstion/travel technique, if some University dudes can do it with cosmically less funding

I'll quote arxiv.org..., and most of what I write comes from there, too.

The currently accepted value for the Hubble constant is 70 km/sec/Mpsc. A straightfor-ward conversion into SI units gives H = 2.17× 10−18 (m/s)/m. This tells us that one meter of space expands to two meters of space if one were prepared to wait two billion billion seconds or sixty five billion years. The fundamental idea behind the warp drive presented in this paper is to increase Hubbles constant such that space no longer expands at such a sedentary rate, but locally expands at an arbitrarily fast velocity. For example, if we want space to locally expand at the speed of light, a simple calculation shows us by what factor we would need to increase H.

Hc 10^8
--- ≈ -------- = 10^26
H 10^-18

Basically, then, for space to expand at speed of light, we need H to be 10^26 times bigger.

There are other interesting highlights in that paper as well, you should propably go and read it. It does not matter if you do not understand the math, most here, including me, do not understand everything either. Everything is nicely explained though, just 15 pages so its not long either.

Main point is, anyway, that it would require at leat 20^28Kg of antimetter to create enough energy, which equals to mass of Jupiter. Currently, if I remember it correctly, it would take about 3000 billion dollars a gram to produce.

(edit: I forgot to add that in warp drive, there is no propulsion system at all. Such an engine would not move our spaceship but it would move space instead. Moving sides of dimensions requires energy, and concept presented in above paper linked doesn't do exactly that either, it just makes space to expand faster. It is a paradox btw, since you would just get further away from _everything_ instead of getting somewhere.

You could of course make it expand faster at direction you came from, thus allowing you to "travel" relatively closer to your destination. It would still mean that you haven't moved an inch, you would have same amount of distance to travel as you had before.

"Real" warp drive, I suppose, is something that can enter another dimension that we are not in and thus use a direction we do not have. By luck, it is a faster route but it may not be. Everything related to such calculations is just theory for now, humanity has no proof of another dimensions. Faschinating, nevertheless.)


[edit on 20/8/08 by rawsom]

Originally posted by Enigma Publius

Originally posted by thefreepatriot
remember the craft would not be going faster then light... Einsteins law will still remain intact... you will be merely compressing\bending spacetime... One way you can see this in action is.. take a piece of paper which represents ource space time plane... then put an A for departure point in one end and B for destination... Whats the fastest way to get there? most people would say a straight line... wrong bend the paper anyway you wish so that the the departure point meets the destination... Gravity can bend space\time as evidenced by measuring the space shuttles clock to an Earth based clock... the shuttles time is off by .000000001 seconds (or somthing to that degree) both clocks are synced before the launch... the reason for the disparity is because the gravitational field cause by earths mass is actually distorting time.. the farther you get away from that field the less effect this gravitational field has on the space\time surrounding earth... you can say it wrinkles space\ time a bit.. Also how astronomers calculate the size of planets is usually by the amount of distortion of space time which is seen from the light from the sun has... its not that they actually see the planet..so if we can master gravity then we can possibly master long distance space flight within our galaxy and possibly time travel.... We just need a miniature particle accelerator.. element 115 and 3 waveguides to triangulate the target destination a

I hope I am alive to see this when it happens.

sorry but einstein did say if you could fold the paper as u say, the a wormhole would allow you to do this.

? a wormhole is a random event (even if it exists) a wormhole is one way.. but you would need to travel all the way to a wormhole in the first place.. I would rather depend on a ships reactor\engines to get me where I want to go not somthing that can collapse at any moment..

reply to post by rawsom


ya this warp drive theory looks unstable you would need tons of energy to pull it off.. I think a gravity drive is somthing that has more of a possibility

once we have mastered the containment and production of antimatter, the energy requirments for this to work won't seem so big.