Is Warp Speed Possible?

October 22, 2010

Humans shed a lot of blood, sweat and tears in search of the almighty loophole. From sweet tax dodges to life-extending gene hacks, there's nothing like finding an exploitable weakness in an intensely complicated system.

But is it possible to find a loophole in the universal speed limit? Can we skirt Einstein's theory of special relativity and travel faster than a beam of light?

"As an object approaches the speed of light, all sorts of interesting things happen," says theoretical physicist Richard Obousy. "For example, time dilation occurs and an object’s mass increases. As you reach the speed of light, relativity calculations indicate that an object's mass becomes infinite."

WIDE ANGLE: Surfing Spacetime

Plug in the numbers, Obousy says, and you face some staggering fuel costs. To accelerate an object to the speed of light, you'd need nothing short of an infinite amount of energy. There has to be a better way, right?

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Warp Speed Basics

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Cosmic wormholes might open a doorway to the other side of the galaxy, but scientists continue to ponder the rich possibilities of another loophole in relativity: the warp drive.

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This kind of technology is what we need to travel to other Planets and the Stars, it would like folding or bending time. If you take a square piece of paper and fold it to make a triangle it would allow you to get there from here.

What they are talking about here is using a Warp Ship to accomplish getting one place to another at Warp Speed, bending or folding time would allow you to get there instantly like beam me up Scotty in Star Trek. If they were able to do that with people it makes me wonder if it could be done with hardware.

I have been thinking lately about this holometer experiment they are going to be doing to determine if the universe is really a hologram. In my mind, if this theory were true it would look something like this: I imagine the universe like a giant balloon. A balloon that started at the big bang and has continuously inflated since then. If the universe is too dimensional then I imagine that all existence is confined to the outer wall of this inflating balloon. Which actually makes sense on another level. People think the universe is expanding.. but what is really happening is the wall of this balloon is stretching out and things are getting further apart.

Anyways.. back to warp speed. If the universe we live in is currently a hologram projected from the two dimensional walls expanded from the big bang, then all we would need to do to achieve warp speed would be to learn how to hop up a dimension. We could leave the outer wall of the balloon and come back onto it at any point without traversing actual spacetime.

I don't really have any math to back any of this up.. just sharing my ponderings.

reply to post by Aquarius1


I have given this a TREMENDOUS amount of thought over the years...

I do think that AE was correct in that you cannot accelerate an object for all the given reasons. However I think the eventual solution will come to be known as 'hyperspace'. It's difficult to describe what I see, but what got my mind rolling all those years ago was the duality of light: It reacts like both a wave and particle depending on the conditions.

Two decades later and I have developed a theory as to how and why it is not only possible to achieve light speed but to also achieve speeds that border on time-travel (so fast that time is irrelevent). Energy is the key, not acceleration potential. Big Al was right when dealing with rockets or conventional thrust ideas however FTL has nothing to do with either.

We have to stop focusing on the limitations of matter, it is after all only a phase of energy.

I think his theories will in time be viewed as either the pinnicle of 19th century physics or almost a dead end from the beginnings of 20th century physics.

Blasphemy I know, but then again, it was his own work that lead me to where I'm at now. I also have to question whether he didn't figure it out and then back-peddle when he looked at where the world was at the time.

The world wasn't ready.

It still isn't.

Originally posted by Aquarius1
But is it possible to find a loophole in the universal speed limit? Can we skirt Einstein's theory of special relativity and travel faster than a beam of light?

Sure. It just involves stepping outside the Newtonian-based theoretical construct of the universe and into and existence that's a bit more flexible. Because not everything that exists can be represented on a chalk board of equations, and while the mathematics suggest that nothing with "mass" can go faster than light, there are things that exist that have no mass. For instance, the idea and shape of a circle. It exists, but has no mass. It only has properties, and it isn't bound by Einstein's formulas.

Remember, there's a critical component missing in all of Newton and Einstein's equations. You. Your point of view. So how can they be accurate?

Originally posted by [davinci]
reply to post by Aquarius1

 

Two decades later and I have developed a theory as to how and why it is not only possible to achieve light speed but to also achieve speeds that border on time-travel. Energy is the key, not acceleration potential. Big Al was right when dealing with rockets or conventional thrust ideas however FTL has nothing to do with either.

I am in agreement with you on that, I do think they are looking and experimenting in all the wrong places, if they are researching and using energy they aren't telling us now are they.

I think his theories will in time be viewed as either the pinnicle of 19th century physics or a dead end from the beginnings of 20th century physics.

Time will tell, his theroy is as good as any.

Blasphemy I know, but then again, it was his own work that lead me to where I'm at now. I also have to question whether he didn't figure it out and then back-peddle when he looked at where the world was at the time.

The world wasn't ready.

Why would say it's blasphemy, things get figured out from others work all time, you are going one step beyond and you may very well be right. Einsteins theories are now being questions and some debunked, he was a brilliant man and without his theories who knows where we would be today.

It still isn't.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

It's a kind of paradox to fly faster then light. If you would move faster the light you fly away from earth, take a big telescope and look in to our past. That's absurd. Isn't it?

reply to post by wisintel


Maybe the universe is really a hologram, wouldn't that be something, very interesting ponding by the way, all of this does make up think doesn't it.

I hope we have some definitive answers to these questions in our life time, you never know.

Thanks for posting.

Originally posted by cushycrux
It's a kind of paradox to fly faster then light. If you would move faster the light you fly away from earth, take a big telescope and look in to our past. That's absurd. Isn't it?

That paradox question, if you went back and killed your mother would you be here today, yes if we split into more then one universe or dimension, that is as big a question as is there a paradox, are there other dimensions? We know there are other universes.

It's fun to speculate isn't it, but those darn questions that keep popping up.

reply to post by Blue Shift

Remember, there's a critical component missing in all of Newton and Einstein's equations. You. Your point of view. So how can they be accurate?

Yes, I just mentioned Einsteins in another post, he gave us a lot to work on and of course question, I ponder the questions of what he would think if he were alive today, not so sure that we have advanced leaps and bounds since he died.

Thanks.

in theory there is nothing impossible about the so called warp drive. the mathematician miguel alcubierre's theory on the subject is well documented - although his theory requires an impractically large amount of energy - several millons of solar masses. there have since been revisions to his warp theory which allow for the same effect using only a few solar masses worth of energy. this is still beyond our current means, but could possibly be achieved using nuclear fusion, or more likely a matter-antimatter reaction - technologies which may be realised in our lifetimes.

the most documented warp theories usually centre around creating a "warp bubble" around a spacecraft to distort the local spacetime. thus you can compress the spacetime in front of the spacecraft, and expand the spacetime at the rear, meaning the spacecraft is actually travelling with space, rather than through it - surfing the crest of a ripple in the fabric of the universe. as the spacecraft is not moving faster than light locally in it's warp bubble, the problems with causality and time travel are negated.

there are some new theories involving string theory and dark matter to achieve the same warping of spacetime effect, which have been given some credence in scientific circles.

personally i think there may be some potential applications for higgs boson related fields in relation to propulsion. very simply, the higgs boson (if it exists) is responsible for giving objects mass. we know that any object with a rest mass above zero requires an infinite amount of energy to reach light speed. if an anti-higgs particle was found, it may be possible to reduce or eliminate the mass of an object in some way - if you could neutralise or reduce the mass of all the particles in a spacecraft, useful interstellar speeds may be attainable.

just some thoughts.

Warped Imaginations: Star Wars Fans Want a NASA Hyperdrive

The hyperdrive, a firm sci-fi favorite mode of transportation for zipping around the galaxy, is a propulsion technology that NASA should be researching, according to hardcore si-fi fans who attended the Star Wars Celebration V Convention in Flordia.

WATCH VIDEO: The lastest advancements in spaceflight and exploration

SLIDE SHOW: Faster-than-light travel isn't the only sci-fi possibility. Browse the Top 5 Sci-Fi Time Travel Methods.

Makes you wonder how much technology comes from Star Wars and Star Trek, it does make you put your thinking cap on.

reply to post by Aquarius1
First of all as far as i know, we dont have any type of radar gun that we can point at a single beam of light travelling through outer space and measure how fast it's moving, and second we cant even isolate a single beam of light in outer space to measure it's speed. so until we are able to do those 2 things, I think the argument is a waste of time!

In this case speed is a measurement of light travelling between 2 fixed points in space over a certain period of time. I myself cant see with my eyes (a single beam of light) moving from 1 fixed point to another fixed point at 186, 000 mps? I just see light everywhere at once.

so to help understand better, you have a car that starts from a stop and goes in a straight line with no stops, and reaches the speed of 30 mph and goes 30 miles in an hour, so going 60 mph gets you to 30 miles twice as fast right ???

Remember not that long ago people said man cant fly, then when we did it was there is no sound barrier then you cant break the sound barrier...

I'm just saying that speed is a measurement of movement between 2 fixed points in space and time...
We have no way yet that i know of to take that mesurement, yet.

reply to post by iismtivu


i'm sorry but they absolutely do have several methods for accurately measuring the speed of light. they have measured light in a void (ie space), water, super-cold gasses, everything. it is possible to slow light down to what you would think impossible speeds - in orders of centimeters per hour. light also travels faster than it does in a void in some instances - C is a variable factor, this has long been known.

but as for your argument that we cannot measure the speed of light absolutely, i am afraid that is nonsense.

I would venture to say nothing is impossible. Just not discovered yet.

However there are obstacles which may make it deadly for living organisms.

When matter travels at high speeds simply striking photons causes powerful radiation. Plasma is the fourth state of matter. Plasma is radiation. In our world we interact with three states of matter, but the fourth plasma (lightning) can kill us.

Find a way to survive being struck by lightning and then you may have a chance.

reply to post by sy.gunson

I would venture to say nothing is impossible. Just not discovered yet.

I would venture to agree with you but add that I am sure many things have been invented, discovered that are being surpressed, especially if it benefits mankind, but you know we are not deserving, on TPTB.

reply to post by Aquarius1


please read my new theory on naterally occouring warping of space time being the power source for the solar system
www.abovetopsecret.com...
if it can happen naturally then we can recreate it

xploder

This is my theory on ftl drive.
To move faster in space you need to slow down.
By using a stop motion light projector to cover your vehicle about three meters all around.
As the vehicle slows you initiate the movement engine to get to where you want to be.
Example:
I leave the atmosphere of a planet let\'s say Giel 4.
Outside the atmosphere I aim my vehicle towards Sol 3
I start the slowing with the projector.
When Geil starts to move on it's galactic plain I start the engine to bring me home.
Inside the vehicle you may still have a thrusting effect
Centrifical force and gravity are not thrown out the window just moved to a different perspective.
Yes I believe that an FTL or warp drive is possble if we stop putting limitations on ourselves.

Wormholes has been discussed since the beginning of time here over at ATS. And my reaction is always the same



lol

reply to post by ZikhaN


That may be so but new studies, technology and information is coming out all the time, just keeping up on the latest, I might just learn something new.

Thanks for posting.

Warping is a very interesting topic indeed . Now I am no expert so please correct as I go along ..

It seems to me that when ever we think about warp speed Scotty , we think of great " speeds " and vast distances , why is that ? Is not " warped space drive " already in use , as seen in every satellite in orbit ? Is not a gravitational orbit not warped space drive ?

Why do we assume that warp drive would allow us to travel very great distances in short periods of time ? To warp two points of space at a level great enough to allow GTL travel , what amounts of energy would be required ?