We NEED faster than light travel.

Have you heard of migel alcubierre?
In 1994 he proposed a supposed "warp drive" whose fate hinges on the existance of exotic matter called dark energy, or dark matter.

At the time of his calculations it was thought to have needed all the mass of jupiter to have enough energy for even a small jump, and therefore rendered improbable.

In the recent decade the calculations were re run and adjustments were made to the hypothetical design that brought the ammount of exotic matter needed down to just a few thousand kilos.

Also in recent tech news this supposed "dark energy" is actually thought to exsist. In fact it does exist.

The way the vessle would work is most easily described in an analogy. Immagine a ship in the ocean. Traditionally ships are powered by propellers and engines. Imagine instead the ship creating a force field so strong it lifts the water underneath of it into a wave. As the wave builds it sucks the ship through the water like a surfer on a wave.

That is a simplified explanation. It compresses space in front, while expanding it behind. The amazing thing is, is that the space in between the front and back of the craft is "normal" so tecnically you aren't moving at all. Your moving space through space which dosentbreak einsteins relativity.

Based on there calculations it would take 2 weeks to go to alpha centuri the closest star to our solar system. Also since your not technically going faster than light the clocks abourd the ship would match clocks on earth, avoiding casualty completely.

Check it out. Nasa is working on it for there 100 year starship program.

 

Sorry, didn't see your article. Haha im just a physics and space nut who happened to see your title and started writing efore I read it all lol. All in all id be STOKED AS FUCK if this happens in our lifetime.

I feel like this generation is in such an exiting inbetween phase. Were not cavemen anymore, and were on the verge of groundbreaking, mindshattering discoveries that will propel humanity into its next phase. Were on the "cutting edge" as it were.

 

If you were able to travel through space faster than the speed of light, wouldn't you collide into various things?

 

Theoretically you could go in a straight line in space and never hit anything. Space is HUUUUGE, and relatively empty.

This design however "bends space", Meaning whatever you hit will simply bend around you. This is the same way light defracts around an object.

 

[quote name='"wtfjusthappened"']

Sorry, didn't see your article. Haha im just a physics and space nut who happened to see your title and started writing efore I read it all lol. All in all id be STOKED AS FUCK if this happens in our lifetime.

I feel like this generation is in such an exiting inbetween phase. Were not cavemen anymore, and were on the verge of groundbreaking, mindshattering discoveries that will propel humanity into its next phase. Were on the "cutting edge" as it were.[/quote]

I'm sure cavemen thought they were also on the cutting edge when they diacovered fire, or made the wheel. And I'm sure scientists will gunk they are on the curing edge when they figure out speed-of-light travel. The truth is is that there is always somewhere new to explore and create in the world. The present is and will always be the cutting edge

 

Technically yes, every moment is on the cutting edge. Think about it this way though. For millions of years people relied on feet or animals for transport. They believed the earth was flat, and had no conception of continents let alone other planets and worlds.

Now within the last 100 years or so we have the car the plane and a man on the moon; within the next 100 years we will be on other planets with perhaps deep space colonies enhabited.

To go from camels to warp drives in 200 years, is to me very cutting edge.

 

Yes, but so is going from the camel to the jet engine.

With current understanding of physics, getting to a warp drive would be impossible. Mostly because it hinges upon a form of matter with negative mass, which whilst not impossible per-se, is not anything we've seen any clue of or have any inkling of how to make.

I'm not saying it is impossible. We must always dream. But interstellar travel isn't something I think we'll figure out in my lifetime. Apart from the obvious nuclear-powered generation ships, which is technologically feasible right now, but alas we got nowhere to go where we know a colony can be created easily.

That will take a few decades more of orbital telescopes finding habitable planets. And then all the rest of the beurocracy and funding before anything happens. By then, most who read this will be long dead of old age. Probably.

 

There are many issues with any speed near speed of light travel that no one has pointed out.

Imagine hitting a meteorite at speed of light. Meteorites are undetectable and common in space. If you hit one at light speed, it would go straight through the craft, which would terminate the mission right then and there. A tiny 1cm by 1cm rock would spell disaster for the crew at light speed. Hell even today it is a big issue.

How do you steer a craft going at light speed to avoid objects. I'd imagine that astronomers will never map out all of space. And going at lightspeed, you wouldnt see anthing clearly except the point directly in front of you. Crashing into an asteroid in the darkness of space is bad news.

Even with light speed, getting somewhere 200 light years away, it would require 200 years of travel. We are in a lonely part of the galaxy. Other than a few exceptions, most stars are a hefty distance away. The solution is to improve cryogenics. But if we are all cryogenically frozen, how do we steer? Computers? We need to improve and update computers then to analyze obstacles that are cm's wide and avoid them very rapidly; light speed rapidly. And it needs to do this for multiple objects in rapid succession without failing for (in this ex) 200 years. Computers need to be improved.

And while all this technology is being improved, humanity needs to get along. We will blow each other up before this technology is developed if we keep fighting over everything like we are now. Near utopia needs to be achieved before we can travel out of the solar system at light speed, which is impossible due to human nature.

On paper it's possible, and in ideal conditions, it's probable.

But in reality, we will only venture our solar system due to human's own nature to not get along.

But it's good to dream

Tl;dr:

Humans will never accomplish this feat because we can't cooperate as a species, and we will become extinct (for seen or unforeseen) reasons before this tech is even close to discovered

 

With an attitude like that im surprised we even made it to the moon.

Since you obviously haven't read this thread ill explain it again. The "warp drive" dosent go the speed of light, technically the ship dosent move at all.

It compresses space in front and expands it behind. The space where the ship resides is "normal", so your really moving space through space. If you hit and object it would bend around the craft just like light defracts around and object.

If you can't grasp this than I highly suggest not talking about things you don't understand.

 

But it is true that humans have major trouble cooperating as a species. Pretty much everyone on the planet is receiving mental or verbal threats of death and torture by someone, and that is if we look at the extremists of the top two religions alone, let alone the hundreds of other cults and hate groups. Plus there is the fact that some leaders have nukes in their arsenal and seem fine with maybe using them. I mean we Americans actually HAVE used nukes to destroy cities before.

First, let us aim at becoming a Type I civilization. We are still a Type zero civilization. Viewed intergalactically and from the perspective of there possibly being advanced aliens in our universe, a perspective relevant to this discussion since it's basically what we want to become, we are still incredibly barbaric and primitive as a species despite centuries of enlightenment. We need a sensible energy policy, reproduction culture, and to agree not to constantly and proudly blow each others heads off to settle arguments between countries before we can think of moving whole populations of ppl to even the nearest star systems. Deep space travel could definitely happen in only 200 years or less (check out Hawking's latest book if you don't believe), but it will be a matter of discipline.

 

Even if you did manage light-speed travel, you wouldn't survive it.


It would tear you apart.

 

I think this shit is really fucking cool. Now, I sincerely doubt we will accomplish this is any of our lifetimes, but I honestly think we'll be capable of interstellar travel one day.
Because we all know gene Roddenberry was involved in a transporter accident and got stuck in the 70s and decided to write stories telling the future.

 

But he also thought men should wear dresses, and all alien life forms were anthropomorphic.

 

Hahaha I think I was really high when I wrote that

 

Superluminal travel is essentially time travel if i understand the science properly. Not time travel as hollywood present it. You wouldnt be going back in history or forward in history. The concept of time itself is widely misunderstood. Im still trying to grasp the notion myself. From what i do understand time nor the speed of light are constant in themselves but are constant relative to atomic processes and other 'constants'. So we are all on the same page here, we are all aware time does not 'tick' everywhere with uniform 'speed'? Even between our gps satelittes atomic clocks and earths atomic clocks there is a time dilation that must be corrected for. The speed of light is measured by atomic clocks which assumes atomic processes are constant. There is profound research demonstrating that neither atomic processes and therefore the speed of light itself is not constant. Anyone else privy to this research? If not ill be glad to post a link on a new thread as to not hijack this one.

 

If you consider earth time to be the standard time then yes technically traveling near light speed would significantly reduce the effect time has on you. If you then slowed back down and came back to earth you would find that a lot more time has passed for the earthlings than for you.

Although I'm definitely no physicist, I'm pretty sure what I bolded is just not true. The speed of light has been proved to be constant as this was a critical part of Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. I'd really be interested in you posting the articles you refer to.

 

Can someone explain to me how traveling at the speed of light makes time go faster or whatever? I don't quite understand how it works, if I went the speed of light for 5 seconds, those 5 seconds would have taken just as long to pass if I was standing on earth wouldn't it?