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This topic has moved here: Subject: How would you invent FTL travel?
  • Subject: How would you invent FTL travel?
Subject: How would you invent FTL travel?

I remember when I used this space to put cool looking links to my chapters back in the day. I don't even know why I'm using it now. Why are you even reading this? You must be interested in me. Still reading?

Can matter even travel faster than the speed of light? Light isn't matter, it is a form of energy. Since nothing can travel as fast as the speed of light, how can we even know? Matter would simply change to energy.

And according to Einstein, to get to the speed of light you must accelerate, or course. Acceleration requires energy. X amount of acceleration requires Y amount of energy or X=Y. The mass of an object moving the speed of light would be infinite and the infinite amount of energy needed to reach that speed is impossible.

  • 12.30.2010 9:30 PM PDT

The closer to light speed you get, the slower time moves. So once you reach light speed, time has effectivly stopped, but only for you. If you broke the speed of light, relative time would start to go backwards. Meaning you could arrive before you left.

  • 12.30.2010 9:35 PM PDT

Halo is one of the most important part of my life.


Posted by: nmiactkt
The closer to light speed you get, the slower time moves. So once you reach light speed, time has effectivly stopped, but only for you. If you broke the speed of light, relative time would start to go backwards. Meaning you could arrive before you left.




The closer to light speed you get, the slower YOUR time moves. So once you reach light speed, time has effectivly stopped, but only for you. If you broke the speed of light, relative time would start to go backwards. Meaning you could arrive before you left.

I think you mean that, just a little correction.

[Edited on 12.30.2010 9:43 PM PST]

  • 12.30.2010 9:43 PM PDT

"Find The Bomb?!
Find The Bomb?!
I'm Looking For The Flag!
What The Heck Is Assualt!?"

I don't believe you thoroughly understand black holes original poster.

Anyways, acceleration would depend upon every action having and equal reaction, so in fact shooting out a microscopic black hole would propel the ship at a high speed due to how much mass is within one.

On the other hand I am part of the large part of theorists that do not believe a microscopic black hole could exist.

But the basic theory would be to offload a large amount of matter, in this case black holes would makes sense being that they are very dense, with high energy as to propel it away from the craft at the highest acceleration possible, inversely sending the craft in the opposite direction.

Being that the case, I don't believe anything with black holes are feasible, for the matter needed to create one the size of a pea is all the matter on earth, and I don't even believe that black hole would be stable and if it were the use of it on a ship would tear it apart due to the intense gravity it would exert.

Thusly another material would have to be use as propulsion, but being in space there is nothing, and not a dense enough matter could be stored on a craft of reasonable size to accelerate to propel it to light speed.

Thus I would suggest using dark matter, which takes up 95% of the matter in our universe. If it could be utilized I believe it is everywhere, even in space, and with the help of Fusion power, "which is not science fiction" it could be sued as a sustainable source that could continually propel the craft with dark matter in a relatively low friction path in space avoiding gravity as best as possible.

Even then probably it would take years of this to finally get the craft to light speed, and I believe that efficient relativistic speeds are actually must faster than light travel, so using it as quick way to traverse galaxies would be a bit pointless.

So... yeah...

  • 12.30.2010 9:46 PM PDT


Posted by: American Recoil
Can matter even travel faster than the speed of light? Light isn't matter, it is a form of energy. Since nothing can travel as fast as the speed of light, how can we even know? Matter would simply change to energy.

Crash course in special relativity:

-Mass and energy are exactly the same thing. Yes, if you heat a rock up, it becomes more massive. In your frame of reference, it will also become more massive if you throw it, giving it kinetic energy.
-"Matter" is just a manifestation or form of energy.
-The reason that photons travel at c is that they have no "matter"; give a photon the slightest bit of mechanical energy (which is pretty much what they're made of anyway) and they'll instantly accelerate in all reference frames to as fast a speed as the universe allows in local space, which happens to be a speed which we notate "c".

And according to Einstein, to get to the speed of light you must accelerate, or course. Acceleration requires energy. X amount of acceleration requires Y amount of energy or X=Y. The mass of an object moving the speed of light would be infinite and the infinite amount of energy needed to reach that speed is impossible.
Which is why proposals for FTL travel generally don't involve acceleration in regular space, but rather space-bending-ish shortcuts.

A fair number of people, myself more or less included, suspect that FTL travel might wind up being impossible to actually attain due to breakdown of causality in various physical models, even if it does seem to be possible in some models assuming certain preconditions exist. Not that causality is considered a physical law, but it's still generally seen as important, and when it breaks down, everything gets all screwy.

[Edited on 12.30.2010 9:49 PM PST]

  • 12.30.2010 9:48 PM PDT

I remember when I used this space to put cool looking links to my chapters back in the day. I don't even know why I'm using it now. Why are you even reading this? You must be interested in me. Still reading?

Posted by: Tupolev
A fair number of people, myself more or less included, suspect that FTL travel might wind up being impossible to actually attain due to breakdown of causality in various physical models, even if it does seem to be possible in some models assuming certain preconditions exist. Not that causality is considered a physical law, but it's still generally seen as important, and when it breaks down, everything gets all screwy.
So in what conditions would this be able to be obtained. I'm sure nowhere on earth has anywhere near correct conditions. Would studies have to be made in space?

  • 12.30.2010 9:54 PM PDT

"If you fight it, you become it."

The amount of energy required to travel in hyperspace (That is, higher dimensions) would require 1,000 quadrillion times the amount of energy from the world's largest hadron collider, according to the Superstring theory.

So, in reality, because the "Universal Speed Limit" is the speed of light in a four dimensional Universe (Our Universe), then the only way to go faster then the speed of light is to move into a higher dimension where faster then light travel is possible. To do this, it would require the same amount of energy triggered in the big bang.

Of course, all of these ideas are theoretical, but going off what evidence is provided today, it would take eons before humans could actually harness the power of hyperspace and travel faster then the speed of light.

Sorry Halo fans, no slipspace drives here.

  • 12.30.2010 9:57 PM PDT


Posted by: American Recoil
So in what conditions would this be able to be obtained. I'm sure nowhere on earth has anywhere near correct conditions. Would studies have to be made in space?

Conditions like "there is a preexisting hole in the universe through which we could make more holes to travel through, but where if a hole doesn't already exist then we can't". Stuff like that.

  • 12.30.2010 10:12 PM PDT

"If you fight it, you become it."

I'm going to go a little deeper into what I'm trying to say. According to the Superstring Theory, there are ten dimensions in space-time. Our Universe consists of four dimensions (Length, Height, Width, and Time). The other six are theorized to exist in an alternate Universe, created by the Big Bang and parallel to ours.

In our four dimensional Universe, the speed of light, or C, is the "Universal Speed Limit". Because of Einsteins famous equation, E=MC^2, we know that it is impossible to travel faster then the speed of light, because in a four dimensional Universe your mass is infinite as you reach the speed of light.

So, FTL travel is impossible in a Four Dimensional Universe. It is not impossible, however, in higher dimensions, where the common rules of physics don't apply.

So how do you get to a higher dimension? Wormholes. Wormholes are theoretical "portals" that twist and bend space-time like a pretzel and can actually pull the fabric of space-time towards you. In theory, you're not going faster then the speed of light, but the fabric of space-time itself is.

However, realism hits hard. It is theorized that the amount of energy needed to create a wormhole is so massive that it would require the same energy generated during the Big Bang. So if you want to know if it's possible anytime soon, it isn't.

I hope this cleared up a few things for people reading my original post.


[Edited on 12.30.2010 10:19 PM PST]

  • 12.30.2010 10:18 PM PDT

I remember when I used this space to put cool looking links to my chapters back in the day. I don't even know why I'm using it now. Why are you even reading this? You must be interested in me. Still reading?

Posted by: Lord Xanth
I'm going to go a little deeper into what I'm trying to say. According to the Superstring Theory, there are ten dimensions in space-time. Our Universe consists of four dimensions (Length, Height, Width, and Time). The other six are theorized to exist in an alternate Universe, created by the Big Bang and parallel to ours.

In our four dimensional Universe, the speed of light, or C, is the "Universal Speed Limit". Because of Einsteins famous equation, E=MC^2, we know that it is impossible to travel faster then the speed of light, because in a four dimensional Universe your mass is infinite as you reach the speed of light.

So, FTL travel is impossible in a Four Dimensional Universe. It is not impossible, however, in higher dimensions, where the common rules of physics don't apply.

So how do you get to a higher dimension? Wormholes. Wormholes are theoretical "portals" that twist and bend space-time like a pretzel and can actually pull the fabric of space-time towards you. In theory, you're not going faster then the speed of light, but the fabric of space-time itself is.

However, realism hits hard. It is theorized that the amount of energy needed to create a wormhole is so massive that it would require the same energy generated during the Big Bang. So if you want to know if it's possible anytime soon, it isn't.

I hope this cleared up a few things for people reading my original post.
I had a basic understanding but you actually cleared me up on a few points. Interesting read. But what would the other 6 dimensions be?

  • 12.30.2010 10:23 PM PDT
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I -blam!- love this thread. Love intelligent discussion.

On a side note, didn't Einstein prove that wormholes exist? Since they exist, does this fact remedy any issues/create any new theories?

EDIT: just read the post above my own, ninja'd! But yeah, it nulls everything I said about wormholes so just ignore everything I say about that

Whoever said I don't know much about blackholes and whatnot is correct- I only know a minimal amount about astrophysics and even less about theoretical physics. HOWEVER, I love learning and listening to stuff about the aforementioned topics... Especially the stuff pertaining to this discussion.

Would quantum mechanics possibly relate to this as well? If someone could try and explain it that would be superb..although I'm pretty sure that it's really hard to do so

[Edited on 12.30.2010 10:28 PM PST]

  • 12.30.2010 10:24 PM PDT

"If you fight it, you become it."

Posted by: American Recoil
I had a basic understanding but you actually cleared me up on a few points. Interesting read. But what would the other 6 dimensions be?


Check out Michio Kaku. That's who I'm reading right now. He's pretty famous on the Science channel and he's a very popular Theoretical Physicist. He goes into detail on the Superstring Theory in his book Hyperspace, which is what I'm reading right now.

As for the other six dimensions, I'm not quite sure. However, they're greatly explained in the Superstring Theory. Try googling it when you have the time.

On a side note, this is quite an interesting thread.

  • 12.30.2010 10:32 PM PDT

"If you fight it, you become it."

This video can help explain the ten dimensions here.

  • 12.30.2010 10:34 PM PDT

We believe that the universe is unbounded: this is not the same as infinite: the 2-D surface of a sphere, wrapped around a 3rd dimension, has a finite size, but has no end. If you start off in a given direction on the surface of a sphere, you could return to your start point without having to turn around -- you simply go all the way around. But wouldn't that mean the universe has an escape velocity like the earth?

Posted by: falconslayer93
I -blam!- love this thread. Love intelligent discussion.

On a side note, didn't Einstein prove that wormholes exist? Since they exist, does this fact remedy any issues/create any new theories?

EDIT: just read the post above my own, ninja'd! But yeah, it mulls everything I said about wormholes so just ignore everything I say about that

Whoever said I don't know much about blackholes and whatnot is correct- I only know a minimal amount about astrophysics and even less about theoretical physics. HOWEVER, I love learning and listening to stuff about the aforementioned topics... Especially the stuff pertaining to this discussion.

Would quantum mechanics possibly relate to this as well? If someone could try and explain it that would be superb..although I'm pretty sure that it's really hard to do so

Lul, Wormholes, simple childs-play to throw that idea around. matter can travel faster than light in certain situations to produce Cherenkov Radiation.

The yet unproven Tachyon is also theorised to be a faster than light elementary particle. Wormholes are excessively tricky as even if they could be produced today, you would need to ensure you haven't screwed or numerous crappy scenarios could happen, the most exciting being the creation of a black hole, and a theoretical white hole in 3-Dimensional Space.

My theory explores the entrance of stellar craft into higher dimensional space using a Particle Drive that manipulates millions of microscopic black holes to rip a rift into intradimensional Spacetime fabric. Basically this:

Imagine you are a fish. You swim and swim, but do they usually reach the surface? No. They are ignorant to the sky and space above, imagine space and the sky to the fish as a higher dimension. The Fishbowl Theory can be derived from this, but I don't like it. String Theory is the basis for my black-hole macroscopic tunneling/cataclysmic brute rifting Theorem, to which up to 11-D space is accessible in VERY certain mathematical examples.

~B2

EDIT: Due to Hyperspace theories on the amount of energy required to access 4-D space, my post is accurate, but does not explain my bypass of the rule. Please do refrain from noting that error.

[Edited on 12.30.2010 10:37 PM PST]

  • 12.30.2010 10:35 PM PDT

"If you fight it, you become it."


Posted by: Bungie2
Lul, Wormholes, simple childs-play to throw that idea around. matter can travel faster than light in certain situations to produce Cherenkov Radiation.

The yet unproven Tachyon is also theorised to be a faster than light elementary particle. Wormholes are excessively tricky as even if they could be produced today, you would need to ensure you haven't screwed or numerous crappy scenarios could happen, the most exciting being the creation of a black hole, and a theoretical white hole in 3-Dimensional Space.

My theory explores the entrance of stellar craft into higher dimensional space using a Particle Drive that manipulates millions of microscopic black holes to rip a rift into intradimensional Spacetime fabric. Basically this:

Imagine you are a fish. You swim and swim, but do they usually reach the surface? No. They are ignorant to the sky and space above, imagine space and the sky to the fish as a higher dimension. The Fishbowl Theory can be derived from this, but I don't like it. String Theory is the basis for my black-hole macroscopic tunneling/cataclysmic brute rifting Theorem, to which up to 11-D space is accessible in VERY certain mathematical examples.

~B2

EDIT: Due to Hyperspace theories on the amount of energy required to access 4-D space, my post is accurate, but does not explain my bypass of the rule. Please do refrain from noting that error.


I love your posts Bungie2. Quite informative. This thread has been a good read!

  • 12.30.2010 10:44 PM PDT


Posted by: Bungie2
Lul, Wormholes, simple childs-play to throw that idea around. matter can travel faster than light in certain situations to produce Cherenkov Radiation.

That's an abuse of terminology. Cherenkov radiation is produced when an object travels faster than light does in a given medium; when people talk about "FTL travel", they're really talking about "faster than c travel". Cherenkov radiation has nothing to do with matter travelling faster than c in local space.

  • 12.30.2010 10:47 PM PDT

I remember when I used this space to put cool looking links to my chapters back in the day. I don't even know why I'm using it now. Why are you even reading this? You must be interested in me. Still reading?

What is the difference between a black hole and a worm hole? And can't a supernova temporarily create one?

  • 12.30.2010 10:49 PM PDT

We believe that the universe is unbounded: this is not the same as infinite: the 2-D surface of a sphere, wrapped around a 3rd dimension, has a finite size, but has no end. If you start off in a given direction on the surface of a sphere, you could return to your start point without having to turn around -- you simply go all the way around. But wouldn't that mean the universe has an escape velocity like the earth?

Posted by: American Recoil
What is the difference between a black hole and a worm hole? And can't a supernova temporarily create one?


Whats the difference between a cone and an hourglass? A black-hole sucks in everything, including light into an infintesimal singularity. (Being extremely brief). As for a wormhole, draw a line on a piece of paper, not fold the paper in half and make a hole that goes through both layers, that hole you made is the basic concept of a wormhole, a basic shortcut through space. (Again being extremely brief for time.

Posted by: Tupolev

Posted by: Bungie2
Lul, Wormholes, simple childs-play to throw that idea around. matter can travel faster than light in certain situations to produce Cherenkov Radiation.

That's an abuse of terminology. Cherenkov radiation is produced when an object travels faster than light does in a given medium; when people talk about "FTL travel", they're really talking about "faster than c travel". Cherenkov radiation has nothing to do with matter travelling faster than c in local space.


I never said local space, I was being very brief.

Posted by: Lord Xanth

Posted by: Bungie2
Lul, Wormholes, simple childs-play to throw that idea around. matter can travel faster than light in certain situations to produce Cherenkov Radiation.

The yet unproven Tachyon is also theorised to be a faster than light elementary particle. Wormholes are excessively tricky as even if they could be produced today, you would need to ensure you haven't screwed or numerous crappy scenarios could happen, the most exciting being the creation of a black hole, and a theoretical white hole in 3-Dimensional Space.

My theory explores the entrance of stellar craft into higher dimensional space using a Particle Drive that manipulates millions of microscopic black holes to rip a rift into intradimensional Spacetime fabric. Basically this:

Imagine you are a fish. You swim and swim, but do they usually reach the surface? No. They are ignorant to the sky and space above, imagine space and the sky to the fish as a higher dimension. The Fishbowl Theory can be derived from this, but I don't like it. String Theory is the basis for my black-hole macroscopic tunneling/cataclysmic brute rifting Theorem, to which up to 11-D space is accessible in VERY certain mathematical examples.

~B2

EDIT: Due to Hyperspace theories on the amount of energy required to access 4-D space, my post is accurate, but does not explain my bypass of the rule. Please do refrain from noting that error.


I love your posts Bungie2. Quite informative. This thread has been a good read!


Hehe thanks brah. With the theory im producing, you managed to bring up an asspain called Superstring Theory and its painful energy requirements. My bypass is using natural processes to rip into the higher-dimension. Although the question is, when you get in 5-D+, how do you escape? ;)

~B2

[Edited on 12.30.2010 10:56 PM PST]

  • 12.30.2010 10:54 PM PDT


Posted by: American Recoil
What is the difference between a black hole and a worm hole?

"Black holes" are regions of space with gravity wells such that no objects moving through space in the classical sense can escape; all paths within the light cone of an object inside of an event horizon point, well, deeper into the hole.

"Wormholes" are hypothetical objects, basically weird shortcut connections between two regions in space.

  • 12.30.2010 10:56 PM PDT

I remember when I used this space to put cool looking links to my chapters back in the day. I don't even know why I'm using it now. Why are you even reading this? You must be interested in me. Still reading?

Posted by: Tupolev

Posted by: American Recoil
What is the difference between a black hole and a worm hole?

"Black holes" are regions of space with gravity wells such that no objects moving through space in the classical sense can escape; all paths within the light cone of an object inside of an event horizon point, well, deeper into the hole.

"Wormholes" are hypothetical objects, basically weird shortcut connections between two regions in space.
I see, two completely different things. I should really check on this String Theory.

  • 12.30.2010 10:58 PM PDT


Posted by: Bungie2
I never said local space, I was being very brief.

It doesn't matter. Either way, Cherenkov radiation has nothing to do with objects moving FTL in the sense of what people mean when they say "FTL".


My use of "local" before "space" was unnecessary.

[Edited on 12.30.2010 11:01 PM PST]

  • 12.30.2010 11:00 PM PDT

We believe that the universe is unbounded: this is not the same as infinite: the 2-D surface of a sphere, wrapped around a 3rd dimension, has a finite size, but has no end. If you start off in a given direction on the surface of a sphere, you could return to your start point without having to turn around -- you simply go all the way around. But wouldn't that mean the universe has an escape velocity like the earth?

Posted by: Tupolev

Posted by: Bungie2
I never said local space, I was being very brief.

It doesn't matter. Either way, Cherenkov radiation has nothing to do with objects moving FTL in the sense of what people mean when they say "FTL".


My use of "local" before "space" was unnecessary.


I worded the writing incorrectly myself. Still, I never said it related to conventional FTL. more or less particular radiational circumstances.

~B2

  • 12.30.2010 11:03 PM PDT

"Of all the Sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful." -John Taylor, Pittsburgh Academy

Firstly, as already brought up in this thread, accelerating to c is impossible. Likewise it is impossible to exceed c in any frame of reference (however, space itself can accelerate at speeds greater than c; this is because space is not moving relative to anything else. Such superluminal expansion occurred during the inflation period early in the universe's history.

To clarify a bit more on the difference between a black hole and a wormhole; black holes are regions of space-time whose gravity is so immense, nothing can escape them. However, they are not "cosmic vacuum cleaners". They behave just like any other gravitating object. You can in fact orbit a black hole and not fall in; however, it would take an enormous amount of energy (for spacecraft, this is the change in velocity, called delta-v) to escape orbit, and eventually this speed (called escape velocity) reaches c and it becomes impossible to escape. Black holes can't be used for FTL travel because they tend to rip anything that falls onto their "surface" into a stream of atomized bits, and besides the point the space around them is filled with high-energy radiation.
A wormhole, on the other hand, is a topological defect in space-time that links two distant points in space-time. The folded paper analogy is correct, however you must understand that it is a 3-d projection of a 4-d structure; wormhole mouths will likely be spherical. There is one caveat with wormholes though; they appear to require "negative energy" to remain stable. This is a bit of an exotic concept for me, and I am certainly not qualified to discuss it at length (not am I with any of the aforementioned...yet), but from what I understand it seems that to prop open a wormhole would require enormous amounts of energy and a form of exotic matter that has a negative mass. This is all theory, but I can direct you to some papers on the subject.
http://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/TraversableLorenzianWormhol es-Overview.pdf < From the Orion's Arm worldbuilding project, a fantastic online collaborative hard SF project
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.0208v2.pdf < A paper discussing the possible foam-like structure of space-time (an integral part in the formation of natural wormholes).

I would tend to be a bit more thoughtful and try to contribute my own theories, but it's 2:30 AM and I need sleep. Might I put in a word for relativistic rockets?

  • 12.30.2010 11:44 PM PDT

I remember when I used this space to put cool looking links to my chapters back in the day. I don't even know why I'm using it now. Why are you even reading this? You must be interested in me. Still reading?

Say that we, theoretically of course, harness the energy necessary to create a worm hole. How would the set location of the exiting portal be set? How would set coordinates be made? And once created, how would it be maintained?

  • 12.31.2010 12:39 AM PDT

On hiding dead bodies:
Posted by: Psuedo
Posted by: teh Chaz
Inside another dead body. It's the last place they'll look
A corpse within a corpse.
CORPSEPTION.
Win.

Posted by: Phenomenon IV
E=MC^2 + 1?
Do you even have any idea what that equation means?

  • 12.31.2010 2:40 AM PDT