Originally posted by OnionHead
reply to post by AnthraAndromda
And all that muck equates to a human able to travel to a distant stars in a few weeks? This all sounds very new and at best in development yet you
said we had the tech today to move people to distant stars, so we have conflicting stories.
Sounds like you have not had the opportunity to "watch" technlogy grow. In 1970, just before the "invention" of the microprocessor by Intel. Earth
had no "machine" that would serve as a "coputing device" other than "mini-computers" that weighed hundreds of pounds and filled at least one 7 foot
eqipment rack. By 1975, I had a "PC" that didn't quite fill a single 4 foot rack. Today I have "under my desk" a small box with more computing power
than most countries had in 1980.
So; "in development", really means "not released" in todays technological world. Especially when it comes to such simple devices as this field
generator.
Seriously, any moderately bright person could discover "magnets" today, and have a compass tomarrow.
To confirm then, using todays tech and our fastest rocket it would take roughly 80k years to reach our nearest star outside the solar system?
Yes, it is absolutely true, a
ROCKET wil take your 80k years. Rockets are slow! Rockets require fuel, and the burning of that fuel, in turn
they provide some small aount of thrust (in that the thrust will be sub-light speed). The "craft" using that rocket engine can never go faster than
its exhaust.
A field drive has NO exhaust, and this one places a gravity "node" in front of the "craft" and uses that to provide acceleration. Doing it this way
means that One can the same acceleration continously for as long as it is needed, so ... how fast did you want to go? FTL? Wait for it.
With a weak system, one that can only provide 1g of acceleration; at the end of a year it would be moving at just over the speed of light, and it
would be nearly a light year from where it started. Tri to Earth's nearest star? Less than 5 years.
There are however other issues to consider at those speeds. Like "time dilation", which is another reason you can't do this with a "rocket". This
field generator also has an effect of what is termed "frame-dragging"; this is where an object "drags" it's inertial frame for some period of time
(all objects do this). The cooled, spinning Niobium mass alters it's "frame dragging" properties and allows for a "different local clock rate". By
exploiting this, that trip to the nearest star can take 5 "normal space years".
Star travel is then practical.
Trying to think why we are so many posts later and you argued my original post. You can argue and post links all you want, and even in the unlikely
event that it is possible in the future, it certainly isn't today.
On a side note is time travel possible both forwards and back?
This was discovered in 2003, and became a "working drive theory" in 2006. Do you really think it hasn't been developed further than that? In 2006,
just after the scientists completed their lab work, and realized what they had, it became a matter of scale. Obviously the original lab system
wouldn't work; not big enough. They used ounces of Niobium and very small electrical potentials and currents. Scaling this system to something
practical is simple enough that anyone could do it. More Niobium, more electricty is a virtual "no brainer".
Time travel; I'm still undecided on that. Time is typically a unidirectional "thing". It has a vector that only points in one direction; forward. It
is easy to conceive of time existing only in the "moment"; events of the pase have already happened, they are history, AND, no longer exist except as
memorits. The future hasn't hapened yet, and therefore does not exist ... yet. Given this it becomes difficult to "see" tie travel.
Crazy thing is, in the Kerr Metric it is possible to change the "sign" of the "time vector" (from positive to negative), this "should" have the effect
of reversing Ones "direction" of travel through time. Unfortunately, I'm not a physicist (just an electrical/software engineer), so the math gets a
bit over my head. Although the control of this "tie vector" is important in FTL, and there are methods that can be used to provide at least some of
this control.
So, on time travel: don't know ... yet.
Now, back to this "in develoment" stuff. It is possible to use smething like this withut fully understanding it. Just look at the application of
electricity in today's technology.Electricity is still very much not understood.
ETA: In this field drive, there is no exotic technology, so building one is something anyone can do in their garage.
edit on 5-8-2012 by AnthraAndromda because: (no reason given)